Like The Spice Gallery

09/04/09

Eric LoPresti: FADE

by Like the Spice Gallery at Citysearch

Sept 11th – October 5th 2009

Opening Reception Friday September 11th 6:30-10:00pm

Like the Spice is proud to present Fade, its second solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Eric LoPresti. The works in Fade are predominated by the soft colors of the desert steppe – grays, ochres, pinks and dark blues. In contrast, the imagery is dramatic in scope and subject, including vast aerial views of fractured desert landscapes, nuclear test sites in Nevada, and explosions from undisclosed arid locations, many of which are based on photographs LoPresti took himself from the windows of chartered planes.

LoPresti’s work is about conflict. The works in Fade investigate the traumatic side effects of contemporary war through landscapes that are the sites of weapons tests, reactors, and munitions dumps. Building off of his previous diptychs which juxtaposed sites of violent conflict with colored gradient fields, LoPresti’s new works convey a post-cold-war zeitgeist with a confident hand and genuine devotion to the aesthetics of the austere. The new works seamlessly incorporates landscapes and gradients, opening up contemplative possibilities and heightening the effect of the vast spaces they depict. Rather than polemicize, LoPresti’s works provide space to encounter the drama and vastness of forces both within and beyond human control..

Eric LoPresti, born 1971, holds a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He is the recipient of the Faber Birren/Louis J. Kuriansky Foundation Award and the Miami Young Painters, William and Dorothy Yeck Purchase Award. Recent solo exhibitions include Against Nature (2005) at Jan Larsen Fine Art, New Thought New Work (2006), at Miami University, Force Against Force (2008) at Like the Spice, and Test Sites (2008) at the New York Public Library. LoPresti lives and works in Brooklyn.

04/19/08

Coming Soon!

by marisais at Citysearch

Force Against Force: Eric LoPresti

May 16th ? June 8th 2008

Opening Reception Friday May 16th 6:30-10:00pm

Like The Spice is proud to present Force Against Force featuring Eric LoPresti?s eloquent diptychs composed of photorealistic renderings and airbrushed gradients. Each binary pairing, executed in either graphite or oil and acrylic, alludes to uncontrollable forces and the universality of conflict and catastrophic loss. The precisely realized images of destruction, danger and chaos on one panel are set against the contemplative psychological space of color field painting, thereby combining two schools of painting historically seen as antagonistic to each other.

Based on dramatic and sometimes harrowing photographs of contemporary battlegrounds in Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as sites of danger and turmoil --- shark filled waters, melting icebergs and refugee camps --- these paintings and drawings express the inadequacy of human perception to grasp the vast, shapeless complexities of powerful forces.

Opposing each landscape is an abstract gradient, where multiple colors or tones fade into one another in atmospheric, emotionally charged fields. With no indication of scale and lacking any solid form, the gradients provide open space into which the viewer can project their reactions and emotions.

About the diptychs, ?I think of them as visual equations, where the resulting experience is very different than the sum of the parts. Each side transforms the other by its proximity,? says Eric.

Born in 1971, Eric LoPresti grew up in the remote desert of southeastern Washington State. He received his BA in Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester in 1993, and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002. His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo shows at Jan Larson Fine Art and Miami University. This will be his first solo show at Like the Spice.