Artificial Horizons, In Real Life

Andrew Schoultz

Exhibition Dates: September 14th - October 19th

GGLA is pleased to present Artificial Horizons In Real Time, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Andrew Schoultz. Surrounding the viewer with a painted world that the artist has been honing for the better part of three decades, Schoultz delves into far-reaching realms of esoteric knowledge, animal symbolism, and natural fauna, all built from the artist’s distinctive mark-making process. Through a deeply meditative method of repeated linework that composes everything from hazy horizons to owl fur, crashing waves to amphorae and beyond, the installation and individual works that compose Artificial Horizons In Real Time vibrate with an entirely analog optical intensity, demanding our presence and attention within the moment, providing a moment of grounding for both artist and viewer alike. Thus just as the title suggests, Artificial Horizons In Real Time, is just that–paintings grounded by an illusionistic horizon line, meant to be viewed, visually picked apart, internalized and grokked all within the thin timeframe of the present, yet to suggest that the works begin and end there is a simplification of the deeply layered qualities, both symbolically and materially, and the nature of Schoultz’s installation that envelops the viewer as they enter the gallery space.

Nature and animal life ground most of the works in one way or another. The artist’s paintings conjure an effect similar to what one has within a forest, of slowing down and using all of our senses, reducing the petty distractions of the everyday, and grounding oneself within both the moment and our insignificance within the universe. And much like the forest has a way of carefully controlling our experience within it, Schoultz deftly creates a similar experience for the viewer, crafting installation elements such as an archway that acts as a portal to the back of the gallery. Inviting viewers to step quite literally into a room painted floor to ceiling in a fade of colors that mirrors a brilliant desert sunrise, Schoultz utilizes the horizon as an anchoring aesthetic tradition within landscape painting, and as a metaphor for beholding the sublime while seeing what the future holds. Two paintings hung in tandem ground the painted wall. Within one, a heavyset vulture peers into the distance, perched atop a winding tree with a multi-colored snake wrapping around auxiliary branches, all set upon a barren fading landscape of yellow to orange to red. Small leaves bursting with color protruding from the ends of branches, and the presence of the vulture, that somewhat ominous sign, both suggest everlasting cycles of death, decay and then regeneration. In another work that shares the same palette, a gray owl deepened with shades of violet and purple, its striped feathers all built from Schoultz’s careful linework, sits on a gnarled branch of the same color, as a snake winds its way menacing over and around branches. Both works focus on birds of prey–apex predators that have evolved to have no natural predators themselves, a situation that mirrors that of humans, and yet still speaks to both the blessing and fragility of life. 

Domestic Views in F Sharp

Andrew Schoultz, Alejandro DePass

3415 Verdugo Rd, La Casita

Presented alongside Schoultz’s solo exhibition is an exhibition featuring Andrew Schoultz’s paintings set in context with the furniture of Alejandro DePass, all set within the domestic confines of the house adjacent to the gallery at 3415 Verdugo Rd. The exhibition, Domestic Views in F Sharp–a reference to both the exhibition’s setting and the tuning often used by shamans to impart their wisdom and magic by way of a specific flute tuning, strikes a different path from Schoultz’s solo yet utilizes similar tools to vastly different ends. Instead of employing painted installations and architectural flourishes, Schoultz and his compatriots rely on the objecthood of what they make, carefully crafted and curated within a domestic setting to set a mood, and again place the viewer in a setting that prioritizes a sense of presence in the moment. Pairing the beautifully finished weighty heft of a seating element or table by DePass in conjunction with a painting by Schoultz, is in itself a means of framing one’s experience, and adjacent monographs, books and related ephemera only serve to heighten the experience while relating to the inspiration and influences shared by all the artists. And while realized in different mediums, similarities are shared through the utilization of repetitive mark-making, in this case using a wood burner that incises indentations into both furniture and frames for paintings and works on paper alike. Rounding out the expansive experiential installation imagined by Schoultz and his collaborators, is an immersive sound installation by Kevin Taylor, aka ODES, which carries through and surrounds viewers across both exhibitions.

Takin’ care of business

Brad Bernhardt

3415 Verdugo Rd, La Casita

Furthering the transformation of this domestic space, is a quietly hidden exhibition by Brad Bernhardt, a Los Angeles-based artist and longtime friend of Andrew Schoultz. Takin’ Care of Business, is an installation of paintings by Bernhardt taking place in the bathroom of 3415 Verdugo Rd, embracing the cheekiness of this space through subject matter and a deeply intentional hanging strategy. The artist’s newest paintings carry on with Bernhardt’s brushy exploration of branding and the ways in which a logo so often carries an entire history, feeling and lineage that is both personally and communally remembered and felt by entire generations who grew up with them. Bernhardt surrounds the viewer with delicately textured paintings of iconography that create a feeling of both familiarity and claustrophobia—an unexpected yet perfect distillation of the experience of American capitalism. Nestled within the alcove of a window, the recesses of a shower, or a cubby for shampoos are paintings so enmeshed within this utilitarian space that they feel like tiles. Yet instead we’re met with the dated logos of Herbal Essences, Windex and Mr. Bubbles,  painstakingly rendered in acrylic on canvas, with each image transporting the viewer with the same power and effectiveness of any landscape or figurative painting.