Alex Israel

Courtesy of the artist, Gavin Brown's enterprise and Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York

This work is in excellent condition overall. There are no apparent condition issues with this work. Unframed.
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The environmental scale of Sky Backdrop and its borderline abstract expanse of gorgeous twilight sky activates the viewer’s imagination in a manner similar to the silver screen onto which we project our favorite films. No influence is too high or too low for Alex Israel as he masterfully weds art historical reference with contemporary popular culture in a spirit evocative of Andy Warhol’s most successful moments. A truly prescient artist of our times and cultural history, Alex Israel’s Sky Backdrop series is his most important element in an already impressively complex and diverse career. Andy Warhol made art out of the images associated with stardom and infamy. Israel looks more closely at the mechanics of the most powerful engine behind such phenomena: Hollywood.

The dreams and fantasy embodied by Hollywood and brought to life in the movie studio are microscopically and exquisitely taken apart by Israel's nuanced art. Just as Warhol turned the idea of the artist’s studio on its head with his Factory, Israel cannily plays with the concept in his use of a film production company as his artist studio. Israel uses the scenic art department of Warner Brothers Studios and its painters to create his gorgeous all-over paintings of quintessential Los Angeles sunsets. In his appropriation of the mechanisms behind cinematic backdrop creation to his own ends, Israel gives us a bona fide Hollywood motif. Isolated from the actors and scenery normally accompanying these backdrops, the works emphasize the materials and machineries of Hollywood and its star power, dealing in the realities of Hollywood rather than the illusions of cinema. That the scenic art department of movie studios is slowly being eradicated through the increasing prevalence of digitally created backdrops lends the paintings of Israel an added nostalgic touch of being passé́, thus ramping up the wistful appeal of the works. In giving us a demoded art form of enchanting beauty, the work of Israel suggests an emptiness that plays on that most ubiquitous L.A. cliché́: the façade. This radical embrace of Hollywood and its classical visual language is Alex Israel’s moda operandi and is an important innovation in the history of art, cementing his place as one of the most discerning contemporary artists. 

The present work in the artist's studio, 2015
Photo: Joshua White, Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise