Drawing inspiration from his acknowledged influences--the Arts and Crafts Movement,  Abstract Expressionism, organic and hard-edged abstraction, pattern and textile design,  and Op Art--Ray combines these formalist concepts with decorators’ tips gleaned from  lowbrow publications and sources of popular culture. His work is widely exhibited at  museums, including SFMOMA, San Jose Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Center  for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, and currently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

(Image: Rex Ray, Bryoria, 2007, mixed media, collage on linen, 76 x 56"; Untitled #3169,mixed media on panel, 24 x 16", 2009; Courtsey of the artist and Turner Carroll Gallery)

LewAllen Galleries is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, Kris Cox: Geometry + Gesture. Marking Cox’s recent addition to LewAllen Galleries’ diverse roster of contemporary artists, the exhibition will showcase recent works that demonstrates his individualistic approach to hybridizing the diverse media of painting, ceramics, wall relief, and sculpture.

Operating at the nexus of Modernist composition and venerable craftsmanship, the art of Kris  Cox deftly balances the mechanics of industry with the poetics of the handmade. Having trained extensively in ceramics prior to exploring the expanded possibilities engendered by hybrid media, medieval ceramics techniques often enter into relations of mutual resonance and exchange with the more recent domains of visual production that Cox either references or directly engages.

Frequently employing such salient principles of Minimalist praxis as the square format, visible grid, minimization of external referents, and foregrounding of literal materiality, his art encourages rapt attention to the relationship between order and material, the decipherment of rule-driven structures, and an acute sense of spatial coordination with his works’ surrounding environments.

Nonetheless, at the level of close inspection prompted by their Minimalist tropes, Cox’s compositions demonstrate their embrace of qualities that the genre tacitly excludes: highly expressive surfaces whose asperities and modulations owe more to firing than formulation. Indeed, the paramount visual interest of his works lies between the perimeters of his taut geometrics: within the richly active crackling produced by the 16th century Japanese technique of raku firing as well as the delicate lineation created by methods that derive from medieval French champlevé enamelling. In mastering principally destructive techniques that breed serendipity from the shed vestiges of authorial predominition, Cox demonstrates the beauty of controlled chaos.

Born in Los Angeles, CA, in 1951, Kris Cox earned a BA from Claremont College in 1973 and received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977. The artist has subsequently participated in more than 50 solo exhibition and numerous significant group exhibitions internationally. His works are included in such prominent public and private collections as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the Oakland Art Museum, General Mills, and the Prudential Insurance Art Collection.

(Images: Kris Cox, Woods, 2005, Mixed Media On Wood Panel (triptych), 81 in x 67.5 in x 1.75 in; Relative Timeline Series, April 96.05, 2005 .mixed Media On Wood Panel 96 in x 96 in x 2 in; Concentric Episode Series, Bone, 30.02.2, 2002, mixed Media On Wood Panel, 32 in x 32 in x 2 in; Courtesy of the artist and LewAllen Galleries)

James Kelly Contemporary is pleased to announce an exhibition of drawings by Susan York and Wes Mills; the exhibition will consist of graphite on paper works from recent years by both artists.  This will be York’s first and Mills’ second exhibition with the gallery.

Both Mills’ and York’s work in the show are composed of the same materials and techniques, yet are noticeably different in their end results. Mills’ work is ethereal, delicate, and of intimate scale while York’s is dense, geometrically based, and larger scale. These are two artists working in a similar vein yet produce drawings that are drastically different in feeling.

York’s drawings are always based on the three dimensional sculptures she constructs out of the same material, the drawings are a way to view and relate the three dimensional objects in a two dimensional presentation. They are made by repeatedly applying graphite to the paper and rubbing the surface, the results of which create a hazy glow around the edges of the forms that alludes to the dense nature of the image. As in the sculptural work there is also a sense of tension in many of the drawings that’s achieved by the placement of the image on the paper. In certain instances, multiple planes of the sculptures are transcribed, resulting in a tension between the two or three images. Other instances the image hovers just above the lower edge of the paper creating a sense of tension between the graphite and the edge of the paper.

Mills’ drawings are very different in their poetic abstract qualities. The show will feature works from several different series spanning a range of years. Throughout the drawings in the exhibition Mills is experimenting with the process of mark making. Delicate lines, biomorphic forms, and shadows created by cuts in the paper characterize several of the series that will be on display. Mills’ drawings are gesture heavy yet only show the essentials.

(Images: Susan York, Asymmetrical Form 11.16.08 (right side), 2008, Graphite on Arches 88 paper, 30 x 22-1/2 inches; Susan York Untitled, 10.15.07 2007, graphite on Arches 88 paper, 30 x 22-1/2 inches; Wes Mills, Untitled, 2006, graphite on paper, 3-3/4 x 3-7/8 inches;  Courtesy of the artists and James Kelly Contemporary)