September 17, 2022 - October 29, 2022
“Untitled” (RGP-2020) ,2020
Acrylic, lacquer and varnish on board, 10 x 8”
as-is.la is pleased to announce the exhibition “Ron Griffin: Paintings.” The show opens September 17 and continues through October 29.
Ron Griffin’s paintings have been aptly described as “readymades in reverse.” They deliver the cool alienation of Marcel Duchamp’s famous strategy while accepting none of the accompanying labor-saving advantages so prized within today’s neoliberal economies, art and otherwise. Quite the contrary. For while Griffin’s artworks are similarly under-committed along the axis of content—often featuring small bits of paper and plastic detritus casually plucked off the sidewalk—they are wildly over-committed along the axis of form, as Griffin exactingly “reproduces” his found objects in paint materials at a precise 1:1 scale. A related body of work begins with wax paper toilet seat covers (Duchamp again) of the sort found in public bathrooms. The artist takes these paper objects, folds them over on to themselves, and then poses the origami-like results against a black background, producing a gray-scale effect he then “re-creates,” so to speak, in overlapping layers of white lacquer sprayed over a black gesso ground. In both series of paintings, Griffin sets the demotic (street trash, stolen toilet seat covers) into tension with the elite (high-modernist referents, technical expertise) to an always striking if sometimes perplexing effect.
Entrance Gallery - Installation view 1
Entrance Gallery - Installation view 2
Main Gallery - Installation view 1
Main Gallery - Installation view 2
Main Gallery - Installation view 3
Main Gallery - Installation view 4
Main Gallery - Installation view 5
