Everything Loose Will Land In LA | New Work from Paul Davies

Paul Davies Everything Loose Will Land In LA

Artist Paul Davies has a new an exhibit at Sydney, Australia’s OLSEN Gallery featuring original paintings and digital collages on which he’s been working for the past three years. “Everything Loose Will Land In LA” opens today August 30th and runs through September 17th.

Paul Davies’ Everything Loose Will Land In LA

Paul Davies Everything Loose Will Land In LA
Horizon Hotel 2017 acrylic on linen 91 x 122cm SOLD

These paintings were initially part of a site-specific installation at RM Schindler’s Fitzpatrick-Leland House, now MAK Center’s public museum space, after attempting to rent it out short-term, in the Hollywood Hills.

In a moment of realization, it was the Eucalyptus Trees, strangely dotted throughout Los Angeles, that revealed a connection between my adopted home in Los Angeles, California and my native home in Sydney, Australia” – Paul Davies

Paul’s revelation led to this series of paintings with a double title “Everything Loose Will Land In LA/Double Golden Gully

midcentury modern architecture

The artist explains that the phrase “Everything Loose Will Land In Los Angeles” is a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright who described L.A. as a center-less sprawl of buildings and billboards. “Double Golden Gully” refers to an unused golden mining location in New South Wales, Golden Gully. The word “double’ is added to suggest a gambling term rather than a place, infused with the notion of instant luck and risk.

Attracted to the shared experiences between Australia and California, such as the Gold Rush and the exporting of Gum trees, the artist drew parallels from these two venues and expressed them within these works, simultaneously creating juxtaposition and harmony.

The Paintings

paintings of midcentury modern homes
Untitled 2017 acrylic on canvas 153 x 122cm SOLD

Within the exhibit, several of Davies’ paintings contain the same modern architectural structures, placed within different environments, such as Palm Spring’s Horizon Hotel (now called L’Horizon Resort & Spa).

Paul Davies paintings
Horizon Hotel in Forest 2017 acrylic on linen 122 x 91cm SOLD
artist Paul Davies
Horizon Hotel with Australian Landscape 2017 acrylic on linen 91 x 122cm SOLD
paintings of pools
Horizon with Mountains 2017 acrylic on linen 91 x 122cm SOLD
paul davies art
Horizon Hotel V 2017 acrylic on linen 122 x 91cm SOLD

The work below, ‘Untitled’, features the Fitzpatrick-Leland House in which Davies had his recent site specific installation at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture:
paintings of midcentury modern architecture

The Double Golden Gully works look at the relationship between California and Australia through the lens of photography and painting. Reflecting on the notion of Hollywood’s Silver Screen, the artist applies silver pigment to many of the scenes. He likens this to the hopeful actor, artist or director, the paint shining more intensely as it’s viewed at greater angles.

paul davies los angeles paintings
Everything Loose Will Land in LA : Double Golden Gully 1 2017 UV cured ink and acrylic on canvas 122 x 183cm SOLD
paul davies la exhibit
Everything Loose Will Land in LA : Double Golden Gully 2 2017 UV cured ink and acrylic on canvas 122 x 183cm $19,500
Everything Loose Will Land in LA : Double Golden Gully 3 2017 acrylic on canvas 153 x 183cm SOLD
Everything Loose Will Land in LA
Everything Loose Will Land in LA : Double Golden Gully 5 2017 acyrylic on canvas 153 x 122cm SOLD

The painting below “Everything Loose Will Land in LA/Double Golden Gully 4” has been acquired by The Crocker Art Museum as part of their prestigious permanent collection.
Everything Loose Will Land in LA art exhibition

paul davies Everything Loose Will Land in LA show
Everything Loose Will Land in LA : Double Golden Gully 6 2017 UV cured ink and acrylic on canvas 122 x 183cm SOLD

Other paintings in the exhibit feature modern architectural facades and swimming pools.

acrylic paintings
Bronte House 2017 acrylic on canvas 182 x 152 cm SOLD
paintings of mcm architecture
Tim Ross, after portrait of Clive James by Jeffrey Smart 2017 acrylic on canvas 178 x 147cm
pool paintings
Untitled 2017 vinyl acrylic copolymer and acrylic on canvas 177 x 151cm SOLD
Untitled 2017 vinyl acrylic copolymer and acrylic on canvas 177 x 151cm
Untitled 2017 vinyl acrylic copolymer and acrylic on canvas 177 x 151cm
Red and White Forest 2014 acrylic on canvas 122 x 153cm SOLD

Digital Collage Prints

We Tell Ourselves Stories 1 3:3 2017 digital collage print 47 x 33 cm SOLD

The exhibit also contains twelve limited editions of Davies’ numbered digital composition prints entitled “We Tell Ourselves Stories.” Measuring 47 x 33 cm, the prints combine painting with photography and play with positive and negative space by layering imagery from his works. The results have a feel of both process and progress.

collage art
We Tell Ourselves Stories 2 3:3 2017 digital collage print 47 x 33 cm SOLD


collage peter davies
We Tell Ourselves Stories 9 3:3 2017 digital collage print 47 x 33 cm sold
We Tell Ourselves Stories 10 3:3 2017 digital collage print 47 x 33 cm SOLD

Davies was recently awarded recipient of the 2017 Chippendale World Art Residency in Provence.

You can view the entire exhibition online here

About the Artist (from OLSEN Gallery):
Paul Davies is an Australian-born, Los Angeles-based artist whose work is driven by friction between opposing forces of built and natural environments, design and art, abstraction and figuration. These boundaries and relationships are illustrated through Davies’ process, which combines painting, stenciling, photography and sculpture.

In this era of surveillance, Davies repeats and collages facades of modern architecture, the neutrality of which blurs what is revealed and concealed. Sighting the manner in which information is often reiterated, Davies employs stencils, hand cut and derived from the artist’s own digital photographs. These are then applied in various mediums to render uncertain what is original and reproduction.

Davies recently completed a residency at The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture Phoenix and work from this is now in the permanent collection of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2013, he was awarded a residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Davies was featured with Luc Tuymans and Peter Doig in essay “Limbo Architecture – Painters of Modernism” by Aaron Betsky, Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006 – 2014), for the May 2014 edition of Architecture Review. Davies has been included in ‘Public Trust: It’s About What We Do’ and ‘The Kindness of Strangers: Recent Acquisitions and Conservation Projects’ both at the SMOCA, ‘Condition Reports’ curated by Ranjit Hoskote for India Art Fair, McClelland Collection’ at the McClelland gallery + Sculpture Park. His work is held in several public and corporate collections such as the Macquarie University, Maitland Regional Gallery, Historic Houses Trust, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Artbank, Geelong Gallery, Rothschild, Kerry Stokes collection, Strickland, and published in prestigious magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Los Angeles Times, Art & Australia, W Magazine online, Wallpaper online, the Australian Financial Review and Blouin Artinfo. Davies has a Masters by research at the University of New South Wales – Art and Design, Australia.

Earlier work by Paul Davies

Paul Davies
Everything Loose Will Land In LA
OLSEN Gallery
August 30th – September 17, 2017
all images and information courtesy of the artist and OLSEN gallery
Paul Davies on Facebook