Installation view, East gallery
Mr. Natural
September 15 - October 27, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 15, 6-8pm
Michael Dopp
David Korty
Roger Herman
Calvin Marcus
curated by Michael Dopp
gallery km is very pleased to present Mr. Natural, a group show with work by Michael Dopp, David Korty, Roger Herman and Calvin Marcus, curated by Michael Dopp. Featured work includes paintings by Dopp and Marcus, etchings by Korty, and wood block prints on fabric by Herman. The exhibition will be held in gallery km’s east gallery from September 15 – October 27, with a reception for the artists on Saturday, September 15th, from six to eight in the evening.
The title of the exhibition, Mr. Natural, references a dice game by the same name, and the show revolves around the tension between structure and chance, with formal themes such as the use of grids acting to connect the distinct styles of the artists. Texturally, the work moves from flat, geometric, cerebral and dry in the work of Dopp and Korty, to heavy impasto and gestural with splashes of color in the work of Herman and Marcus. Binary themes of black and white, geometric and gestural, youth and experience, flat and dimensional, organic and contrived are referenced lightly and then dispatched in the loose manner one might associate with a game of chance. With a consistent emphasis on layering structured shape over unintended consequence, we see the controlled playing off of the incidental in a way that calls to mind the nature of games, the nature of luck, the nature of painting, and the nature of collaboration.
Michael Dopp was born in 1978 in Bloomington, Indiana. He received a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited in Los Angeles, New York and Italy, including recent shows at Night Gallery and Kinkaed Contemporary in Los Angeles and Galleria Studio Legale in Caserta, Italy. He has participated in group shows at Roberts & Tilton, China Art Objects, and gallery km in Los Angeles among many others, and has collaborated on curatorial projects in multiple alternative exhibition spaces in Los Angeles.
David Korty was born in California in 1971, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively throughout the United States as well as internationally, including solo shows at China Art Objects and Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, Kimmerich in New York, Sadie Koles HQ in London, Gerhardsen Gerner in Berlin, I M Art in Seoul, and Braverman Gallery in Tel Aviv.
Roger Herman has exhibited nationally and internationally since moving from Germany to Los Angeles twenty-five years ago. His solo shows include exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Projects, Los Angeles; Ace Gallery, Los Angeles and New York; Froment Putman Galerie, Paris; Ursula Krinzinger, Austria; Fuller Gross Gallery, San Francisco; Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles; Lawing Gallery, Houston; Museo del Arte Contemporana, Mexico City; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the La Jolla Art Museum; the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University; the Santa Monica Museum of Art; and the San Francisco Art Institute. His work is included in numerous private and public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Albertina, Vienna, Austria; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Achenbach Foundation; the Robert Rifkind Foundation; the Eli Broad Collection; the Dallas Price Collection; and the Bank of America Collection. Herman received a DAAD Grant from Germany and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He received his M.F.A. from Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe, Germany, and he is a professor of art at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Calvin Marcus was born in Marin, California in 1988. He received a B.A. from the University of Oregon in 2010, and is a current M.F.A. candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has participated in multiple curatorial projects in alternative spaces throughout Los Angeles.