David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to present Le Gant de Velours, Traversing the Fantasy, and the Thousand-Yard Stare (Disparate Subjects Happening Concurrently, 1977–1979), an exhibition of new work by Matthew Brannon. The exhibition—which includes unique, large-scale silkscreen prints; photographic works that inaugurate a new direction in the artist’s practice; and other works—is on view from September 13 through October 19, 2024, in Los Angeles. An opening reception will be held on Friday, September 13 from 6 to 8 PM. While this exhibition finds Brannon revisiting mediums and modes of thought and practice that have been present throughout his twenty-five-year career, it also marks a series of important and far-reaching departures. An impassioned researcher, Brannon surveys the broader cultural landscape as if he is using a psychological x-ray, producing highly visual works—many of them informed by painting, design, and literature—that encapsulate the images, emotions, and geopolitical conundrums of various eras throughout the twentieth century. Most notably, these have included in-depth examinations of the Vietnam War and its aftermath in political and popular culture. In addition to these themes, Brannon has also fully integrated his personal experience and life story into this exhibition, so that his look at late-1970s America reverberates with the hopes and disappointments of the child Brannon was during that period as well as the adult he is today. Movingly, this includes his process of grieving, in life and in art, the recent death of his wife and life partner. The autobiographical poignancy of the exhibition is balanced by Brannon’s characteristic humor, which is factual and surreal in equal measure. Intellectual Property (2024), a large-scale, aluminum-mounted photograph that appears—on first glance—to recreate or reimagine a scene from the 1977 movie Star Wars features subjects dressed as Princess Leia and Darth Vader. Quickly, however, the image reveals itself to be provocatively “off”; Darth Vader’s cape is made of mesh, and Leia, holding a cigarette, wears a sheer, see-through white blouse. The scene is suffused with an unlikely combination of cynical sexuality and light-hearted play in which cultural icons visibly bear the very anxieties that audiences relied on them to escape. The uncertainty that could be found in other areas of life in the late ’70s appears here in new garb, personified by characters whose mythic struggles for power now take on libidinal meaning according to a new lexicon. The image hints at this intersection of power, sex, and language—as well as the theoretical frameworks intellectuals used and continue to use to describe them—through the inclusion of a stylized take on a book by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Movies and their accompanying documents, especially posters, have provided an ongoing source of interest for Brannon since the beginning of his career. In a recent print on canvas masquerading as a poster for a movie called “Year Zero,” Brannon reanimates otherworldly Star Wars-related figures in order to give voice to compulsions driven by desire. With the phallic associations of the lightsaber literalized and a sultry Leia dominating the proceedings in more ways than one, the mood of the work is, as text on its surface indicates, X-rated, even if its imagery and texts are more allusive than they are explicit. The mythic structure of the film and its eventual franchise tend toward universalist views of good and evil, but Brannon indicates how the film is also a product of the era in which it was made, and therefore brimming with latent, morally ambiguous content. The exhibition is not fully given over to the adult realm of experience, however. A youthful, even wide-eyed innocence also prevails, as does an instinct to find personal connections in the ubiquitous expressions of a culture trying to find itself as globalism begins to solidify its grip upon the masses. Text-based works on canvas provide a newly transparent window into the inner research that Brannon conducts as he collects the outer symbols, images, and documents that populate his works. Spliced among observations and tropes the artist has gleaned from his extensive investigations and translated into his own gnomic prose—allusions to conflicts in Cambodia and Iran; the life of Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist of the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead; and other cultural touchstones abound—are straightforward, poetic reflections on important moments in his childhood. These range from attempts to make sense of unfathomable events to thoughtful musings on seemingly minor moments, all of which have gone on to shape the remainder of his life. It is in the light of such works that Brannon’s newest silkscreen prints take on their full meaning. Though work like Estimated Prophet (I) (2024) appears at first glance to find its visual center of gravity in the decaying manifestations of psychedelia that continued to permeate American culture on the verge of the 1980s. It is also a paean to the heady mixture of disappointment, apocalyptic anxiety, and perverse hope that would carry through the decade to come and lay the groundwork for current paradoxical combinations of possibility and impossibility. These prints demonstrate not only the fluidity of Brannon’s imagination, but the ways in which he has authored his own genre to depict the processes by which people absorb, integrate, trouble over, and rearticulate the signifiers that populate their daily lives as well as the collective currents that give rise to those signifiers in the first place. Despite the increasingly global scope of the headaches and hopes that were brewing during the years of his early childhood, Brannon offers sobering, intimate, and gripping reminders that life is still lived by beloved individuals who suffer, survive, and get by. Matthew Brannon has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Museo Marino Marini, Florence, Italy (2013); Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2012); Museum M, Leuven, Belgium (2010); Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York (2007); and Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (2007). His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Denver Art Museum; DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; and Museo MADRE, Naples, Italy. In 2019, Gregory R. Miller & Co. published Concerning Vietnam, a book dedicated to Brannon’s multi-year project investigating the Vietnam War. Brannon lives and works in New York. _____ David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to present Like Looking in a Mirror, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jenna Gribbon. The exhibition will be on view in Los Angeles from September 13 through October 19, 2024. An opening reception will be held on Friday, September 13 from 6 to 8 PM. Over the past two decades, Gribbon has maintained a consistent engagement with portraiture and the ways in which—through the incorporation of props, and the positioning and gaze of her subjects—she can alter the viewer’s experience of looking. In a departure from recent work, which predominantly featured her wife Mackenzie Scott, the artist returns to a familiar subject, her son Silas, in an effort to explore the replication of traits, appearance, and mannerisms between parent and child that create a sameness which extends beyond the physical into the experiential. The artist’s past work has depicted sweeping scenes—created with props such as clamp lights, projectors, mirrors, and backdrops—that initially appear intimate, but reveal themselves to be constructed upon closer looking. However, these paintings offer a counterpoint by utilizing the large canvases to portray tighter crops of figures’ heads and shoulders, shifting the focus away from narrative towards more psychological, close-up readings. The paintings become examinations of the tensions and anxieties that arise when an artist confronts an image that closely mirrors their own. The works on view also offer a rare glimpse into the dynamics between a parent and child, where the child lives as a double or a projection of a parent, mirroring aspects of their internal self and therefore, heightening the sense of confusion around selfhood and prompting questions about perception. Reflective surfaces and mirrors play a central role in this body of work conceptually, as a device that can aid in the act of seeing and representing doubles or doppelgangers. While doubles and doppelgangers have existed throughout time and are often perceived as a bad omen or threatening force, which the artist alludes to through the use of predominantly darker tones, Gribbon’s impressionistic brushstrokes and empathetic and collaborative approach to figural painting reframe the traditionally disturbing or eerie connotation of doubles to create tender portraits imbued with care. In one example, Gribbon and her son are seen with their arms entangled around one another as their eyes look back at the viewer. The artist’s own presence in the painting, along with her stern gaze, reinforces her role as the child’s protector, as her arm lightly shields him from behind. This is one of several instances in which Gribbon distinguishes herself by her position as a secondary yet omnipresent figure, simultaneously watching after her son and after the viewers looking at the two of them. The artist explores ideas of the uncanny and projection—both literally and metaphorically—by utilizing projectors as a tool to further distort an image and blur the lines between her face and her son’s. In one work, we see a close-up of Silas with an image of Gribbon projected onto—and partially obscuring—his cheek. The eyes, nose, and lips appear in duplicate. Though this could be a result of image manipulation, it is in fact the result of the physical layering of Gribbon’s image atop her son’s. The projected image of Gribbon’s face originated from a photo taken by Silas which appears in several works on view, further emphasizing the artist’s commitment to collaboration and a multifaceted engagement with her subjects. While the larger paintings in the exhibition offer a physical manifestation of replication, the smaller paintings represent the physical passing on of a shared understanding. In the two instances where Silas is seen cooking, it’s implied that he’ll also experience the same tastes and textures that Gribbon herself experiences. In the instance where Silas is seen reading, it’s implied that his thoughts may also be shaped through the same language that shaped Gribbon’s thinking. Even though Gribbon isn’t visible in the smaller works on view, her presence looms largely in other, and arguably more significant, ways. In Looking at a painting of Florine Stettheimer’s mother with M (2024), Silas is seen with Scott in front of a painting by Stettheimer titled Portrait of My Mother (1925). In Gribbon’s painting, as in Stettheimer’s example, the artist’s presence exists beyond the canvas in an attempt to represent themselves in the other. Taken together, the paintings in Like Looking in a Mirror connect to Gribbon’s larger project, in which she utilizes a cinematic approach to create scenes that appear private, but touch on universal themes; in this case, parenthood, identity, and the transfer of thought and experience between generations. While the artist often pulls from art historical references and techniques, this show exemplifies her commitment to radicalizing—and personalizing— these traditional modes to incorporate the surreal, the psychedelic, and the uncanny. The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is planning a major solo exhibition of Jenna Gribbon’s work, tentatively scheduled for Fall 2026. The planned show will be a comprehensive survey of 25 years of painting. Gribbon was the subject of a solo exhibition at Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2022–2023). Recent group exhibitions include Day for Night: New American Realism, Palazzo Barberini, organized by the Aïshti Foundation, Rome (2024); Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters, The Frick Collection, New York (2022); and I will wear you in my heart of heart, FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2021); and Paint, also known as Blood: Women, Affect and Desire in Contemporary Painting, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Poland (2019). Her work is in the permanent collections of institutions including Kunstmuseum The Hague, the Netherlands; Dallas Museum of Art; Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Las Vegas, Nevada; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Kurpfälzisches Museum, Heidelberg, Germany; Rubell Museum, Miami; and FLAG Art Foundation, New York. Gribbon lives and works in New York. _____ David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to present Cylindrical Lenses, an exhibition of new sculptures by Fred Eversley. The exhibition is on view in Los Angeles at 5130 W. Edgewood Place from September 13 through October 19, 2024. An opening reception will take place on September 13 from 6 to 8 PM. This exhibition marks the first solo presentation