Goff + Rosenthal Berlin is pleased to present Plastic Palace, a series of new paintings by Los
Angeles-based artist Faris McReynolds.
Painting from film stills extracted from sources of popular culture, McReynolds explores how an
image can be broken down through multiple layers of appropriation, from film to video to digital
media to paint. Depicting group activities such as party scenes, sun bathing and show-boat
performances, McReynolds magnifies the contrast between the immediacy of spectacle and the
slow reveal of an event’s details. His imagery lingers in the in-between depicting moments in
transition. Relishing this space between cause and effect, McReynolds bestows the mundane
activities of a self-congratulating American culture with a sense of seduction, violence, intrigue
and suspense.
Ranging from an expressionist palette-knife impasto to delicate watercolor to bold illustration,
McReynolds’ brushwork reflects a historically diverse range of influences including Warhol,
Bacon, the Impressionists and the 1980’s work of Richard Prince. Using a loose narrative style
and a seamless melding of assorted techniques, McReynolds immortalizes the minute and
fleeting in high saturation and bold contrast of color.
McReynolds states that his work, “comes from the desire to find a balance between something
that is staged and intuitive, original and reproduced, familiar and unexpected, digital and analog,
comic and tragic…the work explores the grey area between a document and the imagination of
a time and place. I’m drawn to moments that exist between genesis and resolve. Something so
fleeting and anonymous it’s impossible to see without the aid of technology”.
Faris McReynolds received his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Pasadena, California,
in 2000. He has exhibited world-wide including a solo exhibition this year at Tim van Laere
Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. In 2006, McReynolds had solo exhibitions at Roberts & Tilton in
Los Angeles, Gallery Min Min in Tokyo and Perugi Arte Contemporea in Padua, Italy.
Additionally, McReynolds’ work has been featured in Details, Art Papers, Flash Art Magazine,
Tema Celeste and Art Week. McReynolds will have a solo exhibition at Goff + Rosenthal, New
York in March of 2008.
Goff and Rosenthal