Daniel Graham Loxton: Living Room | Roy McMakin: Dining Room & Bedroom
Daniel Graham Loxton: Living Room | Roy McMakin: Dining Room & Bedroom is the inaugural exhibition at CASTLE’s new space, located downstairs from the original gallery. Like the upstairs, the gallery has living room and dining room exhibition spaces, as well as an additional bedroom exhibition space.
The downstairs living room will feature a recent selection of Daniel Graham Loxton’s signature, small scale abstractions on panel, canvas, and linen – curious arrangements of rich pigment and collaged materials that reveal the subtle entropy of assemblage. During the work’s earliest stages, the attachment and subsequent removal of found objects on the surface of the support leaves behind traces that collectively inform the painting’s structure – a kind of underpainting. These specter-images are augmented later by paint and additional layers of collage, in a generative process which employs the Renaissance technique of pentimenti, coupled with conceptual abstraction. In Untitled (Eastern Apples), for example, a sliced canvas and collaged fabric patchwork reveal the stretcher; atop is a ghostly rendering of two green apples in Japanese watercolor, accompanied by an odd, elegant sliver of wood.
Loxton also weaves narrative clues throughout the exhibition, offering viewers a glimpse into his personal mythology. In Untitled (Box Painting), for instance, this perfect green panel is, in fact, collaged sun-bleached brochures from Dia Beacon – where Loxton once worked – half-hidden behind a found paintbox lid. In a recent series of small pine panels, each painting is titled after a site the artist encountered on a recent trip to Northern Italy – Untitled (Orto Botanico) uses an envelope from a 15th century garden as the collaged ground for dry pigment, oil, and watercolor, while Untitled (Tramezzino) is named for a soft triangular sandwich served near a Baptistry in Padua (after which (Untitled (Battistero) takes its name).
The dining room and bedroom will feature a presentation of work by Roy McMakin, including historic drawings and new works on paper. At the outset of his career, McMakin asked, “If an artist makes a chair, is it art or a chair?” As much as this question may seem less complex in 2023, when art and design seem inextricable, McMakin seems determined to ask the question in a way that pushes an answer further from reach. Use/Used (a Nice Windsor Chair with Unusual Arms) from 2013 typifies his examination of the ontological tension between art and function: the piece comprises a found, worn Windsor chair by an unknown craftsman which hangs on the wall, thereby presenting clearly as art; meanwhile, a meticulous, high-gloss recreation (which we know is by the artist, and therefore also a work of art) commands the floor, ideally to be found, collected, and worn as a chair: in other words, a piece of furniture.
McMakin’s initial question gives rise to other questions: How do we care for objects, and why? Looking at Harley’s Father Likes Stickley Furniture, for instance, one encounters a sturdy side table with a single drawer seemingly ajar, ready to be made whole again if only you could shut it. But the single drawer is not ajar; it’s five inches too long, locked in a permanent state of dislocation. Does that mean it’s ready for a museum? A carnival? No matter how much we want it to, sometimes an object just won’t fit, refuses to make sense. And is that playful? Frustrating? Reassuring? Loving? Sad? McMakin presents us with art and craft that is beautiful, painful, conceptual and, sometimes, usable. Just not always in the way we imagine.
Daniel Graham Loxton (b. 1987, Montclair, New Jersey; lives and works in Cold Spring, New York). Loxton received his BFA in film/video from School of Visual Arts (2009). Recent solo and two-person exhibiUons include Shallow History at Louis Reed, New York, NY (2022); The Patron Saint of Turning at Claas Reiss, London, UK (2021); Jir Sandel, Copenhagen, DK (2021), which included a book of drawings by the arUst and introducUon by gallerist and curator Chris Sharp. Recent group exhibiUons include Seeds, Voids, and Tailored Cloth, CFAlive with Claas Reiss, Conceptual Fine Arts, Milan, Italy (2022); A Minor ConstellaUon, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2022).
Roy McMakin (b. 1956, Lander, Wyoming; lives and works in San Diego, California). Since 1980, McMakin has had over thirty solo-exhibiUons. Notable galleries and insUtuUons include: Quint Gallery (1986, 1987, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2013, San Diego), Marc Foxx (1997, 2000, Los Angeles), Henry Art Gallery (1997, Seable), Seable Art Museum (1999), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2003), and Mabhew Marks Gallery (2005, 2008, New York). McMakin’s work is featured in the collecUons of major museums around the country, such as: the Hammer Museum of Art, University of California, Los Angeles; the Henry Art Gallery, Seable; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Museum of Modern Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
