Material Art Fair 2023
Charlie James Gallery is excited to present a presentation of works by Los Angeles-based artists Manuel López and Kristopher Raos for Material 2023.
Manuel López’s drawings and paintings are informed by his immediate surroundings. Each piece is a careful examination of elements found around his environment: books, records, boxes, houseplants, various elements from his home, his neighborhood, and studio. López relies on observation, memories, materiality, touch, and presence to evoke a feeling of familiarity in the compositions. The content of the drawings and paintings build a portrait of the artist - his memories and affections, his culture and personal history, expressed through carefully composed depictions of arranged objects.
Kristopher Raos adopts the aesthetics of advertising, exploiting the bold color and pop fonts of packaging for their formal possibilities and real-world associations, abstracting via adept cropping and clever manipulations. Executed in deft, precision brushwork at a scale that mirrors that of old- fashioned detergent boxes, the works exist in the sweet spot between surface and object. The labor of painting and the labor of daily life are here intricately connected. Raos recaptures time spent performing household tasks as a kind of aesthetic research, transforming the stuff of the world into fodder for the studio. It is an act of both recognition and elevation: a recognition of the abstract potential of midcentury commercial art, and an elevation of that material into something more. The results are a kind of Pop-inflected minimalism – hard edge by way of the corner drugstore.
Venue
Expo Reforma
Morelos 67
Col. Juárez, Del. Cuauhtémoc
Mexico City, 06600
Opening Hours
Private View (Invited Guests only)
Thursday, February 9th, 12 – 8pm
Public days
Friday, February 10th, 12 – 8pm
Saturday, February 11th, 12 – 8pm
Sunday, February 12th, 12 – 7pm
Selected Works
installation
