David Black: "Landscapes"

The LODGE is pleased to announce Landscapes, an exhibition of photographs by David Black, opening February 16 and continuing through March 30, 2019. On view will be 23 photographs taken in Los Angeles from 2015-2018.

As a follow up to his debut exhibition at The Lodge Cerro Gordo in 2016, Landscapes is a selection of new work that explores paranormality and everyday life in Los Angeles. The images displayed in a sequential line present a day to night cyclical narrative of a landscape of our collected dreams. These visual glitches suggest the point of view of a passenger in a fast moving car on the city’s expansive freeway system. Black is interested in capturing opposing forces: light and dark, commercial and artistic, micro and macro, and they fuse to pose questions about illusion, mortality and truth. He also likes to play with archetypes: a dove flutters on the hood of a big car in its dark shadow; sunsets stutter into a strange series moiréd by the artifice of an LED screen from which they radiate. These allusive symbols and characters suggest a twisted storyline that feels fictional but also inherently autobiographical and vulnerable.

The prints in the exhibition are a modest size (16” x 20”) inviting a quiet intake and study, one that fosters an intimacy with each work, as well as an awareness of connectedness to others before and after in the sequence. Arranged linearly, in cinematic form- the viewer is led along a road with an initial beginning and end, but this path soon loops to flip upon itself. The resulting experience taps into the space between self-conscious and subconscious, wherein lies the untethered knowledge that something is waiting to be discovered within the things we think we know.

Audrey Landreth

-Curator