Aidas Bareikis, Kim Dorland & Bill Saylor
June 25, 2016 – August 6, 2016
MIER GALLERY is pleased to announce a group exhibition featuring new works by Aidas Bareikis, Kim Dorland, and Bill Saylor. The exhibition will open Saturday, June 25, 2016 at 1107 Greenacre Ave. in West Hollywood, and will be on view through August 6, 2016. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, June 25, 2016 from 6:00pm – 8:00pm.
This group exhibition presents a focus on the romantic and the notion of “Bad Painting” in three varying, yet connected, idealized realities depicted in painting and sculpture. Somewhere between pessimism and optimism, each artist uses the power of raw energy that comes to life through the use of their materials and subject matter. There is a dark presence in which one can find a sort of punk rock attitude and a certain disregard for traditional modes of painting and sculpture – anti-art, if you will. Each artist is equally expressive in his own handling of materials as a tool to evoke an emotional response to their respective works.
Aidas Bareikis employs found objects, or rather borrows them from the endless circulation of recycling – both of artistic experience and obstructed consumption – until it becomes self-made volumes of “natural” man-made processes – an Anthropocene nature in-effect. The indeterminate inclusion bares the memories of the void of neglect, impoverishment to the result of the beauty of some kind of “striped” baroque. Raw experimentation creates a dreamy, surreal, yet brutally honest presentation.
Kim Dorland works with the contemporary Canadian landscape as a tool to navigate the human condition. It is a psychedelic acid trip through the forests of Canada. His depictions of solitude and nature, whether it be a singular ghostly figure seemingly lost in the woods or completely devoid of humans at all, have an unsettling air about them. Playing with both the intimate and the expansive, Dorland’s work is full of sharp contrasts both in execution and emotion. The graffiti on the forest trees alludes to a human presence, and where the figures themselves are lacking the space is filled with their empty presence. Dorland’s palette mixes the natural and unnatural and feels like what one might see walking through the woods on hallucinogens. His obscured faces point towards a focus on the raw emotion of the imagery he depicts, furthered by his energetic brushstrokes, impasto and globs of paint that have clearly been squeezed directly from its tube.
Bill Saylor paints with an intense energy that emerges from his canvases in the form of hybrid human-animal and interspecies animal-animal creatures. The crude grit and aggression with which he paints is palpable. Saylor has created his own iconographic vocabulary of his hybrid-creatures and symbols whose bright colors and seemingly fast application carry a raw, at times humorous, force. Saylor brings together energy and tension in a manner that is uniquely his own. His paintings and works on paper merge a focus on the gestures as well as the content of his work. His paintings and works on paper merge a focus on the gestures as well as the content of his work, a kind of nature painting for the Anthropocene age.
Aidas Bareikis was born in Vilnius, Lithuania and graduated from the Vilnius Art Academy in 1993. He came toAmerica the same year and completed the MFA program from Hunter College in 1997. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and has been the recipient of a Soros Foundation Grant. Bareikis has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. Most recently his work has been seen in “ABWS,” Martos Gallery, New York, NY (with Bill Saylor, 2012); “Destroy Athens,” the Athens Biennial of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2007); “Fancy Meetings,” Leo Koenig, Inc., New York, NY and Locust Projects, Miami, FL (2007-2008); “When Humour Becomes Painful” at the Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland (2005).
Kim Dorland was born in 1974 in Wainwright, Alberta, Canada and received his BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and his MFA from York University. Dorland has exhibited extensively, both nationally and internationally including exhibitions in New York, Toronto, Milan, Montreal, Chicago, and Los Angeles. His work is featured in The Sander Collection (Berlin); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, Blanton Museum of Art (TX); Glenbow Museum (Calgary); Art Gallery of Alberta; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and numerous private collections. Dorland was recently the focus of a solo exhibition at the MCA Denver. Kim Dorland lives and works in Vancouver.
Bill Saylor has exhibited extensively internationally and has had solo exhibitions such as “New Works,” Makebish, New York, NY (2015); “Audio Tuna Sunshine,” Leo Koenig Inc., New York, NY (2012); “Ghost Light Junkie,” The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2010). He has been included in group shows such as “The Great Figure Part 2,” The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2016); “The Peanut Gallery,” curated by Joe Bradley, The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2008), “Kults, Werewolves and Sarcastic Hippies,” Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco, CA (2005); and “Contemporary Painters,” curated by Alex Katz, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME (2004). In 2010 he was selected for the Artist in Residence program at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa TX. Saylor lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.