FLAT EARTH SOCIETY @ Big Pictures Los Angeles
Group show curated by Doug Crocco, Los Angeles, California, February, 2019.
Big Pictures Los Angeles is pleased to present Flat Earth Society, a group show of new paintings featuring Jennifer J. Lee, Matt Lifson, Jake Kean Mayman, and Alex Sewell. An opening reception will be held February 16th, 2018, 7:00pm – 11:00pm.
The term Flat Earther has become something of a sad joke, in that it’s come to mean a person who has fallen into lesser knowledge from a more enlightened state. However it’s confounding nature is catchy, how can an age of hyper information lead to ignorance? While thinking the earth is flat is foolish, the idea that “flat earthers” represent history repeating itself is interesting. Especially given how access to information has made the world, and time itself, seemingly flatter. We can now easily immerse ourselves in histories and experience vivid story telling of cultures far and wide, recent and ancient. We can embrace aspects of their belief systems as our own, even though they may be outdated or un-relatable to our current cultural norms and nomenclature.
Similarly, the exhibited paintings explore ideas of time, and how layers of time both inform and abstract the meanings we place in symbols, objects, and narratives. Jennifer J. Lee’s painting of an arch comprised of old computer monitors simultaneously references both the architectural breakthrough of the arch, the rise of computing, and subsequent obsolescence of vacuum tube monitors. Similarly Matt Lifson’s painting depicts young men taking written tests in the 1960’s overlaid by young men from another culture who have collectively killed a moose for food. Both groups’ activities represent rights of passage and becoming a man, just in different times and spaces. The artists in Flat Earth Society seem to move fluidly through time to illustrate visions of the past, present, and future.