Kevin Larmon: "slipping in and out of phenomenon"

About

CB1 Gallery is pleased to announce a forthcoming exhibition of work by Kevin Larmon, the gallery’s second show with the artist. The new body of work in the exhibition, slipping in and out of phenomenon is of brightly colored, fetish- finished paintings, influenced by the work of the late Los Angeles artist John McCracken, and East Village artist Steven Parrino. The exhibition will be on view from February 24 – April 7, 2018. An opening reception will be held on Saturday,

Larmon’s work explores the painting’s surface, and its liquidity; he has envisioned his painting as a creation of a complex life form, involving content, emotion, thoughts, dreams and libido under the skin of paint. The impenetrable surfaces of the new work are interrupted by one or more holes (which the artist calls “glory holes”) uniquely and irregularly shaped, like an inverted Arp cut-out. They are highly polished, achieved using acrylic auto body paint and layers of clear coat applied to wood. Without involving the hand of the artist, the cut-outs are done by Larmon’s partner Rodrigo Pedrolli, and then painted in a San Pedro custom paint shop. Like John McCracken’s “Plank Paintings,” Larmon’s paintings are a seductive resolution between sculpture and painting, referring to car culture and a particularly West Coast sensibility.

The title of the exhibition, slipping in and out of phenomenon, is taken from the 80’s popular New York No Wave band, Liquid Liquid, whose songs Larmon listened to while making neo-conceptual paintings in the East Village. Liquid Liquid’s song lyrics were of a made-up language, and listeners would often try to discern the words and their meaning; hence, the belief that ‘slipping in and out of phenomenon’ was an actual lyric, which it wasn’t, until the band taking the cue from their fans, added it in their song Cavern.

Kevin Larmon’s work is recognized as part of the post-conceptualism and neo-conceptual art movements, evidenced in exhibitions of the early 80s East Village Gallery Nature Morte and with critics/curators Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo shaping the nature of painting after the rise of conceptual art. Larmon later was associated with Feature Inc., a gallery that was first established in Chicago in 1984, and eventually moved to New York City. His work is included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas, Austin, among others. He is the recipient of an Atlantic-Pacific Fellowship and a Pollack Krasner Foundation grant. Larmon is an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator Art, Design, and Transmedia in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, New York. He currently lives in San Pedro CA.