Woods Davy works with stones in natural, unaltered states collected from the sea or the earth, and assembles them into fluid and precarious sculptural combinations that appear weightless. These sculptures of heavy stone elements seem to defy gravity and float like clouds, roll like waves, or bend with the flow of the chaotic currents. Art writer Shana Nys Dambrot has observed that Davy’s work is “a collaboration between artist and nature,” one in which the artist “prefers to cooperate with the pre-existing uniqueness and objecthood of his materials.” Every stone contains the story of its own formation, as well as evidence of interaction with its environment. Woods Davy begins with these inherent histories and orchestrates relationships inspired by exploring and studying the underwater landscape, the waves, and the clouds above. As Holly Myers remarked in the Los Angeles Times, there is “something thrilling about a work that appears to defy its own natural properties,” while at the same time one can appreciate the work’s “meditative reverence.” Davy's work is included in the permanent collection of LACMA and many other museum and public collections.

Concurrently, the gallery will present an exhibition of recent work by Tom Lieber. A painter of large abstractions, Lieber is, according to writer Carter Ratcliff, an artist whose work “invites us to note how complex the act of looking becomes when we attend carefully to its pleasures.” With brushes, rags, and his fingers, Lieber layers calm, atmospheric washes amidst dark, frenetic skeins. These marks, lurking below and inching above the surface, create a tension with the rest of the painting, as though they are bursts of consciousness within an unconscious mind. Liebers’s paintings are in the collections of the Tate, Guggenheim, MOCA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On view in the gallery office:

Holly Roberts
Images | Biography