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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Artist Devin Liston, perhaps best known as one half of the duo devNgosha, featured here, is recently aiming towards a singular voice. His new body of work, debuting at Los Angeles' KP PROJECTS/MK gallery this weekend, represents a different direction for the artist who up to this point has mostly worked with collectives. Within the series, titled "Department of Water & Power", Liston’s portraits of friends and more figurative characters merge detailed realism with expressive brushstrokes and dabs of vibrant color. We caught up with him recently in his Los Angeles studio as he was putting in the final touches.
Glenn Barr, devNgosha, and William Wray are three artists who share an affinity for 1960s cult film characters and subculture. Tomorrow, they join together at Merry Karnowsky in an exhibition of new works that elaborates on their inspirations. We first featured Glenn Barr's nostalgic portraits in HF Vol. 10, which range in emotional appeal and design. His background in graphic novels has progressed into a unique style that combines cheesy glamour with scenes based in modern reality. With the concept of "communication" as a central theme for these new pieces, we find them talking on rotary telephones. Read more after the jump.
Artist duo Gosha Levochkin and Devin Liston have made a name for themselves as DevNgosha, combining their backgrounds in illustration and fine art. Years after their first collaboration, Soze Gallery is showcasing their individual talents in side by side solos "GROWN UPS" and "LOST" (previewed here). As collaborators, they've come up with a system of working together and creating, where one starts a piece and the other finishes it, and vice versa. Now abandoning that system, we can see Liston and Gosha are artists who like to play with varying aesthetics.
Last Saturday, Merry Karnowsky looked to the La Brea Tar pits for the inspiration behind their pop-up gallery at Tarfest. Produced by LAUNCH, the event is an annual music and arts festival paying homage to Los Angeles' natural wonder, while fostering creative expression. The famous seepage has been happening for tens of thousands of years, and continues to ensnare organisms today. These unlucky flora and fauna were interpreted by artists Greg 'Craola' Simkins, Todd Carpenter, Lezley Saar, Von Sumner, and James Griffith, who used tar as his painting medium. With the pits just a few hundred feet away, their renderings merged new culture with this culturally historic spot.
On Friday, September 12th, Soze Gallery will host double solo exhibitions by Los Angeles based Devin Liston and Gosha Levochkin (of DevNGosha, covered here). Titled "GROWN UPS" and "LOST" respectively, the event celebrates their first time exhibiting together since 2012- and highlights their unique dialogue as collaborators. Together, the two artists create a subtle dichotomy by focusing on two parts of a combined expression. We take a look after the jump.