Will Bruno, Spencer Carmona, Vija Celmins, Natalie Cruz, Tacita Dean, Joe Goode, Mary Herbert, Katie Marshall, Ken Price, Joey Strella
Afterglow
Curated by Christian Franzen
July 29 - August 26, 2023
In Lieu is pleased to present Afterglow, a group exhibition curated by artist Christian Franzen featuring works by Will Bruno, Spencer Carmona, Vija Celmins, Natalie Cruz, Tacita Dean, Joe Goode, Mary Herbert, Katie Marshall, Ken Price, and Joey Strella.
The distinctive light on the West Coast reveals a radical versatility that has become emblematic of a West Coast sensibility. Masterful in its capacity to coalesce the grotesque and the beautiful into a singular entity, it declares itself as a sublimation of the natural world. It has made Los Angeles the phototropic movie capital of the world. There, light casts the city in a hyper-real relief; other times, it wraps it in a dreamy haze. The light on the Northern Coastline can be imbued with expressive longing, but also feel tamped down and withdrawn. In the endless horizons of the High Desert, it can spawn an unsettling feeling of a clock-less casino. For some, this timeless sensation invokes a feeling of transcendence; for others, it is hostile or even oppressive. The West Coast light has passed through the alembic of man for centuries, inspiring writers, philosophers, filmmakers, and artists alike to revel in its gloriously multifarious delight.
In addition to the work of six emerging artists, Afterglow will include works on paper by Vija Celmins, Tacita Dean Joe Goode, and Ken Price, seminal artists whose practices meditate on the ephemeral phenomenon of light in various contexts and provide context and inspiration for many of today’s Californian artists.
Christian Franzen (b. 1994) is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BFA from California State University Long Beach in 2018. He has participated in group exhibitions at In Lieu (Los Angeles), Sow & Tailor (Hong Kong), and Peripheral Space (Los Angeles), among others. This fall his work will be exhibited with the gallery in a solo presentation at Frieze London as well as a solo exhibition in Los Angeles, his first ever.
