Press Release - Fever Dream by Ben Quinn and Robert Falco
Robert Falco
”Pura Vida”
Acrylic on canvas
62 x 74 inches
2022
pt.2 Gallery
“Fever Dream”
by
Ben Quinn
Robert Falco
Opening Reception
Saturday, April 9th, 6-9 pm
Artist Talk April 9th, 5pm
Showing Through May 6th, 2022
Text by Ariella Robinson
In the way heat rises from a distance, displacing objects from order, the paintings of Ben Quinn and Robert Falco function like the moiré of a screen— revealing that vision itself exceeds our ability to capture it. The works in Fever Dream collapse the spiritual realm between experience, sensation, and observation; and grasp at the conditions of the present— an attention economy built on images and multitasking.
Ben Quinn
”Wild Chandelier”
Watercolor and UV Varnish on PVA over Inkjet Print Fixed to Canvas over Panel
48 x 36 inches
2022
Occupying many worlds at once, Falco’s entropic diptychs bloom and deteriorate simultaneously, selectively revealing and concealing themselves like a vespertine flower.
With a prismatic palette, Quinn considers the star as essential unit of measurement — of both atomic and cosmological proportions, a means of calculating the unquantifiable. Colors reverberate, presenting both an entrance and an exit, inviting us to look in as opposed to at.
There is a reverence for the mundane that materializes in the artists’ source imagery: digital detritus mined from their personal photographic archives. With sleight of hand each artist obfuscates this accumulated visual excess and makes it something worthy of veneration — iconographic.
Robert Falco
”Trapped In My Own”
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 36 inches
2022
While Falco’s painting pulse with the urgent demands placed on the mind and body by our undulating, networked economy, Quinn’s work provides a place for the body to rest while the mind is on mute— sharing in the desire to imbue meaning where meaning has been emptied.
Ben Quinn (b. 1991 Dayton, OH) is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Quinn’s work deals mostly with post-psychedelic reflection and sensitivities to the supernatural through painting, sometimes accompanied by installation and sound. Past solo exhibitions include Pt. 2 Gallery in Oakland, Fused Space in San Francisco, and Littman Gallery at Portland State University; forthcoming solo exhibitions include Stanley’s in Los Angeles (2022), and Et Al. in San Francisco (2022). He collaborated with Acne Studios for their Women's Spring Summer 2021 runway collection, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. Quinn received an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2016.
Ben Quinn
”Classic Apparition Location”
Watercolor and UV Varnish on PVA over Inkjet Print Fixed to Canvas over Panel
48 x 36 inches
2022
Robert Falco (born February 6, 1992) spent 10 years building his technique in San Francisco during which he graduated from SFAI. His paintings deal with a surface tension of multiple images in which he uses non traditional materials to manipulate. Drawing from a personal image archive he draws relationships between varied images. Inspired by urban and digital detritus and the unending cycle of imagery the paintings have a worn look that conveys a sense of distraction as though it’s becoming hard to preserve the painting itself. He currently lives and works in New York City.