Opening Reception: Thursday, May 23, 6 – 8pm
May 23 – June 22, 2013

"Trying to make is often the curse of creativity." – littlewhitehead, May, 2013

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Opening Reception:Thursday, April 11, 6 – 8pm
April 11 – May 18, 2013

Marine Contemporary is delighted to present Tourist, Jow's second solo exhibition with the gallery. Jow is an artist preoccupied with perceptible experience, how the eye takes things in and makes them real, or not, and it is this ambiguity, this moment of stasis between words and thoughts, objects and ideas, or symbols floated delicately on a page that gives her work its power. In her newest body of work, she further exemplifies this vision through a series of large-scale acrylic on panel paintings along with two new neon sculptures and a series of discreetly elegant drawings. Jow's recent work describes not so much a literal place traveled to or from as it does the cultural nostalgia associated with a particular city. Jow's approach to this is transitional and/or generational and is in no way direct or literal as she incorporates song lyrics, further interpreted, or compressed into Morse code to suggest both the complexity and intimacy associated with iconic cities like New York, Paris, London or San Francisco, (with Canada added because the artist hails from Vancouver) each with its own cultural referents and suggestibility.

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Opening Reception: Thursday, Feb 28, 6 – 8pm
Feb 28 – Apr 6, 2013

Marine Contemporary is delighted to present High and Dry, Kelly Barrie's first solo exhibition with the gallery. Barrie's recent work is inspired by ephemeral, free-play sites such as the junkyard playgrounds of the sixties and seventies, including his latest investigation into the genesis of vertical skate culture and the locations that it occupied. Although temporary, such improvised sites often become catalysts for larger social movements that inform our ideas about civil rights and what constitutes public space. The exhibition focuses on the California "Skate Wave" phenomenon of the mid 1970's and the Central Arizona Project (CAP) of 1968.

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Opening Reception: Jan 17, 6-8pm
January 17- February 23, 2013

Marine Contemporary is delighted to present, The Grey Wolf Devours the King, Dennis Koch's second solo show with the gallery. Primarily working in the medium of drawing, Koch makes meticulously structured abstract works inspired by the scientific fields of physics, cosmology, dimensional mathematics, and parapsychology. Koch's ongoing Circle Set series are experiments in hemispheric discontinuity and parallel-processing. Analogous to the bifurcated hemispheres of the human brain, these dense colored pencil drawings consist of two warped sets of five rings, each encircling a blank white oculate. These blank center points focalize the viewer's attention leaving the vibrant, often- dissonant sets of rings to be subliminally cross- processed in unison. The resulting experience is similar to neuroscientist Robert Monroe's use of oscillating binaural auditory tones. These tones stimulate and harmonize brainwaves promoting an experience of altered states of consciousness. The toroidal shape of these drawings also closely resembles how magnetic fields radiate out around a planet.

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Opening Reception: November 29, 6-8pm
November 29, 2012 – January 12, 2013
 
Marine Contemporary, in special partnership with Yasmine Mohseni, is delighted to present The Grey Wolf Devours the King, a solo exhibition of recent work by artist Mark Schoening. Ever the intrepid explorer, Mark Schoening's work exists at the frontier where information fragments and explodes into abstract form. The artist operates as a documentarian, creating sculptures and multi-layered paintings investigating the gestation and dissemination of information. The inception of a single quiet thought is added to and built on until it becomes a frenzied barrage of information. Working with acrylic, latex, spray paint, ink, silkscreen and resin, the artist creates a three-dimensional like space populated by a complex network of abstract forms. Simple geometric forms and lines create architectural backdrops from which emerge fictional landscapes.

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Opening Reception: October 20, 6-9 pm
October 20 – November 24, 2012
 
Marine Contemporary is delighted to present Another Self, a two-person exhibition by recent CalArts graduates, Akina Cox and Ariane Vielmetter. This exhibition, which developed out of a letter from Cox to Vielmetter, includes a series of new drawing, sculpture and video works that explore the relationship between the two artists, as well as their interests in the association between realism and fiction, the self and the other.

