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David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"

Gavlak Los Angeles

West Gallery

April 17 – May 23, 2015

David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
David Haxton, 12 Sketches for Films, 1972-1977

12 Sketches for Films, 1972-1977
Set of 12 prints on aluminum
16 5/8 x 12 5/8 inches
42.2 x 32.1 cm
Edition 1/10

David Haxton "Cut To: Paper & Film"
No. 623 White Form and White Light Behind Orange, 2006

No. 623 White Form and White Light Behind Orange, 2006
C-print
50 x 66 inches
127 x 167.6 cm
Edition 2/3

Pyramid Drawings, Frame no. 108, 2012

Pyramid Drawings, Frame no. 108, 2012
Filming Still
16.25 x 20.25 inches
41.3 x 51.4 cm

Cubes, 1977 Black and white 16mm film transferred to DVD

Cubes, 1977
Black and white 16mm film transferred to DVD
00:09:00

No. 54, 1979

No. 54, 1979
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches / 10.2 x 12.7 cm (image)
11 x 12 inches / 27.9 x 30.5 cm (frame)

No. 201, 1981

No. 201, 1981
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches / 10.2 x 12.7 cm (image)
11 x 12 inches / 27.9 x 30.5 cm (frame)

No. 244, 1981

No. 244, 1981
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches / 10.2 x 12.7 cm (image)
11 x 12 inches / 27.9 x 30.5 cm (frame)

 

No. 318, 1982

No. 318, 1982
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches / 10.2 x 12.7 cm (image)
11 x 12 inches / 27.9 x 30.5 cm (frame)

No. 358, 1983

No. 358, 1983
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches / 10.2 x 12.7 cm (image)
11 x 12 inches / 27.9 x 30.5 cm (frame)

No. 379, 1985

No. 379, 1985
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches / 10.2 x 12.7 cm (image)
11 x 12 inches / 27.9 x 30.5 cm (frame)

No. 380, 1985

No. 380, 1985
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches / 10.2 x 12.7 cm (image)
11 x 12 inches / 27.9 x 30.5 cm (frame)

No. 93, 1980

No. 93, 1980
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches (image)
11 x 12 inches (frame)

No. 127, 1980

No. 127, 1980
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches (image)
11 x 12 inches (frame)

No. 347, 1983

No. 347, 1983
Unique Polaroid
4 x 5 inches / 10.2 x 12.7 cm (image)
11 x 12 inches / 27.9 x 30.5 cm (frame)

No. 162, "Torn Orange Over Blue and Under Orange", 1980/2012

No. 162, "Torn Orange Over Blue and Under Orange", 1980/2012
C-print
32 x 39 inches
81.2 x 99 cm
Edition 1/4

No. 167, "Torn White Shadows Over Grey", 1981/2012

No. 167, "Torn White Shadows Over Grey", 1981/2012
C-print
32 x 39 inches
81.2 x 99 cm
Edition 1/4

No. 131, "Light In and Out of White Tube with Multi Colors Inside", 1979/2012

No. 131, "Light In and Out of White Tube with Multi Colors Inside", 1979/2012
C-print
32 x 39 inches
81.2 x 99 cm
Edition 1/4

(No. 49) Random Square Holes in White Over Blue and Yellow Lit from Front and Back, 1978

(No. 49) Random Square Holes in White Over Blue and Yellow Lit from Front and Back, 1978
Vintage Diptych
Edition 1/4

(No. 15) Magenta Paper, 1977

(No. 15) Magenta Paper, 1977
Vintage Diptych
Edition 4/4

(No. 76) Inside and Out White Cylinder, 1979

(No. 76) Inside and Out White Cylinder, 1979
Vintage diptych
Edition 2/4

(No. 41) White and Magenta with Front and Rear Light, 1978

(No. 41) White and Magenta with Front and Rear Light, 1978
Vintage diptych
Edition 1/4

Press Release

Gavlak Los Angeles proudly presents Cut To: Paper and Film, a solo exhibition of recent and vintage works by David Haxton. The exhibition,
which includes inkjet prints, C-prints, bronze sculpture, Polaroids, digitized 16mm films, and film stills, points to the importance of Haxton's
work in the history of conceptual practice. Extending from the late 1970s to today, this selection of work reaches beyond the limitations of
medium to emphasize the slippage between painting, film, photography, pictorial space, and performative space.


Subtle light transitions appear in David Haxton's photographs from one image to the next. Cream and White Form and Square Holes in White (2005) molds form and shadow with harsh lighting - it's connotations of cinematic artifice revealing the art studio as stage. In No. 141, Shadows from Torn Magenta on White (1980) a soft Vermeer daylight streams in from what seems to be a window to the left. Light is scattered through the perforations cut into magenta photographic paper, and each cut offers a chance for light to play on surface and to reference the framing device and the self-reflexivity of photography. This all sounds quite intellectual, until we realize that the entire gesture is delicately balanced by poetry. Haxton's careful recognition of light is seen as an essential poetic-perceptual force.


The exhibition features Haxton's Polaroids dated 1979/1980, each one like a miniature photo-gem. A dialog with the history of conceptual thinking in art is palpable in Haxton's works. We witness the tension between surface and depth and the tension of the modernist struggle familiar through the push-pull theories of painting and surface put forth by the influential teacher Hans Hoffman, the entanglement between line and space so apparent in Robert Motherwell's early open form paintings, and  especially Lucio Fontana, whose Spatialism in the 1940s through the 1960s emphasized the puncturing of surface and the monochrome as a two-dimensional membrane. David Haxton's works bridge this history, continuing with the erasure of old distinctions between painting and photography and bringing in their wake new questions about the framed space and the space of illusion. These ideas have been re-charged with new meaning today. A dose of the critical questioning of decades which David Haxton's works provide is certainly called for today as the pixel, the frame, and the screen assume central positions in our lives. Haxton's works as a whole activate perception, exposing perception as pliable and malleable, a choice that we make at will. 


David Haxton was a Professor of Art for several decades and now concentrates on his artistic work. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Haxton studied Painting at the University of South Florida (BA) and the University of Michigan (MFA). Haxton made several film installations while teaching at San Diego State University in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Moving from San Diego to New York City in 1972, he began making single screen films in a climate of avant-garde structural cinema. David Haxton's film installation Three Changes was shown in New York at Sonnabend Gallery in 1974; a group exhibition with Vito Acconci, John Baldessari and David Shulman. He continued to show his films at Sonnabend each year until 1979, when he started showing his photographs in the N.Y.C. gallery. His first solo photographic exhibition was at Sonnabend Paris in 1978. Haxton had a solo exhibition of photographic diptychs at Sonnabend New York in 1979. He continued to show his photographic work at Sonnabend until the mid 1980's. Two of David Haxton's most recent group exhibitions include: Ileana Sonnabend Ambassador for the New, The Museum of Modern Art (2014),Watch This, The Smithsonian American Art Museum (2012). His most recent solo exhibition was at Gavlak, Palm Beach (2012). His work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, The San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Albright Knox Gallery, The National Gallery of Art in Canberra, Australia, The Denver Museum of Art, and The Maslow Collection in Scranton, PA.
-Lisa Jaye Young
 

Film Screening Schedule

Week 1: April 21-25               Bringing Lights forward (1970 - 1973) – 3:47

Week 2: April 28 - May 2       Cutting Light and Dark Holes (1974) – 4:25

Week 3: May 5 - 9                 Vertical and Receding Lines (1974) – 5:11

Week 4: May 12 - 16             Cubes (1977) – 9:29

Week 5: May 19 - 23             Painting Room Lights (1981) – 8:42

 
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