Tyler Vlahovich at Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles

Chris Sharp Gallery is pleased to present Tyler Vlahovich’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, The Real Story.

I’ve known and admired art made by Tyler Vlahovich for over 20 years. I love his paintings. I found his last show at Chris Sharp Gallery and these new paintings to give sensation and presence and all that comes with this in a way that only painting can. I’m going to try and describe this in a way that longtime Angelenos may understand more than others.

I moved to LA in the fall of 1979. I had a tiny, slow, Renault LeCar and I drove all over LA trying to understand the place. A patch of freeway I drove often was the 110 through Downtown. Back then I didn’t really mind being stuck there, looking at the gorgeous grid of the DWP building in sight of the big black but shiny cylinder of the Bonaventure. It was always sort of still a thrill even if I was stuck and late for something.

But here is a difference: the amazing volumetric forms and colors, in ever-changing light experience that I got to have probably thousands of times, before a dissociative corrosion of new building obscured the view, was made over time by different architects and builders in regard and relation to what was already there. In painting, these relationships are created concurrently, to make one thing. One thing that stays is the way it was made through time (with care). There are two works in the show that stand out in particular in this way for me. Each has oval forms which are partially obscured by what could be described as cylinders or rectangles made up of different long ribbons of color. One with a vaguely electric but dark blue background and a rectangular form on the right. The other with a bright though slightly dingy yellow background. How is something electric and dark and how is something bright and dingy? How is something either a cylinder or a rectangle? Painting allows for this and makes it possible to understand, maybe better than any art form. One’s eye can see this and not think there is a contradiction. Not all painting does this, but Tyler’s paintings do. His paintings are not about perception but are for perception. There are no tricks involved, just color and texture and color on texture and this makes for good corrosion (not the kind that has agglomerated around the 110 corridor of Downton LA). Corrosion can push forward and backward and it swirls too. In Tyler’s new paintings, good corrosion sits on top of something darker below a series of ribbons which at first seem straight, but with closer looks, are very irregular and made up of various types of waves. This regular seeming irregularity can take over and what one begins to look at is a dark separator of colors. From what I can see of this dark color, is it a brown or is it a dark gray? I’m going to say it is a medium to dark gray brown. It is quite odd and makes me feel like I’m skydiving over rows of beautifully colored crops, maybe even flowers. So, this produces a scale issue that is extreme from the tiny glob of color as tiny bit of the texture made by the top coat of paint over medium dark gray brown that appears as lines, ribbons, rows of color. And I’m still in awe of how far from representation these paintings are.

In just these two paintings various ROYGBIVs are present. It is kind of amazing that with this variety of color the feeling of the works together makes for a pleasant, energized calm with welcome interruptions of what might be considered harsh hues. But these are scattered around the gallery in only a few paintings and still bring their affect to the group, giving a weird almost rugged sense to the show. A tall grass feel, maybe?

I say get lost in there.

–Liz Larner