Chrissy Angliker :
See Through

Lou Beach:
Bewilderness

Kelly Berg:
A Crack in Everything

February 10 - March 23, 2024

Reception: February 10, 4 - 6pm

Artist Talk: March 2, 11am

See Through, is the third solo exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery for Swiss-born/New York based painter, Chrissy Angliker. She was introduced to Southern California in 2016, as part of a group exhibition at CKG entitled, Paint is a Thing, curated by then-gallery director, Beth Parker. That exhibition featured seven artists, most of whom went on to have several solo shows and representation by the gallery. In her exhibition statement, Parker defined the artists as employing “paint to create both an object and an illusionistic space…inciting a layered read, with a visceral reaction to the physicality of the surface, as well as a cerebral reaction to the illusion described.” Angliker has always been recognized for the life of paint, describing it as “an intermediary between two worlds.” The current body of work literally and figuratively addresses that transformative process in that its genesis was grounded in the loss of a loved one. One recurring subject in the exhibition is cut flowers, which Angliker refers to as “severed from their source, brought indoors as poignant reminders of abundant fields beyond.” Cut flowers represent both life and inherent death. Heads inevitably droop, letting go of their petals, a memento mori.

Filmmaker Terry Gilliam called Lou Beach, “funny, smart, twisted, brilliant…the greatest collage artist on the planet.”   The son of Polish parents displaced by World War II (born Lubicz, thus Lou Beach), he came to California in 1968, began studying the Surrealists, and started making collages from old printed matter. He had his first solo show fifty years ago at the Boston Center for the Arts and afterwards, built a long career creating record album covers and magazine illustrations. He states that his current show at CKG titled, Bewilderness, “is a journal of my dreams and reactions to the tumultuous last few years, with the character OBOY serving as an Everyman who is both a participant and observer in every one of these new works, sometimes obvious, other times hidden à la “Where’s Waldo?”  His work has a biting, cerebral, caustic wit that is constructed in humorous, playful layerings that can either disguise, or blatantly tell, sinister stories.

Kelly Berg’s art practice is essentially entwined with her passion for tectonics; caves, geysers, fault lines and volcanoes, and the cultural histories and mythologies associated with them.  The title of her current exhibition, A Crack in Everything, (from a Leonard Cohen song), encapsulates the source of her explorations; active fissures of an ever-evolving Earth, places of both “destruction and rebirth where one can truly experience the sublime.” This exhibition focuses on an ongoing series of paintings she calls Rifts. The origin of this series is traced to her first visit to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park where she traversed the Kilauea Iki Crater. Her Rift paintings on natural wood surfaces follow the fluid shapes and lines of the wood grain, drawing parallels between these organic patterns and ocean waves, layers of sediment and lava flows. During the pandemic, Berg began to introduce pyramids and obelisks into these paintings.  As she states, “the pyramid form in ancient Egypt represents the primordial mound that rose out of the abyss, the moment of our world’s creation.” Within the language of her work, the pyramid and volcano have become interchangeable, representing the dynamics and physical power of natural forces and the creation myths built upon them.