Press Release - "what part of the whale" by Tyler Cross
Tyler Cross
"Neso is blue"
Acrylic and charcoal on canvas on panel
48 x 24 inches
2022
pt.2 Gallery
“what part of the whale”
by
Tyler Cross
Opening Reception
Saturday, April 9th, 6-9 pm
Artist Talk April 9th, 5pm
Showing Through May 6th, 2022
Written by Kyle Lypka
pt.2 gallery is pleased to present “what part of the whale”, Tyler Cross’s first solo exhibition, the show consists of four large paintings on shaped panels, four small diptychs, and five small bronze wall sculptures. The genesis of this body of work can be traced to a whale carcass that washed up on the beach at Point Reyes National Seashore in 2019. Tyler visited the carcass every few months over a two year period.
Tyler Cross
"farfarout poaceae"
Acrylic on diptych canvas on wood panel
17 x 22 inches
2022
The four small diptychs made from two 8 x 11 canvases give an expansive and zoomed out experience despite their size. These paradoxical paintings appear to show us grand scenes, possibly landscapes or something colossal, far away and at low resolution. They feel like polaroids capturing some rare event, but we are kept from ever really knowing what.
The bronze wall sculptures, which could fit in your flattened hand were cast from plywood. These wooden forms were previously used as tools in Tyler’s painting process, generally employed as stencils or stamps. In retiring these tools and eulogizing them in bronze they act as artifacts of the painting process. They give the impression of sarcophagi for an older shape-language no longer being spoken.
Tyler Cross
"Ananke (tool3)"
Bronze sculpture
roughly 5 x 3 inches
2022
The four large paintings are comprised of shaped canvases, nailed un-stretched to a wooden panel of the same silhouette. The strong outer form echoes into itself, revealing a charcoal structure, making them reminiscent of X-ray images. The skinned and mounted canvases reveal a painter's hypnogogia, bubbling up to representation but always sliding back into abstraction, they never quite ring a bell for you, never fully lift the veil. This gives them a slightly ominous feel despite the bright, at times nearly neon colors. The canvases appear to be churning, rhythmically oscillating with presence and absence. They show something in the midst, a sensitivity to dynamism and the ability to respond to it. A process seems to be underway, the sigilization of putrefaction in distorted time-lapse. The paintings resistance to explaining themselves brings forth desire, the refusal to give clear information awakens imagination, the irretrievable summons eros. Slowly gazing at these paintings feels like an antidote to staring at too many graphs - too many charts - too many facts - too many memes. There is no data here, no discourse, only experience of the first order, a type of knowing that is becoming increasingly rare.
To accompany “what part of the whale”, Tyler has made two wall mounted ceramic lighting elements. Paired with these are graphite drawings by Drew Grasso.
“When Tyler asked me to put work in the back room for his solo show and share space with his yet to be made lamps, I looked for work of mine that was about light.”
Drew Grasso
”Desert Lights”
Graphite on paper
paper size - 30 x 22 inches
Maple frame
2022
info@part2gallery.com
The things I found were really about drawing and capturing phenomena where light took a form or had a physicality to it. When we feel things like eeriness, transcendence, or paranormality it has so much to do with an unusual behavior of light.
The sky could be orange or headlights could shine through fog and rain in a very particular but hard to pin down way that you can’t quite capture with a camera. Even if you nailed the shade of orange with a color correction it still doesn’t capture the feeling of living that day. It’s the window into this temporal and ethereal space that can pull you out of your body. To be able to draw or paint one of those actions of light ‘accurately’ would be the closest thing to a true souvenir of that moment you could have. To have my eyes absorb it and put it back out through my hands in a way that I, the artist, recognized as truthful would be a success and I think these three come pretty close.
In a way that couldn’t be more different than the idea of a lamp but the sculptures and the drawings have in common an appreciation for light as an entity that compliments each other. The lamps to me are taking something that could be so average and making it a beautiful, poetic, considered thing while still performing this basic function and the drawings do almost the opposite. They take this body-less ghost apparition and try and pin it down, capture it and stick it in a rectangle. But they cross in a way that feels like a conversation.”
Tyler Cross born 1992, Lancaster CA studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. Tylers main focus has been his collaborative sculpture practice with his boyfriend Kyle Lypka. They have had solo exhibitions at pt.2 Gallery. They currently have a piece in the MarinMOCA and have a forthcoming solo exhibition at the JB Blunk Space in Point Reyes Station. Tyler is represented by pt.2 Gallery and lives / works in Oakland CA.