I recently had the good luck to visit the opening of
Simmons and Burke's show
IF NOT WINTER at the
Michael Kohn Gallery. I often attend art openings in and around LA, but rarely does the art affect me as much as this show did. It was pure and raw and technical and an orchestra of image and sound - excuse my language, but their work is a complete mind fuck.
If you can get out to visit their show before it closes, I highly recommend it. It was an honor to be present to experience such true works of genius.
For their second solo show in Los Angeles, the artists have created a collection of work that underscores their now iconographic style. Using the Internet as their source material, Simmons & Burke have effectively combed through millions of images and sounds, appropriating these once disparate elements into the grand narratives of their art. Embracing a sense of horror vacui (literally, a fear of empty spaces) in their artwork, Simmons & Burke fill the entire surface of these works, creating depth from rich layers of imagery and sound.
-courtesy of Michael Kohn Gallery
Below
LA Weekly's Christopher Miles describes the duo's work for their first solo show in LA:
"The collaborative duo of Case Simmons and Andrew Burke share a tendency toward epic spectacles that fuse human triumph, folly and cosmic events with the likes of 15th-century Netherlander Hieronymus Bosch or 16th-century German Albrecht Altdorfer. But while such forebears delivered such imagery as Christ issuing his last judgment from a kind of divine bubble hovering above a scorched and debouched earth, or a portal to heaven opening above a massive battle scene, Simmons & Burke are more likely to deliver Karl Lagerfeld decked out in white and emerging from the clouds, Michael Jordan dunking in the sky or Mr. Roarke and Tattoo of Fantasy Island mounting a podium while Britney and Madonna kiss in the corner. All this is handled via collage reminiscent of dada, with a kind of post-tweaker mania about it, and arranged in compositions that recall the sort of Renaissance and Baroque layouts art historians diagram with diagonal lines and triangles, but that you’ve probably seen more familiarly while tripping on a kaleidoscope. The most pleasurable eyestrain you’ll ever know is paired with equally cacophonous layered soundtracks matched to each of their Paradise on Earth visions."
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
