Opening Reception: Friday, August 19 6-8PM
(Beverly Hills, CA – August 10, 2022) UTA Artist Space LA is pleased to announce Fragile World, an exhibition featuring new work by Carl Hopgood, Samyar Maleki, Ryan Winnen, Jack Winthrop, and Greg Yagolnitzer. Juxtaposing found object and neon sculptures against bold paintings, Fragile World explores themes of identity, masculinity, and our current socio-political climate. Throughout the gallery, Hopgood’s dynamic sculptures bring together word and object, with precariously balanced chairs and other artifacts serving as scaffolding for neon statements of affirmation and hope. Hopgood blurs the lines between digital and physical, past and present, with miniature projections and text bringing life to everyday items.
Alongside Hopgood’s sculptures, paintings and mixed media works by Jack Winthrop, Ryan Winnen, Samyar Maleki, and Greg Yagolnitzer evoke the varied influences of their makers. Winthrop’s colorful paintings from his TOTEM series are titled with the intentions that guided their creation – Gratitude, Love, Serenity – which radiate from vibrant, abstract figures. Winnen’s mixed media works have a muted complexity, with tactile, layered surfaces reminiscent of the graffitied and weathered walls of music venues and old buildings. Maleki’s graphic paintings in bold, primary colors, evoke poses from fashion photography, seen through a pop-art lens and informed by an architectural eye. Greg Yagolnitzer’s photorealistic paintings of dive bar bathrooms capture a grunginess you can almost smell. The works in Fragile World present a complex picture of contemporary masculinity felt through form, color, texture, and language.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Carl Hopgood is a British artist, born of Welsh and Greek heritage. He attended Goldsmiths College in London, graduating in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts first class honors degree and an MA in Fine Art from the University of The Arts Central Saint Martins. He had notable solo exhibitions at Waddington Galleries, Karsten Schubert, The Groucho Club and Minnie Weisz Studio, London. His group exhibitions include The Maddox Gallery LA, Dallas Contemporary, Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, The British School in Rome, Lazarides Gallery, Platform Six at The South Bank OXO Tower, and Sothebys London. His work features in several public and private collections including those of The Vinik Family Foundation, Eugenio López Alonso (The Jumex Museum) and Morgan Freeman. His exhibition UTA Artist Space Los Angeles brings together new and existing sculptural works combining neon, found objects, and video.
Samyar Maleki was born in Tehran, and as long as he remembers, has always carried pencil and paper with him. Studying Art and Architecture from an early age exposed Maleki to various fields such as painting, graphics, industrial design and sculpture. These influences, along with his love of music, deeply inform Maleki’s artistic practice. Since graduating with a Masters in Architecture from Tehran Azad University in 2000 Maleki continues to grow his passion of melding creativity with the linearity of rigid construction.
Ryan Winnen is an artist and musician from Cleveland, Ohio, currently based in Nashville, Tennessee. Growing up working summers with his father, a house painter and laborer, Winnen was introduced to the utility and temporality of paint, as well as the “living” quality of industrial buildings. As a teenager, Winnen became a musician and found himself in and out of the dirty venues downtown where walls held stories, sweat, and graffiti, which he knew would someday be erased by fresh coats of paint. Today, process painting forces Winnen to befriend uncertainty and investigate the way his materials interact when constructing a work. Paint, dirt, loose charcoal, spilled inks and natural dyes are applied in tandem to canvas and textiles. As an homage to the buildings and found objects of his hometown, he refers to his less gestural works as “surface studies”, often hiding his hand. Winnen’s work explores the importance of action, tactility, legacy and preservation in the midst of optimization and uniformity.
Jack Winthrop is an accomplished artist from Minneapolis, Minnesota who recently moved to Los Angeles after living and working in New York City for a decade. Jack graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a BFA majoring in graphic design. When Jack was developing his style as a child drawing and creating was like breathing. Almost involuntary. Innately Jack’s curiosity drove him and his diligence to make new things daily.
Greg Yagolnitzer is an artist who was born in Moldova in 1987. After immigrating from the USSR, he grew up in and around Philadelphia until moving to New York City to study traditional animation at the School of Visual Arts. Alongside his paintings, Greg has a career in writing, directing and animation.
ABOUT UTA ARTIST SPACE
UTA Artist Space is an exhibition venue designed by Ai Weiwei in the heart of Beverly Hills that is committed to showcasing art by globally recognized talent. Since its establishment in 2016, UTA Artist Space has presented notable exhibitions with interdisciplinary artists and creatives, including Derrick Adams, Myrtis Bedolla of Galerie Myrtis, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Essence Harden, Larry Clark, Petra Cortright, Conrad Egyir, Amanda Hunt, Mariane Ibrahim, Arcmanoro Niles, The Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery, The Haas Brothers, and Ai Weiwei, among others.