SPACE'D
at GALLERY 207

"You will get lost in this work."

Los Angeles artist GORDY GRUNDY made his Solo Debut with the series, Space'd. "There are two influences (for the series)," says the Los Angeles based artist, "One is Chet Baker who told us to "Get Lost" and the second is the artwork of John McCraken. He calls his clean, minimal sculptures a "portal to another world." I think if you "fell" into one of McCrakens sculptures, you'd land into one of my paintings."

Grundy, a native of Southern California, brings us Epic work with the grandiosity of Hollywood and the soulfulness of the surf culture. With rectangular canvases, horizontally hung, much is reflected in the artist's Western Horizontality, a perspective of sea and sky.

"My influences are the Venice artists of the Sixties," answers Grundy, "Ed Ruscha, John McCraken, Joe Goode, Ed Moses, Robert Irwin and Vija Celmens." In his new series, Grundy's immediacy is reminiscent of the early Abstract Expressionists. References can be made to the gestural aggression of Jackson Pollack, the color and spirituality of Mark Rothko, the emotionalism of Franz Kline and the reverence of Californian Agnes Pelton.

The Space'd Series is minimalist at its foundation and meditative by nature. Grundy explains, "I started the Series at a time when there was great change in my life. I wanted to create another world, a safer place that I could escape to. It's important that the paintings be emotionally raw and courageously honest." Conceptually, the work speaks more strongly from the heart than the head.

 

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Last updated 2-1-01