A year ago, the Los Angeles-based artist Aaron Curry made a big return to painting with a new series of cartoonish heads that evoked his signature sculptures – 'a really basic idea of portraiture' he calls them – at London’s Michael Werner Gallery. Shortly after that show, however, he began reading Carl Sagan, and thinking a lot about science fiction and contemporary CGI, and the 'cosmic orgies and celestial nurseries' creating the galaxies beyond us.
'Living in California, it’s extremely obvious that the earth is going through a change right now, and that got me thinking a lot,' says Curry. 'The Earth is going to continue and be something without us for millions and millions of years until the sun burns out.'
Working with these far out concepts, the early aesthetics from his days as a San Antonio skate punk and the formal language of his collage-based sculptural practice, Curry emerged with 'Starfuker', his first Los Angeles solo show in five years, at David Kordansky Gallery. 'It’s always been a collage-based practice for me,' says Curry, who started the work by making paper cut-outs last March, which he used for a series of monumental matte black aluminum-steel sculptures (created with digital renderings and fabricators) that break free from the XYZ axis he’s used over the past decade.
The two pieces at Kordansky – Starfucker and Creator Creator – move into torqued planes that are festooned with familiar icons (cones, grids, anchors, tubes) and Curry’s clipped shapes (cutting into the sculptures and protruding from them) that warp, hollow, and bend depending on your perspective while evoking Joan Miró and Joan Jett in the same breath.
'I started thinking about different volumes and different ways to use space,' says Curry, who drew some inspiration from the Richard Serra sculptures in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as vintage black-and-white pictures of old church altarpieces. 'By making them black, they’re just sculpture and form, but then when you go into the other room colour reveals itself.'
Working with the Gilles Deleuze concept of space folding, the Alpha-Omega opening of the Bible and Sagan’s all-encompassing theory of the cosmos, Curry turned more of his collage clippings into CNC-milled shaped canvases – 'to keep the awkwardness and the freeness to your hand' – that attempt to capture 'this tornado that’s moving through space... fucking stars and eating them'.
To create this 'Starfucker' visual language, he began painting his shaped canvases with Picasso-esque harlequin patterns ('to create a fabric of space'), spray-painted starbursts, brushed abstractions that mimic digital markings from afar (and primitive, if painterly, brushstrokes up close), with various plays on light, perspective and dimensionality via celestial fields of black and day-glo that confuse the fore and backgrounds. 'I like this play of the brushstroke that creates a confusion where it becomes an image of a stroke or a brush of light,' says Curry, who considers this work a breakthrough. 'I’m really happy with this show, even if nobody likes it. For me, I really feel like it all came together.'
The exhibition presents Curry’s early aesthetics from his days as a San Antonio skate punk, the formal language of his collage-based sculptural practice and his consideration of life on earth after we humans are gone. Pictured: Cosmicgasmatical, 2015
'Living in California, it’s extremely obvious that the Earth is going through a change right now, and that got me thinking a lot,' says Curry. 'The Earth is going to continue and be something without us for millions and millions of years until the sun burns out.' Pictured: CosmicCnot, 2015
The visual language of the show encompasses Curry painting his shaped canvases with Picasso-esque harlequin patterns (’to create a fabric of space’), spray-painted starbursts, brushed abstractions that mimic digital markings from afar (and primitive, if painterly, brushstrokes up close), with various plays on light, perspective, and dimensionality via celestial fields of black and day-glo that confuse the fore and backgrounds. Pictured: Bearth, 2015
'I like this play of the brushstroke that creates a confusion where it becomes an image of a stroke or a brush of light,' says Curry. 'I’m really happy with this show, even if nobody likes it. For me, I really feel like it all came together.' Pictured: Evasive Maneuvers, 2015
INFORMATION
’Starfuker’ is on view until 16 December. For more information, visit David Kordansky Gallery’s website
Photography courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery
ADDRESS
David Kordansky Gallery
5130 West Edgewood Place
Los Angeles, CA 90019
-
Doc’n Roll Festival returns with a new season of underground music filmsNow in its twelfth year, the grassroots festival continues to platform subcultural stories and independent filmmakers outside the mainstream
-
Commune Design’s new rug collection is a psychedelic tripThe Los Angeles-based company worked with Christopher Farr on its groovy rug collection inspired by 1960s and 1970s Northern California
-
The Hart Marylebone marks the next chapter in London’s design-led pubsThe trio behind The Pelican and The Hero turn to Marylebone, fusing Victoriana, intimacy and culinary honesty in their most ambitious project yet
-
Jamel Shabazz’s photographs are a love letter to Prospect ParkIn a new book, ‘Prospect Park: Photographs of a Brooklyn Oasis, 1980 to 2025’, Jamel Shabazz discovers a warmer side of human nature
-
The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles launches the seventh iteration of its highly anticipated artist biennialOne of the gallery's flagship exhibitions, Made in LA showcases the breadth and depth of the city's contemporary art scene
-
Thomas Prior’s photography captures the uncanny fragility of American lifeA new book unites two decades of the photographer’s piercing, uneasy work
-
Central Park’s revitalised Delacorte Theater gears up for a new futureEnnead Architects helmed an ambitious renovation process that has given the New York City cultural landmark a vibrant and more accessible future
-
Stephen Prina borrows from pop, classical and modern music: now MoMA pays tribute to his performance work‘Stephen Prina: A Lick and a Promise’ recalls the artist, musician, and composer’s performances, and is presented throughout MoMA. Prina tells us more
-
Curtains up, Kid Harpoon rethinks the sound of Broadway production ‘Art’He’s crafted hits with Harry Styles and Miley Cyrus; now songwriter and producer Kid Harpoon (aka Tom Hull) tells us about composing the music for the new, all-star Broadway revival of Yasmina Reza’s play ‘Art’
-
Richard Prince recontextualises archival advertisements in TexasThe artist unites his ‘Posters’ – based on ads for everything from cat pictures to nudes – at Hetzler, Marfa
-
Out of office: the Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekAnother week, another flurry of events, opening and excursions showcasing the best of culture and entertainment at home and abroad. Catch our editors at Scandi festivals, iconic jazz clubs, and running the length of Manhattan…
