Artist: Tyler Vlahovich
Exhibition title: Pulling Up Roots
Venue: Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, US
Date: January 29 – March 12, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Chris Sharp Gallery is very pleased to present a solo exhibition by the Los Angeles-based painter, Tyler Vlahovich.
Something of a cult figure of the LA art scene, Tyler Vlahovich and his abstract painting defy easy categorization. His reverently irreverent work is known to take place on a variety of supports, ranging from canvas to irregularly shaped pieces of wood as well as found cardboard and paper. As a long-time dabbler in electronic music, Vlahovich approaches picture making the way an improviser builds on a given motif, allowing it to flow and mutate as he elaborates and fixes it into form. The connections between different bodies of work have less to do with imagery than with style, mark making, and the exuberant spirit of the overall practice. As such, his idiosyncratic non-brand of abstraction is altogether fluid, protean, and full of felicitous surprises.
Consisting almost exclusively of large-scale canvases, this exhibition is thematically anchored by a core group of new works. These seemingly elemental paintings are dominated by motifs that include broad circular yellow integers of color, floating wedges and mirroring forms in brown, green, orange and black, which crowd together with the comic bluntness of jumbled building blocks. Paint seems less applied than unceremoniously scrubbed and jabbed onto the surfaces, giving them an aggressively sensuous texture. This core series is complemented by other works which are tangentially related in terms of form, but not necessarily in terms of palette, and still other works, which see the artist departing completely from the central theme of the show, as if engaging in the pictorial equivalent of say, an instrumental solo. But do not be deceived: like the work of any great improviser, the apparent freedom and idiosyncrasy that suffuses Vlahovich’s work is underpinned by a lifetime of practice, craft-building and thought. In its own inimitable way, it all pops, booms and warbles together.
Tyler Vlahovich (b. 1967 Tacoma, WA) is a painter who lives and works in Los Angeles. A regular exhibitor at Feature Inc., New York from 2003 until its closure in 2014, Vlahovich has also had solos, most recently, at Lulu, Mexico City (2021); Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles (2021); Feuilleton, Los Angeles (2020); Farbvision, Berlin (2018); Window Project, Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (2017); Twig Gallery, Brussels (2011); John Tevis Gallery, Paris (2006); Mary Goldman gallery (2003).
This exhibition also inaugurates the expansion of Chris Sharp Gallery into its neighboring space. The gallery is now comprised of 4650 and 4652 W Washington Blvd.
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (periwinkle), 2021. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm).
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (6), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (5), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (2), 2021. Oil on canvas, 32 x 27 in (81.28 x 68.58 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (2), 2021. Oil on canvas, 32 x 27 in (81.28 x 68.58 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (6), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (5), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (periwinkle), 2021. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (dark purple), 2021. Oil on board, framed, 13 x 11 in (33.02 x 27.94 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (big pink), 2021. Oil on canvas, 54 x 48 in (137.1 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (big pink), 2021. Oil on canvas, 54 x 48 in (137.1 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled, 2018. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in (121.92 x 152.4 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled, 2018. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in (121.92 x 152.4 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (7), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (7), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (1), 2022. Oil on canvas, 32 x 27 in (81.28 x 68.58 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (1), 2022. Oil on canvas, 32 x 27 in (81.28 x 68.58 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (2), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (2), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (3), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (4), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Untitled (1), 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 in (142.24 x 121.92 cm)
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Tyler Vlahovich, Pulling Up Roots, 2022, exhibition view, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles