Villas - Solo Exhibition by Heath West

Villas
Heath West
September 8 – October 6, 2018
Opening September 8 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Artist Talk - 6 PM

DALLAS – Galleri Urbane is pleased to begin our fall season with an exhibition of all new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Heath West. Sixteen months after Neighborhood of Infinity, his first solo exhibition with the gallery, West has continued to make work inspired by the histories of cinema, architecture, and painting; however, the recent paintings in Villas approach these concepts from a new, paired-down perspective.

At the root of each discipline of architecture, film, and painting lies a concern for the framing of spatial forms. As a former design architect turned full-time visual artist, West has implemented painting as a nod to the shared doctrines of these practices. Past paintings often adopted framing techniques found on the big screen; a film storyboard comes to mind with previous compositions that contained the cast shadow of a figure waiting to enter the scene from beyond the picture plane. The paintings in Villa, however, take a step back from these cinematic tableaus and redirect focus to the architectural spaces that have always played a role in the artist’s work by portraying them in their purest forms.

Void of figures or objects, the empty spaces in the new paintings allow West to focus on the compositional elements, like line and color, that provide the core of his interests. To one end, the emphasis on line-work connects the series to the schematics of an architectural blue-print constructing the most basic elements of a room: the shape of an archway or the frame of a window. To the other end, West’s draftsmanship undoubtedly remains firmly rooted in the tradition of painting. While the linear elements first appear to be fastidiously placed, closer inspection pleasantly reveals the hand of the artist throughout, imbuing a more personal warmth to the paintings that is further reinforced with West’s use of a linen ground.

Color has also gotten paired down in this new work. Some paintings are rendered entirely in hues of one color while others rarely go beyond the use of two or three. In simplifying his color palette, each individual painting can be drastically different by altering minimal components. Otherwise similar compositions lend dramatically disparate atmospheres with the simple change of a color. While many elements like these have been scaled-back and simplified, the work in Villas is nonetheless a thrilling advancement in West’s practice. Through this uncomplicated approach, West has reinforced the conceptual framework of his paintings wherein the potential for exploration is limitless.

A public opening reception for Villas will take place at Galleri Urbane Dallas on Saturday, September 8th, 2018, from 6:30-8:30pm, and a conversation with the artist will take place beforehand at 6:00pm.

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  Heath West holds a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He has participated in group shows at 0-0 in Los Angeles, Harper’s Books in East Hampton, Nomadic at California Institute of the Arts, and the Agathe/Vi se pa Kunst booth at NADA NYC. In 2017, he was the recipient of an artist grant in painting from the Peter S. Reed Foundation in New York City. In 2018, West presented Haus Paintings, a solo exhibition at Dillon Kyle Architects in Houston and participated in See You Next Thursday’s presentation at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival in New York. This October, West will also present a solo show of site specific paintings at the Cabin in Los Angeles where he now lives and works.