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Opening Reception: September 8, 6-9 pm
September 8 – October 13
2012
 
Marine Contemporary is delighted to present, White Noise, a solo exhibition by Christopher Michlig. White Noise engages the notion of urban fabric as a connotative starting point for a series of geometric, patternesque investigations. Each small abstract work pursues a unique compositional idea, referencing a range of fundamental visual strategies from city traffic to textiles.

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Opening Reception June 30, 5-8 pm
June 30 – August 11
2012
 
Marine Contemporary is delighted to present I'll Capitulate if You Succumb, Ricky Allman's first solo exhibition with the gallery. Utilizing the geographic landscape of his childhood in the Rocky Mountains, modernist architecture and gestural abstraction, Allman's work reflects an indefinite future; a complicated and frenetic world of colliding forms often in the moment of origination. His literal and psychological landscapes are a mix of dreamy futurism and bold expressionism, evoking contradictory worlds of order and chaos with a sometimes-sinister beauty.

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Opening Reception May 19, 6-9 pm
May 19 – June 23
2012
 
Marine Contemporary is delighted to present "Birds of Passage", Debra Scacco's debut U.S. solo show. The London based artist's practice is centered around defining the concept of 'home'. Born in 1970's New York to an Italian family, ethnic ties instilled in her both a devotion to family in the truest sense and ownership of a history not strictly her own. These ties paired with geographic displacement, mean that she is perpetually in a transient state: in between places, in between origins, in between roles, and ultimately in between the person she feels she should be and the person she has become. The result of this constant emotional flux is a lifelong fixation with what 'home' is, and the seeming impossibility of belonging.

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Opening Reception April 7, 6-9 pm
Britweek Reception: April 28, 6-8pm
April 7 - May 12
2012
 
Marine Contemporary is pleased to present "On the Horizon: New Generation British Painters", a group exhibition curated by Alexandra Ray and Catherine Loewe. "On the Horizon" showcases three distinctive figurative painters currently living and working in London: Robert Fry, Adam Dix and Hugh Mendes. We are presenting this exhibition in conjunction with Britweek, a celebration of British excellence in California.

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Reception: February 25, 6 - 9 pm
February 25 – March 31
2012
 
Marine Contemporary is pleased to present The Bare Facts, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Peter Lograsso. For his first show at the gallery, Lograsso has chosen to focus primarily on his most immediate surroundings - his bedroom. He chooses his subject matter based on its story telling power. Images of light playing on a window, a bronze owl on a shelf next to cassettes and a ripped window screen are slowly observed, absorbed and photographed; careful attention always paid to their intrinsic compositional strengths. Lograsso is not interested in capturing memory, but rather creating it, preferably a memory of how he would like things to be. He describes his images as "internal tableaus," for instance a window with a hole cut through the screen refers to his state of mind rather than how the hole got there in the first place. He is interested in molding reality to how he wishes it would be, rather than recording it. There is a feeling of 'what could have been' in each image, instead of what was perhaps a less exciting or bleaker reality. It is exactly this vulnerability and sometimes poignant humor that reveals Lograsso's internal dialogue with his place in the world.

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Reception: January 14, 2012 6 - 9pm
January 14 – February 18
2012
 
Marine Contemporary is pleased to announce On the Nature of Things, a solo exhibition by San Francisco based artist Robert Minervini. On the Nature of Things is both a reference to the repetition of the still life motif featured in many of the works in this exhibition, as well as a direct quotation from the ancient Roman poet Lucretius' poem by the same title "De Rerum Natura". The book of poetry, now more than 2000 years old, is a call to radical ideas, such as that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.

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Reception: December 3, 6 — 9 pm
December 3 – January 7
2012
 
Marine Contemporary is pleased to present, Tender is the Night, a group exhibition curated by Emily Sills, presenting the works of Sam Knowles, Rachel Hovnanian, Polixeni Papapetrou, Allie Pohl, Christine Rebet, Katy Stone, and Frank Zadlo. In a long line of appropriation, this show takes its cue from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who borrowed the line as the title for his novel from John Keat's poem "Ode to a Nightingale."

