Force Against Force: Eric LoPresti

Force Against Force: Eric LoPresti
May 16th – June 8th 2008
Opening Reception Friday May 16th 6:30-10:00pm

Like The Spice is proud to present Force Against Force featuring Eric LoPresti’s eloquent diptychs composed of photorealistic renderings and airbrushed gradients. Each binary pairing, executed in either graphite or oil and acrylic, alludes to uncontrollable forces and the universality of conflict and catastrophic loss. The precisely realized images of destruction, danger and chaos on one panel are set against the contemplative psychological space of color field painting, thereby combining two schools of painting historically seen as antagonistic to each other.

Based on dramatic and sometimes harrowing photographs of contemporary battlegrounds in Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as sites of danger and turmoil --- shark infested waters, melting icebergs and refugee camps --- these paintings and drawings express the inadequacy of human perception to grasp the vast, shapeless complexities of powerful forces.

Opposing each landscape is an abstract gradient, where multiple colors or tones fade into one another in atmospheric, emotionally charged fields. With no indication of scale and lacking any solid form, the gradients provide open space into which the viewer can project their reactions and emotions.

About the diptychs, “I think of them as visual equations, where the resulting experience is very different than the sum of the parts. Each side transforms the other by its proximity,” says Eric.

Born in 1971, Eric LoPresti grew up in the remote desert of southeastern Washington State. He received his BA in Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester in 1993, and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002. His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo shows at Jan Larson Fine Art and Miami University. He is the recipient of the Louis J. Kuriansky Foundation Award and the 2005 Miami Young Painters, William and Dorothy Yeck Purchase Award. This will be his first solo show at Like the Spice.