<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">new work:</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Rey</span></span> @ <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Young Art gallery</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">till Nov 20, 2011</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6054/6303176751_dde9fb995f_b.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6054/6303176751_dde9fb995f_b.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 702px; height: 482px;" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />big gay heart</span>, 2011</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">primer, wood, steel 53 x 12.25 x 120 inches</span><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://youngartgallery.com/"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 102, 102);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Young Art Gallery</span></span></a>,<span style="font-style: italic;"> one of LA's defining galleries at the moment, continues to show some of the most interesting sculptures in a tiny gallery space tucked away on a small street in Chinatown. Michael Rey's latest works should be fully encountered.</span> <br /><br /><br /><p><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Rey</span></span>’s shaped wall works and sculptures issue from an encounter between<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"> high modernism and traces of ’80s goth culture</span></span>—a collision of nostalgias that mutually undermine each other. Rather than hold up modernism as a patriarchal presence against which to mount a heavy handed Oedipal attack, Rey treats it as a source of some of the diverse free-floating signifiers from his childhood, made meaningful associatively rather than through art historical reference. Eschewing any heroic anti-heroism, the artist opts for a playful reinvention of lost objects he knows to be culturally phantasmic. Although Rey’s objects can be (partially) read as exercises in de-sublimation, they are best understood as libidinal configurations<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;"> always in the process of metamorphosis</span></span> and which refuse any singular fixed meaning. </p> <p>The <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">8 monochromatic wall works</span></span> are panels entirely surfaced in oil-based plasticine clay. The peculiarity of this material is that it remains forever malleable even after its oil paint finish has dried. The resulting surfaces are epidermal in their fragility and suggestive of these works’ metaphoric permeability to their surroundings and to the viewer’s gaze, a permeability enhanced by the orifices that pierce their surface planes. The plastic quality of the clay, with its infinite capacity to accept impressions, hints at corporeal vulnerability while simultaneously evoking fetishistic display.</p><p><br /></p><p style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://youngartgallery.com/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Young Art</span></a>: 418 Bamboo Lane, Unit B<br />Los Angeles CA 90012</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><br /></p><p style="font-style: italic;"><br /></p><p style="font-style: italic;"><br /></p><p style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">-----------------</span><br /></p>

new work: Michael Rey @ Young Art gallery till Nov 20, 2011 big gay heart , 2011 primer, wood, steel 53 x 12.25 x 120 inches Young Art Gall...

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