Alex Israel

Almine Rech Gallery, Paris

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although the overall tonality is more saturated in the original and fails to convey the depth and texture of the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals a few minute chips to the stucco, predominantly to the outer and side edges. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Born in Los Angeles in 1982 Alex Israel’s burgeoning career has wilfully embraced the project of embodying the near mystical essence of his home and birthplace: the long billed centre of the entertainment industry and crucible of mainstream desire. Taking the global reputation and perceptions of LA as his point of enquiry, Israel has built a unique conceptual repertoire that enacts a keen interrogation of celebrity culture, film studio design and the Hollywood dream. Bearing an unashamedly alluring aesthetic this work is exemplary of Israel’s remarkably fluid practice that has propelled him to wide critical acclaim and significant recognition by public institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Emblazoned with emblematic violet splendour Untitled (Triptych) is an effervescently surreal and consciously hyper-artificial evocation of a luminous sky. Israel’s irresistible palette pertinently plays with our perceptive capacities, simulating extreme depth through the vibrancy of its tones but also a concrete feeling of artificial flatness. This inherent sense of a veneer draws crucial equivalence with the stereotypically shallow draw of LA and the dreams it propagates.

Created with the scenic art department at Warner Bros. Studios, subtly blended mists of paint conjure the lurid tones of directional studio lighting. This series of ‘Flats’ takes its name from the term used to describe backdrop elements for television and film. For Israel these ‘flats’ set a scene, expressing artifice whilst evoking a mysterious sense of anticipation for performance.

The present work’s format as a triptych is compelling. Finding its historical roots in church altarpieces, Israel’s series of three ‘Flats’ become objects of devotion for the new cult of Hollywood; holy objects that sarcastically promise social apotheosis. Notably they also take their outer shape from Californian Spanish revival architecture to create a mocking mixture of the banal and the cerebral.

‘Flats’ also relate to Israel’s most significant and defining project As it LAys. Distributed by the artist’s website and a YouTube channel, Israel has continually interviewed Hollywood celebrities, from Academy Award winning actors to Reality Television stars as well as designers and producers who make up LA’s mainstream cultural scene. Here the artist enigmatically delivers lifestyle questions from a set of index cards he shuffles in his hands in what becomes an uncomfortable scene where his subjects are left awkwardly propelled to express personal narratives with minimal encouragement from their interlocutor.

Harbouring an obsession with fame and superficiality akin to, and inevitably inspired by, Andy Warhol, Israel’s output reconfigures this discourse for the Social-Media age, sardonically fetishising the zeitgeist from which his subjects emerge. Whilst Warhol saw New York as the apt centre for his ‘superstars’ and factory for art production, Israel’s nomadic existence working between mainstream production studios reconceptualises a new ‘dream factory’ that is Hollywood: a template for the world, in its most utopian and apocalyptic form.