John Divola: Blue with Exceptions: AF Projects, Los Angeles
Louise Alexander Gallery/AF Projects is pleased to announce Blue with Exceptions, an exhibition of new works by John Divola from the George Air Force Base (GAFB) series.
Divola photographed the abandoned housing area at the decommissioned George Air Force Base in Victorville, California. We are shown scenes of dereliction - crumbling walls revealing layers of paint and plaster, in which Divola's gestural interventions in the form of painted shapes offer a surprising contrast. Here, Divola captures the tension between the observation of the specific and the insistence of the abstract.
Enso: 36 Right-Handed Circumference Gestures
Since 2015 I have generated a number of groups of photographs working in the abandoned housing tract of what was previously George Air Force Base in Victorville, California. "Enso: 36 Right-Handed Circumference Gestures" is a single work containing 36, 8x10 inch Silver Gelatin contact prints. These photographs are arranged chronologically and were exposed between June 7th and August 12th, 2018.
In each image I have attempted to draw a circle using spray paint and tracing the circumference of my right arm. Each drawing is in a different room generally in the morning. It is an index of a place and a time. It is an index and trace of my physical being.
In the 1995 film "Smoke" Harvey Keitel plays Auggie the owner of a smoke shop. One day Auggie brings out an album of photographs to show to his friend Paul, played by William Hurt. It seems that every afternoon Auggie goes out of his shop to photograph the same corner in front of his store. Looking at the images Paul exclaims that they are all the same. To which Auggie immediately protest that they are all different.
Born in Los Angeles in 1949, Divola earned an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 1974, where he studied under photographer Robert Heinecken. Since 1975 he has taught photography and art at numerous institutions including California Institute of the Arts (1978-1988), and since 1988 he has been a Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside.
Since 1975, Divola's work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Australia, including Galerie Marquardt, Paris, 1990; Laura Bartlett Gallery, London 2012: Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013; Wallspace Gallery New York, 2014; and Palm Springs Art Museum, 2019. His work can be found in numerous public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Among Divola's Awards are Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973, 1976, 1979, 1990), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1986), a Fintridge Foundation Fellowship (1998), a City of Los Angeles Artist Grant (1999) and a California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (1998).
