David Muenzer at Jan Weenix Gallery

Artist: David Muenzer

Exhibition title: Sylvan Plug

Curated by: Patrick Michael Ballard

Venue: Jan Weenix Gallery, Altadena, Los Angeles, US

Date: December 14, 2019 – February 17, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Jan Weenix Gallery

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape […]
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
-John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, 1819

I named it sylvan plug because I created it with the help of Tristan Polzl just when the “sculpture” on the picture was presented in Paris and it made me think of the deck. If people find a better name (GB Prison? Rest of the world versus blue ?) I’ll probably change it as I don’t like non-descriptive names. Though one can argue “Sylvan plug” being pretty well descriptive of what the deck does.

-Lejay, Thread: Sylvan Plug (or whatever splashed Green stompy), 11-01-2014 05:24 AM

A story about strategy: Sylvan Plug emerged as a narrow but powerful response to a family of tactics that rely on repeated selection to reduce variance. Against agents not attempting to smooth those peaks and valleys, the Sylvan Plug approach will do very little. Perhaps the name is descriptive, as the inventor notes, because the prison player will find obstruction of movement to be ecstasy in itself. Here, in and around the cabin at the edge of the canyon, the exhibition opens under the sign of a wooded stoppage.

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Sylvan Plug is curated by Patrick Michael Ballard. A new prose work by Ballard, written on the occasion of the exhibition and illuminated by Muenzer, is available as a pdf here.

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David Muenzer is an artist and writer. Notable exhibitions include Scalar-Daemon at Reserve Ames, Los Angeles (2016) and 14 & 15 at Latham & Watkins LLP, New York (2011). He has co-directed the artist space Full Haus since 2015, which most recently presented Storefront: The Seeld Library at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018).

David Muenzer, Sylvan Plug, 2019-2020, exhibition view, Jan Weenix Gallery

David Muenzer, Departure, 2019, Oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches (152.4 x 121.92 cm)

David Muenzer, Sylvan Plug, 2019-2020, exhibition view, Jan Weenix Gallery

David Muenzer, untitled, 2018, Colored pencil on paper, 14 ¾ x 11 inches (37.47 x 27.94 cm), Frame: 17 1/8 x 13 1/4 inches (Frame: 43.5 x 33.66 cm)

David Muenzer, Sylvan Plug, 2019-2020, exhibition view, Jan Weenix Gallery

David Muenzer, Hearth (TIL of the Dunning-Kruger), 2019, Bronze, patinated steel, 31 x 56 x 30 inches (78.74 x 142.24 x 76.2 cm)

David Muenzer, Sylvan Plug, 2019-2020, exhibition view, Jan Weenix Gallery

David Muenzer, Froth Spoon, 2019, Colored pencil on paper, 15 x 11 inches (38.1 x 27.94 cm), Frame: 17 3/16 x 13 3/16 inches (43.67 x 33.5 cm)

David Muenzer, Sylvan Plug, 2019-2020, exhibition view, Jan Weenix Gallery

David Muenzer, Kauai Window, 2019, Colored pencil on paper, 11 x 15 inches (27.94 x 38.1 cm), Frame: 13 3/16 x 17 3/16 inches (Frame: 33.5 x 43.66 cm)

David Muenzer, Sylvan Plug, 2019-2020, exhibition view, Jan Weenix Gallery

David Muenzer, One taught me love, one taught me patience, and one taught me pain, 2019, Colored pencil on paper, 15 x 11 inches (38.1 x 27.94 cm), Frame: 17 3/16 x 13 3/16 inches (Frame: 43.67 x 33.5 cm)

David Muenzer, Rome Window (after Tischbein), 2019, Colored pencil on paper, 16 x 12 inches (40.64 x 30.48 cm), Frame: 18 ¼ x 14 ½ inches (Frame: 46.36 x 36.83 cm)