Exhib - Alejandro Diaz, Karen Lofgren, Joel Otterson, Rubén Ortiz Torres

Royale Projects is pleased to announce a group exhibition featuring Alejandro Diaz, Karen Lofgren, Joel Otterson, & Rubén Ortiz Torres opening Saturday, March 12, 2022.

Surrounded and seduced by the most sought-after of substances, gold, signification and metaphor are regarded. This untitled exhibition is thematically drawn together by each artists' critique of minimalism, abstraction, and their challenging of what is valued and what is discarded.

Rubén Ortiz Torres
Beautiful Ugly, 2018
chromogenic urethane on found truck hood
46 x 81 x 17 in (116.8 x 205.7 x 43.2 cm)

Joel Otterson
Mixed Marriage (In Love Seat), 2018
walnut, oak, aromatic cedar, leather, embroidered velvet, and brass
44 x 50 x 18 in (111.8 x 127 x 45.7 cm)

Alejandro Diaz
Repeal (Hangers), 2017
14K gold pigment and acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 in (76.2 x 76.2 cm)

Alejandro Diaz, known for his humorous and loaded text based works in paint, neon, and signage, presents a series of 14K gold pigment and acrylic paintings. His Repeal Paintings make use of use of everyday objects in absurd, political, poetic, and beautiful ways. Hangers, mops, and trowels are adhered to the surface and then ripped off. The artist states “If you repeal something it doesn’t just vanish but it leaves a scar.” These glamorous abstractions carry the same subtext as his more overtly politically charged works but present with a refined subtlety and honor.

ARTFORUM described Karen Lofgren’s Gold Flood as a response to "Minimalist sculpture by injecting that aesthetic with a dose of the fantastic and potent ambiguity…flooding the gallery with the scintillating metal…meaning is multifaceted… not a trick of the eye or mere eye candy, but something a little deeper and more troubling than its shine.”

The center-point of Joel Otterson's Spring Time Anytime, is a humble soda bottle interwoven in an ornate 24K gold gilded cast brass foliated ormolu. In her essay for the “Among Others” exhibition catalog, Carole Ann Klonarides states that the ormolu, "resembles Renaissance jewelry and a finial in a shape that could be found in a Jean Arp painting” and continues noting that the bottle, that could as easily be trash, is “elevated to the status of a Song Dynasty masterpiece”. It sits in a position of esteem upon the top of Otterson’s In Love Seat, from Mixed Marriage series. "The artist sees the work as a mixed marriage between Donald Judd Minimalist sculpture and his Gay Maximalist sensibilities." It is also a masterwork of cabinetry combining walnut, oak, aromatic cedar, leather, embroidered velvet, and brass, prestige materials not often coupled, but when put together, make a perfect union.

Rubén Ortiz Torres
Objeto activo, 2018
gold, urethane, chromaluscent paint on found jeep hood
38 x 54 x 1 3/4 in (96.5 x 137.2 x 4.4 cm)

Karen Lofgren
Gold Flood, 2009/2019
automotive paint on plywood
3/4 x 57 x 22 in (1.9 x 144.8 x 55.9 cm)

Joel Otterson
Springtime Anytime, 2017
plated brass and enamel glass
26 1/2 x 17 1/2 x 4 in (67.3 x 44.5 x 10.2 cm)

Ruben Ortiz Torres' Chrysopoeia, references the alchemic process of the transmutation of other elements into gold, continuing acquisitiveness as a thematic thread. As the viewer moves around the gold leaf, lead, and glitter marked painting, the color shifts from green to gold, forcing one to reconsider art history, California car culture, and avarice. Emblematic of the violence and corruption caused by the war on drugs, a mangled truck hood, taken from a Mexican police junkyard of vehicles damaged by conflict with the cartels, hangs on the wall. Contrasting the rough, oxidized surface, the auto component is modified with a fetishized finish and continues Ortiz Torres’ critique of formal abstraction with reference to artists such as Judy Chicago, John Chamberlain, and James Turrell.

ALEJANDRO DIAZ, KAREN LOFGREN, JOEL OTTERSON, & RUBÉN ORTIZ TORRES