Lawrence Fodor @ GEBERT CONTEMPORARY

GEBERT CONTEMPORARY is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Lawrence Fodor that will include large scale drawings, paintings, and photo-based mixed media paintings. The exhibition titled, Edge of Chaos, will open 5 July and run through 9 August, 2024. The exhibition will open with a reception for the artist who will be in attendance on Friday 5 July from 5:00—7:00 pm.

This solo exhibition marks a 10-year anniversary from the last exhibition of Fodor’s work in Santa Fe, also produced by GEBERT CONTEMPORARY. This new body of work represents a return to nature-based abstraction for the artist and addresses chaos and complexity theories as they relate to the natural world, the volatility of climate change in its disruptive effect on our environment, and the fragile equilibrium between order and disorder in nature and our lives.

Fodor lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California, splitting his time between the two locations and maintaining studios in both cities. This body of work was produced over the past year in both studios and completed in the Santa Fe studio. Working in two locations provides the artist with two vastly different realities, demanding and contributing to viewing his work with varied and changing perspectives. This body of work was produced in both the LA and Santa Fe studios but still has a kinship—definite sibling relationships—born from the same DNA. The work is a conversation originating from long walks and hikes in Santa Fe and on breaks while driving between New Mexico and California, specifically in Sunset Crater National Monument in Arizona. There, the disruptive effects of climate change are clearly visible in the burned Ponderosa forests from the Tunnel Fire in 2022 and the extensive Piñon Juniper die-off in Wupatki National Monument due to an extended drought in the area over the past 25 years.

The exhibition includes several large-scale mixed media drawings, a return to the artist’s foundational practice and studies at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Drawing classes were required the first two years at Otis; they were rigorous and the language of drawing was drilled into our sensibility and work ethic. It is primal practice that immediately gets to the heart of one’s intentions without over-thinking. Also included in the exhibition are paintings and photo-based works comprised of oil and alkyd resin washes on archival pigment prints on paper and canvas. The photographs are captured using a multiple-exposure technique in the field, processed in Photoshop, printed and then layered with countless washes of oil paint. This mixed-media process allows the artist to collaborate within these varied mediums to more expressly communicate the conceptual concerns addressed in this diverse body of work. If a painting or drawing is a compilation of infinite moments of mark-making and a photograph represents one moment in time, then combing the two mediums allows me to juxtapose these two very different aspects of my practice to more effectively reach a certain resolution. And it enables me to bring together my time spent in nature and in the studio.

Fodor’s work is included in numerous private and public collections, including: the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, NM, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX, New Mexico Museum of Art and the New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, NM, LIOLI Museum, Minneapolis, MN, and Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS.

For more information about the work of Lawrence Fodor please contact Cov Jordan: 505.992.1100 or cov@gebertcontemporary.com