Silverman Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Julian Hoeber on view from June 10 – July 16, 2011. The artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery features a series of new paintings, as well as a selection of constructions, including a door, a chair, and a coffee table.
The paintings are the latest iterations of The Execution Changes, an ongoing series that employs a 2 × 3 ratio scale to determine the surface compositions of acrylic-on-panel works. Also integrating elements of collage, each piece is titled in alphanumeric code, underscoring the tension between the regularity of this self-imposed system and its unexpected painterly effects. As with previous bodies of work, this series mines established art historical narratives only to arrive at new breaks and fissures. In this context, the resonances with Op Art and the conceptual strategies of the 60s and 70s (such as the work of Sol LeWitt) provide a strategic point of departure to explore irregularities within a given set of formal operations.
Hoeber explores a similar logic with Endless Chair, a series of design objects produced from birch plywood slats treated with stain and gesso. Each work is built from the same modular unit reconfigured into limitless, unique combinations. In this, Hoeber eschews distinctions between high and low culture, form and craft, emphasizing instead the materiality of each object to produce what the artist describes as “Conceptual art made with an interest in handcraft.” Combined, The Execution Changes and Endless Chair comprise an open-ended project that endeavors to generate in excess of one thousand unique objects across a wide range of media.
Julian Hoeber was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1974. He holds a degree in Art History from Tufts University, a B.F.A from the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and anM.F.A. from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. He has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, including solo exhibitions at Blum and Poe, Los Angeles, Galleria Francesca Kaufmann, Milan, and Praz-Delavallade, Paris, as well as group exhibitions at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and the Deste Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens. His work is part of numerous private and public permanent collections includingMOCA, Los Angeles, the Dakis Joannou Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Most recently, he held his first museum solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum with a free-standing structure based on the architecture of “gravitational mystery spots.” Hoeber currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.