Dan Witz + Brett Amory
Two solo exhibitions open Thursday, June 30, 2011 from 6—8pm




Dan Witz
Mosh Pits, Human and Otherwise
Solo Exhibition

June 30—July 30, 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 30, 6—8pm

NEW YORK, NY (June 1, 2011) – Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to present Mosh Pits, Human and Otherwise, recent works by Brooklyn-based artist Dan Witz, in what will be his first solo exhibition at the gallery. Mosh Pits, Human and Otherwise features large-scale oil paintings on canvas from Witz’s celebrated Mosh Pit series—produced over the past ten years—marking the first time works in the series have been exhibited together.

Dan Witz is known for hyper-realistic figurative painting, with a career spanning over three decades in both studio work and street art interventions. Applying old master techniques, he achieves impressively convincing trompe l’oeil illusions of light, shadow and depth in his finely rendered portraits, landscapes and still lifes. The artist recently added digital media tools to his process (having previously used traditional projection methods). Combining old master techniques and digital technology, he photographs his subjects, composes in photoshop, prints an a-chromatic underpainting on canvas then glazes and scumbles over this foundation using traditional representational painting. Although equally time consuming and labor intensive compared to his pre-digital practice, Witz finds that new technology provides a unique opportunity for realist painters to evolve. Through his work, Witz continues to skillfully simulate the three-dimensional quality of reality as seen through the eye (rather than the flatness of photography as seen through a camera lens) with remarkable accuracy.

Influenced by his background as a musician in post-punk noise bands during the downtown scene of New York in the early 1980s, the Mosh Pit motif marries Witz’s two passions—performing and painting, both heavily fuelled by the rebellious spirit of art and music of his generation. In contrast to paintings that portray throngs of punk youth, titled after music venues such as ABC No Rio, Witz expands upon the crowd theme to include a rush-hour herd of suit-wearing businessmen in Grand Central Station in addition to non-human subjects in other works with animals such as a pack of fighting dogs and a writhing mass of rats. Offsetting the aggressive tone and group energy of the Mosh Pits, additional works represent Witz’s captivating portraiture with isolated female subjects whose faces are illuminated by the screens of their mobile devices and a group of paintings which depict figures inspired by erotic fetish subcultures. All of Witz’s works express a provocative point of view, informed by an artist who constantly strives to challenge his audience as well as himself.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in 1957 in Chicago and currently based in Brooklyn, Dan Witz attended Rhode Island School of Design from 1975-77 and came to New York in 1978 to attend Cooper Union, receiving a  BFA in 1980. In 1982, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992 and 2000, he received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1998 he received a fellowship from the Public Art Fund. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide and featured in numerous books and publications. Witz’s first monograph In Plain View: 30 Years of Artworks Illegal and Otherwise was published by Gingko Press in 2010; the book spans 30 years of the prolific artist’s career.

NEW YORK, NY (June 1, 2011) — Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to announce Dark Light, new works by California-based artist Brett Amory, in what will be his debut solo exhibition in New York.

Dark Light features a new series of oil paintings on panel, expanding upon Amory’s ongoing series of works entitled Waiting, which portray studies of urban life through fragmented cityscapes and anonymous, isolated figures. Amory began the Waiting series in 2001 with paintings depicting commuter subjects seemingly detached from their fellow passengers and surrounding environments, inspired by the introverted culture of public transit and inhabitants of the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, where the artist lived for thirteen years.


Amory’s work is based on photographs the artist has taken of ordinary city architecture and people who he sees on a daily basis but never speaks to. He feels especially drawn to individuals who look lost, lonely or awkward—those who don’t appear to fit in socially. Amory’s imagery has evolved over time as the artist has reduced compositional elements of the urban environment with increasingly more negative space, placing a stronger focus on the human subjects—who have shifted from daily travelers in the mundane sense to what has become an implied spiritual passage toward transcendence. In recent works, including those in this exhibition, the negative space has become black rather than white, adding to the emotional impact of the light source as having symbolic significance within the context of the obscured landscape imagery.

As the title suggests, the Waiting series is about how we rarely experience living in the now, always awaiting what will come next or obsessed with what has already transpired. In our age of distraction, being in the present is difficult to achieve outside of meditation practice, it requires heightened cognitive awareness and clear mental space, often prevented by constant internal dialogue, preoccupation with memories of the past and/or concern for the future. Amory’s work attempts to visually represent this concept of disconnection and anticipation, conveying the idea of transient temporality that exists in most moments of our daily lives.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brett Amory was born in 1975 in Chesapeake, Virginia. He has lived in the Bay Area of California for the past 15 years, living in San Francisco for 13 years before relocating to Oakland in 2009, where he is currently based. Amory attended The Academy of Arts in San Francisco, where he received a BFA in 2005 as well as two major academic awards: The Student Choice award in 2004 and Second Prize in landscape painting in 2003. In 2006, Amory was included in the book Convergence along with six fellow Bay Area artists.