of Cylindrical Lenses in Los Angeles, opening in conjunction with PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a landmark regional event presented by Getty that explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. Eversley is included in two PST ART group exhibitions, Lumen: The Art & Science of Light at Getty Center and Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Modern Physics, 1945–1980 at the Palm Springs Art Museum. Eversley is a pioneering artist with an early and long-standing affiliation with the Light and Space movement. Cylindrical Lenses features Eversley’s largest assemblage to date of these new grand, free-standing resin sculptures in which the artist’s lifelong research into the physical and metaphysical properties of energy takes subtle, complex, and immersive new form. The Cylindrical Lenses arise out of the artist’s abiding interest in rendering the energy- driven properties of the parabola as large-scale, immersive optical sculptures. This series is the realization of a vision to increase the scale of smaller, early cylindrical sections of dyed resin that emerged ahead of Eversley’s first solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970. This vision of creating vertical cut-cylindrical sculptures in formats from to six to ten feet tall had never been fully executed until 2022. The results are works with both monumental presence and the ability to express an interactive, kinetic spectra. For this exhibition, Eversley has created a dynamic ensemble of eleven luminous Cylindrical Lenses, each between seven and ten feet tall and arranged in four rows that reach toward the light which enters through the gallery’s skylight. Each work’s tapered section arises from either a half or three-quarters cylindrical shape drawing the gaze upward towards its parabolic apex. These geometrically simple, yet sophisticated forms focus attention on their visual and physical features, as well as the precision with which Eversley brings to his medium, providing a phenomenological point of contact. They also contain shifting refractions and reflections that reveal the sculptural properties of light itself. Both celestial and corporeal, each unique shape—with its hue gradually saturated in its parabolic arched volume—occupies space and light as a perfect optical instrument, becoming a portal from ordinary reality to transcendental planes. The transparent masses on view are ordered with variant hues of lightness and darkness, from lighter tones of amber, violet, and pink, to deeper saturations in red, blue, and green, allowing viewers to see through multi-colored alignments. Each work changes dramatically with changes in light intensity, color temperature, direction, and the relative angle of the spectator to both the light source and the work. Additionally, all surrounding environmental factors are mirrored in various ways in the internal space of each work; in each case allowing several other sculptures to be superimposed and seen from various directions. This affects the relationships between all cylinders on view, generating a constantly shifting experience in which viewers’ movements through the space allow them to observe seemingly infinite combinations of spectra and prismatic effects within the works and projected on their surrounds. The exhibition demonstrates how this key performative facet, the fundamental basis of Eversley’s mission, is elevated to new dimensions. The space becomes an arena for spectators to engage in a spirit of play with these objects—in the past, Eversley has referred to his objects as “toys”—and to explore them over time. Whether alone or together with other viewers, this important social dimension of the work challenges the notion of viewing as an isolated act as viewers’ bodies are visually transformed and become fluid, distorted, and multiplied, shifting and dissolving depending on the angle of the light and the viewer’s position. The works on view emphasize the connections between the different kinds of energy that appear in the visual, physical, and metaphysical fields, generating an enlivening, mystifying landscape where stillness and motion appear to be present at the same time. They are manifestations of Eversley’s persistent innovation and continued exploration of the hypothesis-based procedures of scientific research that are the foundation not only of technological progress, but of humanity’s constantly evolving capacity to understand, celebrate, and reimagine its place among the mysteries of the universe. In the late fall of 2024, Fred Eversley’s (b. 1941, Brooklyn, New York) largest public sculptural installation for permanent display, titled Portals, commissioned by Related Companies in a public-private partnership with the City of West Palm Beach, will be inaugurated in Julian Abele Park at One Flagler. Fred Eversley: Parabolic Light, an outdoor installation presented by Public Art Fund at Doris C. Freedman Plaza in New York’s Central Park, is on view through August 25, 2024. Eversley will be included in the major group exhibition Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now, opening November 17, 2024, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Eversley has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California (2022–2023); Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2017); Art + Practice, Los Angeles (2016); National Academy of Science, Washington, D.C. (1981); Palm Springs Art Museum, California (1977); Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California (1976); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1970). Recent group exhibitions include Light, Space, Surface: Selections from LACMA’s Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2023); Light and Space, Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen (2021–2022); Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963–1983 (2017–2020, traveled to five venues); Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery, London (2018); Dynamo – A Century of Light and Motion in Art, Grand Palais, Paris (2013); Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980 (Getty Foundation, 2011; traveled to Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2012). His work is in the permanent collections of more than three dozen museums throughout the world, including Tate Modern, London; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Museum of Modern Art, New York; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The first monograph dedicated to Eversley’s work was published by David Kordansky Gallery in 2022. Eversley lives and works in New York City.