Review

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Various Artists

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Find a way to communicate with the person or group you need to be in communication with.

Make yourself known to the person or people.

Discover what they need or want from you.

Do, produce and/or present what they need and want from you.

– Formula for condition of Nonexistence, Ethics and Conditions, L. Ron Hubbard

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Jacob Patrick Brook’s studio practice consists of a series of derivations. Consider the series The Perfect Jacob, in which the artist unravels a thread of familial paintings stemming from an AI’s conception of his (Jacob’s) perfect self. The generated image depicts an odd-ball red-haired boy with off-set eyes and a shit-eating smile. Across over 75 canvases Brooks mutilates this poor mongrel boy, crudely pasting imperfect prints into wet paint, and scrawling his fucked-up face into abstact compositions. Similarly, The Bat series unfurls a single sketch of a bat tattoo, briefly seen on the back of a biking woman by Jacob on his way to work, into a series of 80 sketches. 

Described by Brooks, his recent works derive from ‘continued experiments in repeating, and seeing exactly how far something can be repeated and riffed-on before it completely falls apart.’ Each painting is produced in a single fit of virtuosity. Brooks begins with a pinprick of an idea, then allows the canvas to bleed. Vacuous mantras like hot piss, miller high life, and now glamour! Its back… meld together with swaths of thick oil. Barbells become abstract scaffolding. Bats become mountain caps. Wet rust blends into gunmetal gray. 

For Various Artists, Brooks and Dongieux approached the prompt of performing the perfect exhibition, then similarly carried out a process of derivation. Here you might recognize Dongieux from his imitation self-portrait in Francis Forever, stood just behind Brook’s Disco Bat. Or, perhaps you recognize him for his unabashed curational gimmicks, such as creating an exhibition spanning pun in The Rat Race, or exhibiting in a Döner Kebab shop across from a well-reputed Berlin gallery in Table for Two. In Various Artists Brooks and Dongieux set out to exhibit works by Joe Bradley, Jacob Patrick Brooks, Kim Gordon, Seth Price, Mike Kelley, and Jordan Wolfson. The final exhibition consists of works by Joe Bradley, Jacob Patrick Brooks, Kim Gordon, Seth Price, Mike Kelly, and Jordan Wolfson.

 

Glamour! It’s back again.

                                                                                                                                               – Reilly Davidson
 

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Joseph Bradley is a nationally award winning artist. Owning a successful gallery and studio in Greenville South Carolina's Art District, Bradley creates work for private collectors and corporations.

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Jacob Patrick Brooks was born in Kansas City, Kansas. He lives in Brooklyn, New York currently.

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Kim Gordon is a maker and artist from New York. She is the Founder of Gordon Craftworks, a home and home fragrance company, and founder of Artwhirl Arts, an online curatorial platform for New Contemporary Artists.

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Seth Price is a marketing and personal branding expert dedicated to empowering people to lead meaningful businesses and turn recognition into revenue.

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Mikey Kelly, born in California in 1972, is a contemporary artist living and working in Napa, CA. 

Jordan Wolfson was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated with an MFA from Yale School of Art in 1991.

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Reilly Davidson is a life coach based in Austin, Texas. Reilly attended UT Austin.