Galerie Frank Elbaz mounts Plastic Surgery: to look like you
On Nov. 2 galerie frank elbaz Dallas reveals Plastic Surgery: to look like you a new group exhibition featuring works by Andy Coolquitt, Guillaume Leblon, and Matthew Wong. On their own, Coolquitt, Leblon, and Wong are dissimilar artists, but for this show Curator Carlos Cardenas unites them together to explore the body as a medium. Through Cardenas, the exhibition underscores the points of physical and symbolic synergy between the artists? own practices.
All three artists are acutely aware of scale. Matthew Wong?s paintings force the viewer inside the painting through a larger-than-life scene-scape. Coolquitt?s monochrome, Snuggie-like, found objects evoke Rauschenberg?s Bed, especially with the robes? empty sleeves dangling from their frame compelling the viewer to fill them. Leblon?s bronze heads investigate weightiness among other concepts. Although each artist employs unique methodologies, sensibilities, and agendas, they are activating the viewer?s own co-presence, and addressing each subject as an object.
Cardenas explains the exhibition as an exploration of ?the slippery dialogue between representation and abstraction as the core issue of the Great Project of Modernism. In France, the fine arts are called ‘les arts plastiques,? so plastic becomes something that is malleable. In English plastic is known as this hard surface, but the body, form, color, mass and surface are qualities that we can shape, or are shaped by evolution despite our best intentions.?
Cardenas references the evolution of Michael Jackson?s face, Bruce Nauman?s groundbreaking experiments with his own body, and Kim Kardashian?s selfies as examples for the exhibition?s assertion that ?our media to the world, our own bodies, are increasingly ?plastic.??
Lyrics from the Talking Heads, 1980?s song Seen and Not Seen accentuate the exhibition?s narrative Cardenas says.
He would see faces in movies, on T.V., in magazines, and in books…
He thought that some of these faces might be right for him…
And through the years, by keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in his mind…
Plastic Surgery: to look like you is a call for self-evaluation of self-imposed environmental circumstances that extends well beyond the gallery walls. The exhibition will run through Jan. 27. Galeriefrankelbaz.com