Deitch celebrated artist Emma Webster at its 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard gallery space on September 8, 2023. Not to worry if you missed the opening art party you can still catch the exhibition through October 21, 2023.
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Be aware Deitch is also hosting a second opening art party – the SAME night at its other location. See bottom of this post for more info.
Deitch Artist Emma Webster
Emma Webster paints landscapes that are not landscapes. Her work fuses high technology with traditional painting techniques. Her studio is a fascinating combination of a computer lab and a Renaissance artist’s atelier. She has invented a process that fuses hand drawing, virtual reality as well as sculptural models to generate her images. The resulting compositions are then meticulously hand painted onto canvas with astonishing virtuosity.
On Site Installation
Webster creates an immersive installation, building a black box theater within the gallery’s white cube. Her oil paintings will serve as backdrops alongside trompe l’oeil work that confuse and confound audiences with redefined notions of set design, exhibition staging, and props. Through the structure of her built-in theater, Webster creates a new labyrinth of scale, forcing viewers to contend the real with the unreal. By placing visitors both onstage and backstage, Webster blurs the lines between art and object, set, performance and time.
This new body of work explores her interest in concepts relating to staged landscapes and theatrics. Painting, drawing, and sculpture interact fluidly with peripheral elements common to most theatrical settings. Bringing these seemingly disparate parts together, Webster establishes a connective tissue between artifice and convention. The gallery itself is transformed into a mysterious space that beckons an awaited performance, or possibly a performance that has already taken place.
Artwork by Emma Webster
The theatrical setting reflects her sense of landscape as well as theater. The forests and glens depicted in her paintings are not real places. Webster describes her compositions as “optically devious”. Reality and illusion are deliberately confused. It is plein air painting made indoors.
Artist History
Emma Webster (b. 1989) lives and works in Los Angeles. Her relationship with the surrounding landscapes of the city, both urban and rural, informs her borrowing of elements that are at once both familiar and foreign. A self-described painter of landscapes, however not a landscape painter, Emma Webster paints scenographic worlds.
At Deitch’s additional gallery, another opening reception will took place for Vanessa Beecroft: Rules of Non-Engagement. See the website for more info on it. The exhibition also runs September 8–October 21, 2023, at 925 N. Orange Drive, Los Angeles, 90038; http://deitch.com
On view: September 8, 2023 – October 21, 2023
What: New Exhibitions
Where: Jeffrey Deitch, 7000 Santa Monica Blvd., LA, 90038
When: Running through October 21, 2023
Website: http://deitch.com
CLICK HERE for additional upcoming art exhibitions, along with performances and foodie events.
