Press Release by Depart Foundation
Los Angeles – Depart Foundation announced today that it will collaborate with the American Academy in Rome to present Grear Patterson: Seek and Destroy, the artist’s first Los Angeles solo exhibition and the Los Angeles sequel to Patterson’s exhibition Forest Theater presented at the American Academy in Rome in 2014. A precocious former member of The Still House Group, New York-based American artist and photographer Grear Patterson, working in a variety of media, creates expressive works suffused with nostalgia for lost innocence and childhood rituals. Summoning many of his most significant formative experiences, he plumbs the pleasures and traumas of adolescence, evoking both personal and collective rites of passage. His work, alternating between disclosure and reticence, explores not only the immediacy of reckless experience, violent impulses and erotic yearning, but also the halting emotional and linguistic shorthand used to express those furtive memories and desires.
Drawing upon a collection of random snapshots, collected images and personal effects, Seek and Destroy, summons in various, often indirect ways, formative moments in the artist’s life. Embodied by, among other things, treehouses, baseball cards, summer camp, cult movies seen over and over, and fireworks on the Fourth of July, these moments might be construed as typical of an American childhood and the turbulent passages of adolescence – Sturm und Drang leavened by the cool sensibility of Ed Ruscha, with a nod to the dark undercurrent in William Eggleston’s photographs of back yards and suburban clutter. Part Hardy Boy and part Holden Caulfield, Patterson presents his recollections in the form of photographs, interactive installations and private relics, tapping into a broader consciousness. His works are remarkably mature ruminations upon memory, nostalgia and the hormone-fueled transition from childhood to adulthood. Like Harold with his purple crayon, Patterson creates a rich personal world that melds the real and the imaginary.
Patterson’s exhibition Forest Theater, which this exhibition follows, was presented at the American Academy in Rome from October 9–December 5, 2014.
A catalog with a text by exhibition curator Peter Benson Miller and published by NERO accompanies the exhibition.
Grear Patterson: Seek and Destroy is organized by the American Academy in Rome in collaboration with DEPART Foundation.
Grear Patterson
Grear Patterson (b. 1988) attended Duke University and the School of Visual Arts in New York. His work has been exhibited in several group shows across the United States, the United Kingdom and France. He was included in the 9th Shanghai Biennale in 2012, and in the Los Angeles group shows Ain't at Frank Pictures, curated by Louis Eisner and Nick Darmstaedter (2011), and Mondofornia at 9 Dudley Ave, organized by David Quadrini, in Venice Beach (2013). His first-time solo show, Nowhere Fast, was presented at Gloria Naftali, New York, in 2012; other solo shows were presented at Ellis King, Dublin, Bill Brady KC, Kansas City and the American Academy in Rome.
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome supports innovative artists, writers, and scholars living and working in a dynamic international community.
Founded in 1894, the Academy emerged in 1914 in its present form as a hybrid center for the arts and humanities. It remains the premier American overseas center for independent study and advanced research. A not-for-profit, privately supported institution, the Academy annually offers the Rome Prize to approximately 30 individuals, following a national competition in which independent juries select candidates across disciplines, which include Literature, Music Composition, Visual Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Design, and Historic Preservation and Conservation, as well as Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern, and Modern Italian Studies. The annual application deadline for the Rome Prize is 1 November.
The Academy community also includes a curated group of Residents, Affiliated Fellows, and Visiting Artists and Scholars. This exceptional group of artists and scholars live and work at the Academy campus located on one of the highest points in the city of Rome.
To learn more about the American Academy in Rome, please visit: www.aarome.org.
DEPART Foundation
DEPART Foundation is an emerging arts organization predicated on the discussion, exhibition and production of art and is dedicated to the development and support of contemporary artists whose work and careers are departing from their previous endeavors or predecessors.
Since its founding in 2008, DEPART Foundation has served as a catalyst for the Italian art and cultural community, strengthening the dialogue between Italy and the international art world. Like multiple outposts in Europe and U.S., DEPART Foundation has actively encouraged artistic production through sponsorship of young and established artists and the provision of spaces and resources conducive to the research, production and exhibition of new work, and to the presentation of educational and public programs.
Some of the most interesting and dynamic artists of our time, from around the world, have been presented for the first time in Rome by DEPART Foundation. They include Cory Arcangel, Joe Bradley, Nate Lowman, Ryan McGinley, Tauba Auerbach, Darren Bader, Louis Eisner, Roe Ethridge, Sam Falls, Mark Flood, Elias Hansen, Brendan Lynch, Oscar Murillo, Sarah Braman, Seth Price, Jon Rafman, Stephen G. Rhodes, Amanda Ross-Ho, Sterling Ruby, Lucien Smith, Valerie Snobeck, Frances Stark.