CLAY DEAN EXHIBITION

Weekend is excited to present Field Theory, an exhibition in black and white featuring photography, an artist's book, drawings, and video by Los Angeles based artist Clay Dean.

Over the past few years, Clay spent time traversing Los Angeles on foot, intent on understanding the landscape of the city and the materials existing within its environments. The result of his first explorations became his 16mm film, Not West of Western, followed by his photographic book, Hollywood. After immersing himself in the streets he started to subtly add his own mark, essentially turning these traversed urban spaces into his artist studio, as seen in the three large format photographs Los Feliz, Skid Row, and Vernon. Utilizing discarded objects and refuse found in the streets and back alleys, he invokes the language of painting, sculpture, photography, and cinema.

At the same time, Clay began to integrate the influence of these urban materials with his background in experimental cinema with pieces like Carousel Paintings. In this work he introduces spray paint to 35mm motion picture film, from which he cuts the printed celluloid into individual frames and mounts them as slides. He then utilizes the mechanism of the carousel slide projector to reframe these still images in a linear temporal structure, as one would experience cinema.

In Field Theory, an analog video loop, Clay uses an analog audio/video synthesizer to remove all reference to the real and focus on the formal elements of sound and image to create a stripped down signal, an ambient drone, existing in pure image and sound.

The foundation of his practice takes an intensely methodological and metaphysical approach toward the understanding of material and environment. This results in images and objects that are born from encounters with the formal qualities of medium. His process creates a meditative atmosphere that beckons to the viewer.

Clay Dean lives and works in Los Angeles.