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Reception: October 22, 6 — 9 pm
October 22 – November 26
2011
 
Marine Contemporary is pleased to present Domina, Stephanie Pryor's first solo exhibition with the gallery. For this new body of work, Pryor has been looking at old master paintings, particularly 16th Century Venetian paintings. Pryor's most recent portraits of women are inspired by paintings of courtesans from this period, such as Giorgione's Portrait of a Courtesan. The title of the show comes from the Latin phrase "Domina Domina", which translates as mistress, dame, lady or she who rules. In old English Law, it was a title formerly given to noble ladies who owned estates on their own, separate from men. This Latin root went on to form the words dominate and dominatrix.

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Reception: September 10, 6 — 9 pm
September 10 — October 15
2011
 
Marine Contemporary is pleased to present A California Minute, Jow's first solo exhibition with the gallery. The predominant focus of this show is lyrics from songs about California from the 1960's and early 1970's. For the last five years, a significant part of Jow's work has focused on text and world play with a special emphasis on signs and symbols. More known for her witty and irreverent drawings on vintage letterhead paper, this show marks a departure from that body of work and focuses more on the artist's love for language in its purest visual form. For A California Minute, Jow explores the complexity of California's allure and fantasies about the Golden State's promise through the simple dots and dashes that articulate Morse code. Extending out of her earlier work with Braille, Jow became interested in Morse code, not only for its capacity to communicate language and its romantic sense of nostalgia, but also because it's graphic qualities are reminiscent of work by minimalist artists of the same period.

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Reception: July 30, 6 — 9 pm
July 30 — August, 27
2011
 
Marine Contemporary is pleased to present, All the ifs and whens, an exhibition by London based artist, Annabel Emson and Cologne based artist, Gereon Krebber. This two-part exhibition takes place in London and Los Angeles. Part I opens at Kenny Schachter/Rove Projects in London on July 12th and continues at Marine Contemporary in Los Angeles on July 30th.

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Reception: June 25, 6 — 9 pm
June 25 — July 23
2011
 
Marine Contemporary is pleased to present, Standing Waves, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Dennis Koch. Standing Waves is a collection of abstract, colored pencil drawings and sculptures that appear to resonate; dipping and shifting in patterns of motion. Exploring the fractal vibratory qualities of Cymatics, the study of visible sound and vibration, Koch uses repetition and recursion to map subsystems of lines and color. He then layers, refracts, or creates interference patterns to observe the emerging self-organizing geometric patterns.

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Debut U.S. solo show
May 7 — June 18
2011
 
Marine Contemporary is delighted to present Bad News, the debut U.S solo show for U.K based collective littlewhitehead. Where littlewhitehead often unashamedly appropriate media images and represent them as hyperreal sculptures, this is not as politically preaching as it may appear. Littlewhitehead are children of the 80's: brought up on a diet of video nasties, computer games and the post-industrial landscape of socialist Glasgow. Their work is the product of a very idiosyncratic and private dialogue, where with an encyclopedic range of references, they discuss shared ideas until they have inspiration for a work. As a result, all of their work is steeped in their very own brand of dark humor. It is through such humor, that they manage to negate any particular ideological position and instead foster reflection on many ontological and ideological absurdities.

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Reception: March 19, 6 — 9 pm
March 19 — April 30
2011

Marine Contemporary is delighted to present its inaugural show, Camp Alpha, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist, Christopher Pate. In Camp Alpha, the artist sees the US military base Camp Alpha in Babylon, Iraq as a touch point for how history becomes fodder for progress. Camp Alpha was controversially constructed upon a sensitive archaeological site in which areas were leveled to accommodate helipads and parking lots for heavy vehicles. The exhibition Camp Alpha is not specifically an investigation of the base and its political and moral implications, but rather a meditation on the type of human activity it represents. Residents of Los Angeles are keenly aware of how artifacts of the past are built upon, demolished or otherwise cleared away for new construction, often at an alarming rate. This layering, whether violent and destructive, or carefully considered and engineered, enables new forms while leaving behind an irreversible void and sense of loss. We hold on to all we can grasp in the process, knowing that what we have before us will someday fade as well.

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