Alone in the world

Doug Wheeler and Noah Davis - David Zwirner Gallery

Doug Wheeler

Over the past five decades, Wheeler has become known for his innovative constructions and installations that engage with the perception and experience of light, space, and sound. On view will be an immersive environment by the artist that further expands on his groundbreaking investigations of the possibilities of luminous space. 

This is Wheeler’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery and coincides with the release of the first major monograph devoted to his work. David’s press release by the Gallery

Noah Davis.

Davis’s body of work encompasses, on the one hand, his lush, sensual, figurative paintings and, on the other, an ambitious institutional project called The Underground Museum, a black-owned-and-operated art space dedicated to the exhibition of museum-quality art in a culturally underserved African American and Latinx neighborhood in Los Angeles. The works on view will highlight both parts of Davis’s oeuvre, featuring more than twenty of his most enduring paintings, as well as models of previous exhibitions curated by Davis at The Underground Museum. Noah’s press release by the Gallery.

Jason Rhoades: "Tijuanatanjierchandelier" on view David Zwirner Gallery

I recently went to check this exhibit out in Chelsea, this is the first time I get to see Jason Rhoades’s work in person and Is pretty cool, lots of neon as you can see in the photos.

Here are some of the words from the press release…

The title of the work refers to the cities of Tijuana, Mexico, and Tangier, Morocco, two socially and culturally distinct locales separated by 6,000 miles, which Rhoades associates through their respective locations at the borders between the so-called developing world and the Euro-American West. The visually striking installation is composed of a chaotic web of dangling chandelier-like sculptures made up of neon lights and assorted wares the artist collected during his travels. Rhoades included fifty-one of these unique chandeliers in the original installation, forty-four of which are presented here. The sculptures are suspended above an array of items and souvenirs including mattresses, rugs, animal pelts, imposter handbags, sombreros, Moroccan lanterns, taxidermied animal heads, leather belts, ceramic gourds, trucker paraphernalia, bullwhips, and wooden maracas, among other found objects. Reminiscent of a bazaar or marketplace, the work addresses the rise of global tourism and consumerism—industries that have come to define the economies of these areas—while also visualizing the tension that emerges between cultural expression and identity, and cultural appropriation and stereotype. In his choice of these two locations, Rhoades also acknowledges the broader targeting of Latin Americans and Muslims in the post-9/11 political climate. Though created before the 2008 global recession, the global refugee crises, and the ensuing wave of xenophobic nationalism, Tijuanatanjierchandelier anticipated the tensions that have recently erupted between the drive for increased free trade and globalization and the persistence of traditional notions of national sovereignty and security.

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