Kristen Lorello Gallery is pleased to present Michael Wetzel: Bu, a solo exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Michael Wetzel, on view from 5 September - 28 October 2018. This is the artist's first solo exhibition at the gallery.  Sculptures in frescoed plaster with inclusions of found seashells, pebbles, and colored plexiglass are paired with paintings on linen that superimpose landscape, figure, and word.  They continue the artist's ongoing exploration of the experience and imaging of place.

The geographic reference point in this exhibition is Los Angeles.  Wetzel incorporates elements of L.A.'s human-made and natural landscape into the form and material of his artworks, drawing upon his lived experiences in California, while working from New York.  Each sculpture includes a geometric base and elongated torso, capped by a highly embellished head.  Found seashells, the outline of canyons and shorelines, and the futuristic style of L.A.'s 1960s "Googie" architecture inform the surfaces of his sculptures, which rift on the classical tradition of bust portraiture, fresco painting, and Cubist sculpture.  The paintings echo the hand-wrought architectural quality present in the sculptures.  Made with charcoal, casein, and paper, they communicate a mood somewhere between stiffness and tranquility.

Equal to Wetzel's interest in place as experienced is his investigation of place as invented or imaged.  By incorporating text into his paintings and sculptures, Wetzel creates specific associations between word and place, drawing simultaneously from the language of printed advertisements and the research of other artists who use text to direct the viewer's reading of a site (Aitken, Baldessari, Ruscha).  For Wetzel, the use of text brings into play the corporate practice of branding particular locations in service of tourism or real estate - souvenir t-shirts, billboards, travel ads, or posters - and of associating a location with a particular mood to market other products. The title of the exhibition, Bu, points two ways, as the homonym for "Boo," a term of affection, and as the packaged nickname for Malibu, "the Bu."

Honey Ramka presents Standards of Living, an exhibition by Jeffrey Tranchell and Michael Wetzel. Opens Friday, October 27th from 6-9 PM. On view through Sunday, December 10th.

Wetzel’s installations draw from his experience growing up with Richard Meier’s famously austere Lambert House. Accompanying Wetzel’s work are Tranchell’s lamp-like sculptures, themselves an amalgam of home-improvement materials. Taken together, their works explore how the accumulation and remnants of memories and materials effect how we store, process, and construct the same.