ELEMENTAL: Andy Moses - Jen Stark - Kelsey Brookes

Santa Monica, CA - William Turner Gallery is pleased to present Elemental, an exhibition featuring Andy Moses, Jen Stark and Kelsey Brookes – each of whom has gained recognition for their use of vibrant color and pulsating rhythmic forms to create powerful visual experiences.

Each artist takes the viewer on a transcendent journey, exploring and utilizing elements of the natural world as points of departure. Moses’s symphonic interplay of line and color react to the geological world, sometimes bringing to mind other-worldly landscapes, magmatic pooling or primal seas. Stark’s works often resemble fantastical organic and geologic structures and are suffused with charged, undulating layers and patterns that often mirror the unexpected, implausible designs found in nature. Brookes combines his knowledge of biochemistry and cognitive science to create bright, intricately expansive paintings that draw inspiration from the shapes of drug compounds, molecular structures and the sense of hallucinogenic states that they can induce to heighten the viewer’s sensory perceptions.

About Andy Moses - Born in Los Angeles in 1962, Andy Moses was raised in Santa Monica CA. He studied at California Institute of the Arts from 1979-1982 then moved to New York in 1982 and began exhibiting in the mid-eighties. He moved back to California in early 2000 where he continues to work out of his studio in Venice. The unique light of Southern California has influenced Moses as it did the generation of artists who came before. Moses has been equally influenced by the infinite vistas of the Ocean and Desert. “I am interested in the zone between abstraction and imagery that reflects the natural world on both micro and macro scales.” Moses’ work can be found in many prominent collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Orange County Museum of Art, The Laguna Art Museum and The Fredrick R. Weisman Foundation.

About Jen Stark - Stark was born in Miami, Florida in 1983 and studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 2005. Since then, Stark has exhibited globally, with major shows in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Thailand and Canada. Stark draws inspiration from vivid colors of the natural world – the attractant/repellent properties of flowers encouraging pollination; insects warning birds of their poisonous traits, the luminous mystery of phosphorescent sea creatures – all are in direct conversation. “My work concentrates on optical designs that mimic mandalas and sacred geometry. Through the use of psychedelic colors and repetition, I create patterns that seem to make static objects vibrate and move. The results resound with ideas of replication and infinity, often on a minute scale, echoing patterns and intelligent designs found in nature.” Via these corporeal abstractions, spectators are led onto the astral plane; there’s a transcendence to Stark’s pieces where the vibrational phases become a sacrosanct and curative experience for the viewer. Stark’s work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the West Collection, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale and MOCA Miami, among others. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

About Kelsey Brookes - Brookes was born in Denver, CO in 1978 and studied at Colorado State University, graduating in 2000. Since then, Brookes has had solo exhibitions in La Jolla, Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, London and Berlin. Brookes’ two main bodies of work, molecules and aesthetic abstractions, are created with a rigorous process of attentiveness, which provides visual evidence of both an artistic process and meditative practice. “The brain and its product, the mind, are a fascinating subject. I question existence, both philosophically and scientifically, and because of my background, a good place to start my interrogation of life is through the material science of the brain.” KELSEY BROOKES: Psychedelic Space is the first monograph of the artist’s artwork and examines three years of work and four solo exhibitions. His work belongs in esteemed private collections, as well as the public permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation.