David Buckingham | Nobody Likes a Smartass | Artist Reception & Exhibition

Caldwell Snyder Gallery will host an opening reception for David Buckingham with works from his most recent exhibition on Saturday, February 23rd from 4:00 to 6:00 pm at our St. Helena gallery. Exhibition continues through March 23rd.

Part sculpture, part assemblage, David Buckingham’s bold, provocative art begins in the California desert, where he scours remote landscapes for what he calls “beautiful, battered metal, material that’s had a previous life and the scars to prove it: old tractors, hay balers, cotton pickers, rice threshers, school buses.” Having hauled masses of rainbow-colored steel back to his Los Angeles studio, he cuts, welds, and wrestles the pieces into works often inspired by movies, advertising, and music. “For the most part, I mine my own psyche,” he has said. “Each piece is a bit of a self-excavation.”

Reminiscent of Pop art, Buckingham’s perpetually fresh, energetic work has an immediate impact on the viewer. It seems fitting that the discarded metal he scavenges in the desert, all of which originally formed some part of the American landscape—signage, vehicles, machinery used to grow food—is repurposed as art that so directly taps into the collective American unconscious.

Buckingham’s unconventional art education includes a stint at New York’s infamous Rivington School, which created guerilla sculpture gardens in the city, and where Buckingham took welding lessons from artist Ray “Cowboy” Kelly. He has exhibited his work extensively in the U.S. and abroad, including at California’s Riverside Art Museum and the Lancaster Museum of Art and History. His sculptures have been featured in an international advertising campaign for Wrangler Jeans, installed as public artwork on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, and purchased by private collectors around the world.

Caldwell Snyder is a leading contemporary art gallery representing many of the most significant international painters and sculptors of the 21st century. Caldwell Snyder has been a vital force in the art world, introducing many renowned artists to the Bay Area for the first time. With a combined exhibition space of 12,000 square feet between the San Francisco and St. Helena gallery locations, Caldwell Snyder has mounted more than 500 exhibitions over the past three decades.