BRET SLATER
VIDEO ROOM: KEVIN COOLEY

MAY 10 - JUNE 16, 2012
Opening Reception Thursday May 10, 6-8pm (Artists will be present)
We will be open until 8pm on Saturday, May 12.

Marty Walker Gallery presents new, luxuriously layered acrylic paintings by Bret Slater. Mastering a balance of simplicity and material, Slater bridges color-field abstract painting with contemporary plasticity of surface, intelligently piling hues like icing on a cake. Intentionally ambiguous, the unassuming canvases recall Richard Tuttle and Piet Mondrian with a cartoonish twist that are, according to Glasstire’s outlook for this spring’s exhibitions, “deliciously palatable … with a jolt of punkish energy.”

Bret Slater’s first solo gallery exhibition in Chicago received rave reviews and was chosen by Modern Painters magazine as one of “100 Artists to Watch” and one of the “Top 100 Best Shows of the Fall 2011”. Since completing his MFA at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 2011, his work has rapidly gained attention among many art circles and is one of Marty Walker Gallery’s hot new artists. Slater received a BFA from SUNY-Purchase and has exhibited nationally in New Mexico, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and was part of an artist-in-residence program in Lyon, France. In addition, the artist’s work was recently exhibited at Art Brussels and the Dallas Art Fair. Slater lives and works in Dallas, Texas.

IN THE VIDEO ROOM: KEVIN COOLEY, SKYWARD

Kevin Cooley, Skyward, 2012, 9 min 45 sec HD Video, in situ, installation view

Skyward is a video portrayal of Los Angeles’ manufactured landscape and its complex relationship to the natural world. The work is a metaphysical gaze upwards, past the gridlock of street-level to the pristine blue sky promising freedom and limitless possibility. This ten minute journey transcends the routine to reveal fantastical moments in everyday life. Traveling through this networked ecology that physically defines Los Angeles, we discover interdependent ecosystems largely overlooked in everyday life. Time and space become fictionalized, which itself becomes an allegory for the city. The journey ends in flight high above the fog of the beach near Palos Verdes, turning back just for a moment towards the shoreline and the ever-sprawling megalopolis on the horizon.

Kevin Cooley works in photography, video, and public installation. His work examines the interaction between the natural environment and the one that we fabricate. Making use of unusual or overlooked moments in everyday life, his work becomes a meditation on our evolving relationship with technology, nature, and ultimately with each other. Cooley has shown his photographs and videos at the White Columns, Massimo Audiello, Kopeikin Gallery and Young Projects in LA, and is included in a number of important private and public collections including the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, and Harvard Business School’s Schwartz Art Collection. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY