Shane Guffogg

Vol. 173 January 26, 2015
Shane Guffogg
Guffogg's latest work continues his exploration with his calligraphic shapes and images that float somewhere between
writing and drawing – figurative and abstract. Like a secret language, Guffogg's paintings, drawings and sculptures
offer us a new world of signs and gestures. His movements and images serve as codes to interpret information that
cannot be transmitted verbally.
Entering Shane Guffogg’s latest show is like walking into a gem box. Beautifully curated are three distinct bodies of
work consisting of soft pastel on paper, oil on canvas and Murano glass.
In the works on paper, titled Lumen Lapsus, the particles of pastel cascade down the surface, dance over and cut across
the picture plane, like particles of falling colored light creating an imaginary spatial layer that pushes the first moment
back in to a conceptual space.
With the oil paintings initial lines are laid down in paint on the canvas, followed by months spent defining them within
the pictorial space using oil paint mixed with a glazing medium. The paintings are what Guffogg likes to call “a visual
conversation between subconscious and consciousness.”
This visual conversation is also true for the glass sculpture. Guffogg began the idea by drawing the outlines of the
negative space created by the movement within his paintings onto paper. He then folded the paper in half and cut out
the shape, creating a mirrored image. With a sculpture in mind he began to play with the cut out shapes, exploring the
3 dimensional object by drawing light and shadows onto the paper. These became the templates for his Murano glass
series titled ”The Fifth Sound.”
Shane Guffogg’s show is the inaugural show for a new gallery in East Hollywood called The Lodge. The Lodge is situated on Western Avenue near Santa Monica Boulevard in a building that is adjacent to a 99 cent store and that once
housed Ed Ruscha’s studio.
Guffogg first showed in this same space in 1997, when it was the Corridor Gallery. That show earned Peter Frank's Pick
of the Week and two of the works from the show were later exhibited in Drawn from the Artist's Collection at the
Drawing Center in New York and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
In 2003, the space was used to launch Pharmaka, which later became a leading gallery in downtown Los Angeles
whose mission was to explore the role of painting in our contemporary society. Twelve years later, the storefront at
1024 N. Western Ave is having a rebirth from the artistic eye of Alice Lodge. Miss Lodge envisions the space as a
reprieve from the modern world; an oasis from the commotion of the 30,000 odd cars that drive past each day. And
Guffogg’s show is the first treasure you will find inside.
http://artweek.la/issue/january-26-2015/article/shane-guffogg
may 2013 review
LOS ANGELES
Shane Guffogg: “The Annunciation of Ginevra de’ Benci:
Conversations with Leonardo”
at Leslie Sacks Fine Art
What are these “ribbon-esque” paintings that also look a bit like
spaghetti; an image of string theory, or clef notes dipped in a minty,
azure-coloured liquid with bright beams of light bursting from the
canvas? Shane Guffogg certainly takes us on a journey of discovery
through his new body of work, which is a continuation of his Ginevra
series inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait Ginevra de’ Benci. One
thing we do know: his work looks anything but real, which allows us
to tap into the sphere of philosophy, pondering along with others about
the question, what is reality? Similar to da Vinci and as the title implies,
Guffogg’s paintings also have a spiritual element, and inspire further
reflection. Perhaps they are Leonardo’s reincarnated self, having an
exchange of ideas with Guffogg over the fundamental questions
of life; the improvable existence of God and the inability to prove his
non-existence, the visualization of these two failures, and the space
that divides them. On another level, they could be a sequel to da Vinci
and Ginevra and their platonic love enflamed through abstract art.
a glazing process that is similar to the Old Masters’ technique. Ginevra
de’ Benci # 7 and # 12 seem to have not only been sparked by this
young Renaissance woman, but also by music, due to the shapes
of the lines and their resemblance to clef notes. “I started off as a
figurative painter because that was what I knew,” Guffogg describes.
“Somehow, and I don’t remember where or when, I saw beyond this
physical world. It was like listening to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for
Strings and registering the deep melancholy the minor chords
summons, bringing moments of sadness from all of human history.”
Overall, Guffogg’s new Ginevra paintings have an exceptionally positive
feel to them, because of the energy they radiate, and the painter’s
obvious fascination with da Vinci, and his muse.
Like in the other Ginevra paintings, in Ginevra de’ Benci # 51 the
viewer can’t see where the line begins and ends, which is a metaphor
for infinity, or maybe one’s look beyond the Big Bang and life after
death. Its spatiality and three-dimensional illusions are created through
“Ginevra de’ Benci #51,” 2012
Shane Guffogg
Oil on canvas, 66" x 84"
www.artltdmag.com
—SIMONE KUSSATZ
Photo: courtesy Leslie Sacks Fine Art
Copyright ©2013 Lifescapes Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vol. 115 March 4, 2013
Shane Guffogg: The Annunciation of Ginevra de'
Benci
Wed, Mar 06, 2013
da Vinci scholar Marco di Mauro wrote, “The American artist Shane Guffogg has
captured the potential abstraction of the Portrait of Ginevra Benci, making a very
personal interpretation of it." Runs through April 1 at Leslie Sacks Fine Art.
The Ginevra series, consisting of fifty-two oil paintings, evolved out of Guffogg’s
immediately prior At the Still Point series, comprised of forty-one oil paintings
(selected examples exhibited at Leslie Sacks Fine Art, January 2010). The
combined ninety-three At the Still Point and Ginevra de Benci canvases done over
the past four years reflect an extraordinarily intense application of attention, by
virtue of which Guffogg has provided a window onto a personal renaissance – one
that may have significant universal implications as well. He has returned to the
Western canon as such is informed by abstraction, contemporary math and science
(string theory), and his own sensibilities, just as the art of the Renaissance was
informed by classicism, then contemporary math and science, and the sensibilities
of artists such as Leonardo.
On the occasion of Guffogg’s recent 2012 retrospective at the Villa di Donato,
Naples, Italy, organized by the Italian Cultural Organization Art 1307, da Vinci
scholar Marco di Mauro wrote the following: “The American artist Shane Guffogg
has captured the potential abstraction of the Portrait of Ginevra Benci, making a
very personal interpretation of it. The result of his research is manifested in the
execution of abstract paintings where the artist’s rendition takes the form of “a
composition of lights and shade together, mixed with the different qualities of all
his simple and composed colours…” to quote Leonardo and his Treatise on Painting
In the final analysis, Guffogg makes no attempt to imitate a masterpiece by the
Renaissance genius, preferring to capture the admirable harmony of forms which,
far from expressing aesthetic perfection, harbour a content that is so profound and
secret that it can only be partially deciphered.”
March, 2013
11
PREVIEWS OF EXHIBITIONS
SHANE GUFFOGG
(Leslie Sacks Fine Art, West Los
Angeles) "Make it new," the poet
Ezra Pound implored poets and
writers in the early 1900's in what
would become a defining anthem,
theme, goal and practice of modernism throughout all of the arts. L.A.
painter Shane Guffogg bases the
work in this exhibition on Leonardo
da Vinci 's " Ginevra de ' Benci," and
in doing so renders the old quite new,
answering the poet's call with remarkable inventiveness and a plethora of
well-seasoned skills.
Leonardo painted this work sometime around 1474, and it was his first
portrait painting. The original hangs in
The National Gallery in Washington
D.C. and represents the only painting
by Leonardo presently on view in
North America. Guffogg re-imagines
the Renaissance work in a show
titled "The Annunciation of Ginevra
de ' Benci: Conversations with Leonardo." The fifty-two oil paintings on
canvas that comprise this series stand
in equal measure as a conversation with
and a meditation on the 15th century
masterpiece.
Guffogg relies on his signature
illuminated ribbon motif, comprised
of flowing , interlaced and intuitively
rendered lines of paint. These probing vectors dynamically morph into
tangles of depth-infused contours
suggestive of both da Vinci 's young
female sitter and archetypal models
of the female form.
Extraction becomes abstraction
in these paintings (all titled "Ginevra
de ' Benci," then simply numbered),
which succeed as both glowing appropriations of da Vinci 's masterpiece and
testaments to Guffogg 's commitment
to sustained and intense looking. For
example, in "#13" a subtle yet distinctive oval shape draws the viewers '
eyes to the canvas ' center, where it
establishes both a mask-like silhouette
functioning as de ' Benci's face and as
a portal aimed at this work's (and da
Shane Guffogg , "Ginevra de' Senci #50,"
2012, oil on canvas, 70 x 60".
Vinci 's) imaginative depth.
Guffogg's blend of resin and oil
paint situate bursts of light in places
that correspond to the multiple light
sources in da Vinci 's work, but in
Guffogg 's case we cannot separate
the incandescence from the color it
illuminates.
In "#13" as well, Guffogg 's golden
nest-like bouquet of swirls mirrors
Leonardo's own overriding and unifying earthy palette as well as de'
Benci's curly hair. One might think
of Guffogg's paintings (particularly
"#48," "#50" and "#51 ") as exquisitely modulated color tone poems,
which offer analytical visual riffs on
often very small patches of hue in the
da Vinci work. The current paintings
also wink an appreciation toward the
industrial "finish fetish" surfaces of
L.A. 's 1960 ' s-spawned Light and
Space artists. Keep in mind that Guffogg worked from 1989 to 1996 as a
studio assistant for another legendary
L.A. artist, Ed Ruscha, and now lives
and works in Ruscha 's old studio in
Hollywood.
Of course the world regards Leonardo as an artistic as well as a scientific
genius, so it is not surprising that Guffogg 's energized, interlocking ribbons
lend themselves to associations with
DNA's entwined and iconic double
helix pattern. They also evoke thoughts
about the vibrating one dimensional
"strings" of string theory, and thus
12
feed speculation that they mesh the
cosmos into a fleeting and perhaps at
its essence intangible fabric of change
and possibility. More quality than
quantity, "reality" for these pioneering
thinkers becomes inseparable from an
individual's act of observing experience itself.
In many ways such a poetic formula resonates delightfully with the
methods, means, ambitions and goals
embraced and employed by Guffogg in
producing a remarkable body of work.
Andy Brnmer
From Leonardo to Guffogg
The connection established by Leonardo between science and painting, disciplines that are
complementary in the cognitive process, has induced some researchers to interpret his painting as a
mere scientific investigation of nature, disregarding the interior spirituality that permeates it. The
intensity of the Portrait of Ginevra Benci, exhibited at the National Gallery of Washington, does justice to
the great sensibility of the artist, who captures the vital flow animating the body beyond the fixed gaze of
the subject, and who gives it physical substance with the virtuous chromatic rendition, which bears
witness to a Flemish influence. The fingerprints found on the surface of the painting reveal a great
passion for painting that is far removed from the scientific calculations which some scholars insist on
observing in every aspect of his work, revealing a feverish, almost obsessive feeling of inadequacy before
the challenge of depicting the “impulses of the spirit”. And it is probably this sentiment that made
Leonardo apply the paint with his fingers, to better blend the colour and give the skin those pearly
reflections that have made the Portrait of Ginevra Benci so famous.
It has been believed that the portrait was executed for the wedding, celebrated in 1474, of Ginevra Benci
to Luigi di Bernardo Niccolini, but Jennifer Fletcher has recently suggested a much more fascinating
hypothesis, according to which it is not a matter of an official portrait, but a private one commissioned by
which Bernardo Bembo, ambassador of Venice in Florence who entertained a platonic relationship with
Ginevra and who, in this context, made Cristoforo Landino and Alessandro Braccesi compose verses
celebrating his sentiment. It was probably precisely due to this platonic love that Leonardo chose to
depict the woman with such diaphanous pallor, ethereal purity and rigorous volumes, making her stand
out solemnly from the natural landscape in the background. In spite of its firmness and statuary imposing
presence, her figure tends to abstraction in the depth of the suspended gaze, which does not enter in any
dialogue with the observer, and is not necessarily aimed outwards.
The American artist Shane Guffogg has captured the potential abstraction of the Portrait of Ginevra Benci,
making a personal and very interpretation of it. The result of his research is manifested in the execution of
abstract paintings where the artist’s rendition takes the form of “a composition of lights and shade
together, mixed with the different qualities of all his simple and composed colours” to quote Leonardo
and his Treatise on Painting. In the final analysis, Guffogg makes no attempt to imitate a masterpiece by
the Renaissance genius, preferring to capture the admirable harmony of forms which, far from expressing
aesthetic perfection, harbour a content that is so profound and secret that it can only be partially
deciphered.
Marco di Mauro
μετά τα Φυσικά
Metaphysics: a science that studies the essence of things, and not their real nature. “… it goes beyond the contingent
elements of the sensible experience … according to a universal perspective. Metaphysics focuses its attention on what it
considers eternal, stable, necessary, absolute, seeking to capture the fundamental structures of being”
— (from Wikipedia)
Shane Guffogg’s research in painting and the arts has always explored the essence of things, what is visible and
what may immediately be obtained from sensorial prerogatives; his research focuses on what is beyond the
phenomenal reality: research in metaphysics.
What Guffogg describes in his painting is expressed through the immediacy of the gestural language, but he aims
to go beyond mere physical gestures, beyond the physicality of the object.
Ever since the Eighties, when he definitively abandoned figuration, Guffogg has begun to focus on the gesture,
that is to say repetitiveness and its freedom.
Instinct guides the hand according to rigorous criteria that might seem antithetical with respect to the very nature
of the gesture, but which are on the contrary stabilizing and appropriate to the research he wants to conduct.
The purpose of metaphysics is to attempt to explain the universal and objective structure which is supposed to be
concealed behind the appearance of the phenomena… Guffogg pursues a universal, placeless and timeless reply
behind the outward appearance.
He therefore proceeds according to a scientific rigour, with a freedom that is conscious and channelled in schemes
of technical rigour, in order to achieve a result that looks to the soul rather than to the object as such.
The unreal space and light borrowed from Rembrandt, from his early works with very dark backgrounds, the static
quality of time rendered by an object which suddenly appears in the image, and which resembles a photographic
image in which the moment is frozen for ever; the feeling of a total, absolute silence which accompanies the
apparent movement of the object, render the sense of the metaphysical character of the whole.
Incredible as it may seem, Guffogg’s metaphysics is also found in the magic and unreal atmospheres of De Chirico,
where the figuration is replaced by another, stripped of any sense of reality; it is important to note that it is NOT a
matter of an absence of figuration, but a rendition of the essence of figuration.
Unreal illumination, unreal colouring, dilated and alienating spaces: these are the elements the two have in
common, within the context of a research that unites them on a philosophical level of being and essence.
The works from the Nineties and the first decade of the new century introduce a much vaster coloration and a
superimposition of pictorial surfaces and backgrounds that render them much more dynamic.
But the research is, to an increasing extent, centred on a yonder and a beyond which pervades the canvas and
pulls the eye within it.
The patina technique, borrowed from the old masters, which makes him apply up to 80 coats of paint and build
the work up slowly, creates subtle variations of hues and illumination, that allow the light to penetrate through
the layers and reflect, rebounding towards the spectator, giving an illusion of having been created from within the
work.
The intricate passages of sign and colour create a kind of tangle of strings, a central nucleus that is unravelled and
that slowly irradiates towards the edges. The primary gesture is followed by a continuous sequence of secondary
ones, a sequence dictated by both instinct and reasons. Guffogg explains that, once he has carried out the first
gesture, which marks the first “curve”, the seriality of the subsequent lines becomes almost automatic; he also
recounts that a trace or sign curving towards the right is offset, as if “by instinct”, by another one to the left, in a
symmetric development borrowed from Sixteenth-century symmetries that are definitively lost in the final reading
of the work. It is a kind of uncontrollable “domino effect”; the succession of gestures becomes “obligatory”: it is
that one, and no other. This superimposition of gestures is both conscious and unconscious; it traces the trajectory
of the construction of the pictorial field, of the “scene”. A signic trace which is composed and “issues” from his
hand with a rhythm not unlike that of a music score. The continuous and incessant superimposition of the sign
and the trace gives rise to a superimposition of the surfaces and levels of paint which, together with the cutting
and frontal light, gives the work an almost three-dimensional depth. The result is a kind of writing, a gestural
writing inspired from the ancient Chinese technique where the artist performs a kind of dance with the canvas.
And what about the desire elicited in those who observe, to put their hands into that tangle of light and to mix
and unravel strings with the same force and vehemence as its creator? An attempt to reach the centre, the heart of
the tangle and to begin to mitigate it, to unravel the strings to find out what is beyond, or what is happening
outside and inside it?
In any case, it is precisely as a dance that Guffogg describes the particular “realization” he has been working on for
two years with the “Ginevra de’ Benci” by Leonardo da Vinci; almost a companion in the flesh, who has
accompanied him for four years, in his research and in this daunting challenge. The work (the only one present in
the American territory) hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and represents the theme of the whole
new body of works which Guffogg has been working on from 2011 until today.
But why has the artist chosen that work and that author? Perhaps because also Leonardo’s work is nothing if not a
metaphysical work. Its basic structure is definitely so, and Leonardo, for that matter, was wholly familiar with
Aristotelian philosophy, to which all this is closely connected.
The scene is completely unreal even if it portrays a real personality; the eyes which seem directed at the spectator
really do not “look at him”: they are as if lost in emptiness; the “deafening” silence of the scene and the total
stillness of everything; immobile trees, leaves that do not fly in the wind, a landscape visible in the far background
that seems to be immersed in a dream, and that has nothing real to it.
Everything takes place in the mind of Ginevra, in the mind of Leonardo, in an intimacy that is NOT violated, in the
thought of a personality which is not externalized and not betrayed.
metá ta Physiká: the pursuit of what is beyond the reality of thing, the overcoming of the contingent and unstable
elements of reality in order to seek the essence of man in something more eternal, more universal and more
absolute.
Perhaps the soul?
And the colours of Leonardo, his extreme spatiality, his immense range, have inspired the work of Guffogg, which
breathes the same air: open, immense, immobile and still, but which aims directly and irremediably for infinity.
— Cynthia Penna
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shane guffogg
by shana nys dambrot
Jun 2008
Using the idea of illumination as a literal and metaphorical framework for his work, L.A.-based artist
Shane Guffogg makes oil paintings with radiant, fairly humming surfaces, replete with the caprices of
refractive light trapped inside their own skin. His paintings typically feature 70-80 layers of translucent
colors that have been mixed with a glazing medium, which causes them to seem incandescent, aglow
from within as if by lamplight. Vertical shafts, swirling ribbons, and sprays like the shimmering tails of
shooting stars generate a trembling dissonance. They are unruly but regal paintings with a balanced
asymmetry, anchored in place by longitudinal pales more like eruptions than pillars, with ragged edges
like clouds when the sun’s rays break through. This effect is only intensified by the restless tectonic shifts
between the background, foreground and middle ground. Despite their labor-intensive process, the works
seem deeply intuitive and retain their spontaneity, like flies trapped in amber.
Asked what’s on his mind when he’s painting, Guffogg gives a characteristically mystical answer:
“Everything and nothing; a blending of the conscious and subconscious, like the twisting of rope. If I do
think about someone, a place or event, it is intertwined with an emotion and possibly a color. A memory
is a starting point for a painting, but as the painting progresses the surface becomes more about itself.”
Guffogg’s calligraphic mark-making process records the artist’s own physical involvement, and forms the
basis for the patterns that float over the surface. According to the 45-year old artist, it is an act in which
the subconscious “creates its own consciousness.” He has long been interested in the way perceptions
are processed and sorted, consciously and subconsciously, the way meanings are assigned by the psyche
to events and images, and the way memories are created and deployed. Attuned to this transfer, Guffogg
starts the patterns in the top left corner and moves across as if he were writing a letter. Channeling his
storytelling impulse through the language of abstraction, his works invite viewers to bring their own farflung associations into the equation, enumerating the things his shapes “could be:” a butterfly, a
Polynesian mask, tattooed skin, ghostly apparitions, fire pits, brocade fabric, spray paint lines, something
ancient and oracular. “Cave paintings are something I constantly look at for their mystery and beauty.
Their voices have transcended their documentation of a world that is so far removed from who we are
now, but still resonates with us thousands of years after the fact.”
In the context of this atavistic exchange of histories, it makes sense that he would find himself at the
center of a community artist’s collective. Popular downtown art hub Pharmaka was spawned organically
when Guffogg ran into John Scane and Vonn Sumner at a Christmas party in 2003 and “before I knew it
we had leased this space downtown.” Now Pharmakaówith its program of exhibitions, panel discussions,
pod-casts and the likeóis at the heart of the neighborhood. Among its newest endeavors is its “greening
the gallery” project initiated via Richard Byrd and the Discovery Channel show, Alter Eco. As for the
demands of Pharmaka on his studio work, Guffogg believes it sustains
and resonates with his painting practice. “The illumination I employ in paint is a great visual metaphor
for what is happening at Pharmaka and the corner of 5th and Main. There was a need to look at art in an
honest way and try to understand its place in our society. The conceptual platform was built with the idea
that art matters and it grew from there.”
"The Rhyme of Reason," 2007, oil on canvas, 48" x 60"
Photo: Jim McHugh
Shane Guffogg’s work could be seen most recently from January 19 - February 16, 2008, at Leslie Sacks
Fine Art, where he will have another solo show in January 2009. 11640 San Vicente Blvd., in Brentwood,
Los Angeles, CA 90049 (310) 820-9448 www.lesliesacks.com
Pharmaka will host “Rebel LegacyóThe Abstract in Latino Art” this summer. The group show is curated by
Kathy Gallegos, Director of Avenue 50 Gallery. From June 12 - July 13, 2008 at Pharmaka 101 West 5th
St., Los Angeles, CA 90013 (213) 689-7799 www.pharmaka-art.org
For more information, visit: www.shaneguffogg.org
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Home > Features > Shane Guffogg
The Painter's Manifesto
Shane Guffogg, painter and co-creator of the Downtown Art Walk
By Jennifer Hadley
Part philosopher, part writer, Shane Guffogg is, first and foremost, one of
downtown’s most prolific painters.
I know nothing about the art world. Zilch. But I do know a little bit about words, so
although I’m uneasy about interviewing Shane Guffogg – L.A Native, kick ass painter, and
founder of Pharmaka – my fears of interviewing him are slightly assuaged by reading the
home page of his website (www.shaneguffogg.com). The first lines read: "For me the art
making process is a physical act of memory and the psychological manifestation of the act
of my physicality." Hot dog. I may not know jack about art, but I live for words. Shane and
I are going to get along just fine.
I meet with Shane on Monday morning at his studio/home/drawing room/art
collection storage spaces (which are actually several residences in one complex near Santa
Monica and Western). Canvases of works-in-progress line the walls (including one which,
I decide, is what my emotional state would look like if it were a painting). Other works
lean against the wall towards the back of the studio.
To break the ice, I tell him that I’m an ignoramus when it comes to art, but that I
enjoyed the copy on his website. He confirms that those are indeed his words, not the
words of a hired gun. Right on. An artist and a writer; at least we share one thing in
common. As much as I secretly want to dissect the rest of the words he’s written, I’m on
assignment, and need to get down to business. My business in this case is learning more
about the art world Downtown, from arguably one of the most influential and intimately
connected players in its history.
This takes us back to 2002, which is when Guffogg tells me he began to notice an
unsettling trend in the art world. “The vision of the art world was not being guided or
dictated by artists. It was being dictated by those who have power and money,” he
explains. Sounds like a pretty sweet conspiracy theory to me, but Guffogg apparently
wasn’t the only art world insider with these sentiments.
In 2003, Guffogg, along with artist John Scane and art dealer Adam Gross, sat down
to dinner and began waxing philosophic about the state of the art world in L.A. “The art
world, what was going on; it had almost been hijacked by corporate sensibilities. Suddenly
art had become this money making machine. What could we do about it? Nothing. But we
needed to have this dialog about it.”
So they continued the dialog, every Tuesday, and each week, they invited another
artist to participate in the discussion. “Painting is one of the most ancient forms of
communication. We were trying to figure out if it was still a valid form of communication.
These were big questions we were asking ourselves.” (I’d have killed to have been a part of
those meetings, as that philosophy degree I have might actually have gotten some use.)
By the time the group grew to seven artists and two dealers, Guffogg and company
decided that although these were all very good questions to be asking, they served no
purpose if they couldn’t be answered. Therefore, Guffogg set about to answer them, via
writing what would eventually come to be known as The Manifesto. The Manifesto not
only attempted to answer these and other questions, but laid the foundation for what would
ultimately become known as Pharmaka.
“Historical movements arise from necessity,” reads the first sentence. “In our fast
moving world, the stillness of painting is more relevant and more necessary than ever. The
quiet moment between the viewer and artwork bears witness to a tradition as old as our
creative instinct. It has always been the duty of the artist to recognize and interpret the
issues that impact us, and as painters we share in this responsibility – but we must also
remain faithful to this tradition. Straddling these divergent streams that divide the old and
the new, tradition and revolution, we have come together as a group, PHARMAKA, to
embark on the resurrection of what some have called a dying or anachronistic art:
painting.”
Home > Features > Shane Guffogg
The Painter's Manifesto
Sweet. Sounds like a piece of cake. But how, pray tell, were the members of
Pharmaka going to accomplish this? Well, apparently, if you’re artists, you start by having
your first show, which is exactly what Pharmaka did, with a twist. In January of 2004, the
group launched three simultaneous shows throughout Los Angeles. Suffice to say, the
turnout exceeded their expectations. “We had about 2,000 people attend the opening
downtown,” Guffogg says.
With numbers like that, and with the Manifesto in place, the next logical step was for
Pharmaka to open its own gallery downtown. Though Guffogg admits it was a risky move,
a space opened up at the less than desirable corner of 5th and Main, and the price was right
(free rent). Pharmaka went for it. With help from architect Christoph Kapeller, the building
at 101 W. 5th was transformed from a complete dump to stunning gallery, which would
open its doors in 2005 as an artist-run exhibition space and serve as the home base for
Pharmaka. Incidentally, by this point Pharmaka had become a “501(c)(3) non-profit
organization dedicated to building a creative and sustainable community in Downtown Los
Angeles through contemporary art exhibitions and cross cultural programming.”
But Guffogg wasn’t just painting, curating, and launching Pharmaka from ’03-’05. He
also had his pen in yet another pot of ink – helping Bert Green organize and launch the
now crowd-pleasing Downtown Art Walk.
In 2004, “Bert and I were talking. Gallery Row was up and running. But we still
needed to figure out how to get people Downtown.” The idea of the Art Walk was born,
and before Guffogg knew it, “We had about 12 people come, and eight of them were in
Pharmaka.” I think for a minute that Guffogg is joking, but he’s not, even though he’s
laughing. Yes, the first Art Walk in Downtown would be completely unrecognizable when
compared to the thousands the event brings in every month now, more than five years later.
Although Guffogg recently resigned from the Board of Directors of the Downtown
Art Walk, and admits that the recession has taken a toll on the art world in downtown, he
still feels that the future of the art world in Downtown is bright.
“[When] you create an artistic movement Downtown…you create a destination place.
Which is what happened. It is unfortunate that with the recession, it became very hard to
sustain it. I think it’s going to come back again, but I think it’s going to have to wait for
another economic cycle.” All the same, when that cycle does come back around, L.A will
be poised to take over as a heavy hitter in the art world, he predicts.
In the meantime, Pharmaka lives on, though without a permanent residence in
Downtown, and Guffogg is eagerly preparing for his next solo exhibit, scheduled for May
at the Leslie Sacks Gallery in Brentwood. After all, he is first and foremost a painter,
something he documented years ago in The Manifesto. “As people we experience the
world through the deceptively simple act of being. As artists, we speak of a world that is
seen through open eyes and interpret it for the world to see. But as painters, we paint.”
MAY 2010
The Arts Issue
This issue includes feature articles on Mr. Brainwash – famed street/pop artist, Shane Guffogg – painter and co-creator of
the Downtown Art Walk, as well as Rikk Galvin – the founder and CEO of ShareYourself Media.
We hope you enjoy this month's issue and feel free to let us know what you think.
-The Bunker Hill Magazine Staff
© Bunker Hill Magazine - All Rights Reserved
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SHANE GUFFOGG
January 19 - February 16, 2008 at Leslie Sacks Fine Art, West Los Angeles
by Bill Lasarow
While it was still shopping season
you probably stopped for a few
minutes to peer into a store
window’s catchy display. But did
you take a few extra minutes to
really sort through the layers of
visual information? You might
have caught a view into the depths
of the floor space behind those
mannequins. Perhaps there was
signage posted there, or
decoration painted directly on the
glass. And you might even have
registered the reflected images of
the street action facing the
tableau. We encounter the
ordinary with filtering lenses that
reduce a complete visual
experience so as to extract the
cultural message we regard as
“important.” Forgive my cynicism
if I suggest that our hierarchies of
what is important would be made
healthier by simple inversion (like
so many art folks, I can’t stand
succumbing to the moronic
seduction of commercial
messaging). But they would at
least be richer by just staying alert
to the multiple layers of
information before us.
Shane Guffogg is all about making
us stay alert.
The quick version of his paintings
is that a twisting ribbon of an
automatist gesture is
superimposed on a field of little
Rorschach blots that read
vertically like Asian calligraphic
characters. Ghostly smoke rings
hover against Victorian wallpaper.
If this decisively abstract painter is
out to represent anything, it’s that
the major ideas which have held
sway in the modern and
contemporary era can be collapsed
into a unified vision irrespective of
their clashing disharmonies. Unlike
so many of his peers, Guffogg is a
unifier not a divider.
There was a decade-long stretch in
which Guffogg steadily packed on
and mastered control of new
component layers applied with
increasing complexity that reached
a crescendo with an image such as
the absorbing “Spanda” in 2003.
Vertical shafts of golden light
activate an aurora borealis effect
on a web of yellow linework. A
waterfall of blue patterns softly
occupy the foreground. Executed
in varied tones, the pattern
washes over the linework without
holding it back, and provokes a
bracing double take as you try to
distinguish the physical from the
optical properties of the paint. It
gives no more opportunity for your
eye to rest than a Jackson Pollock.
But it’s orderly and controlled
elements firmly root Guffogg in
the kind of rationalism that an
earlier generation sought to shed.
His current work reinforces this impression by lowering the voltage and
more closely tying things into a structure that feels like it wants to live
together. Before, his paintings were being increasingly compelled to
blow apart in their own Big Bang. The current year’s “I Remember” is
like looking at a wall rather that into deep space, and you gaze right
through the feather light ribbon. The pattern is aggressive, but as
repetitive as a monk’s chant: neither dramatic nor narrative. Attention
falls primarily on the swirling line, which is calibrated between being as
distinct as a portrait and as ephemeral as mist. You go back and forth
from mellow introspection to grasping after a specific identity that
announces but refuses to resolve itself. We are still too early in this
game to regard this work as emeritus, but it is precisely the kind of
step back that, rather than signaling a retreat, indicates a growing
authority.
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SHANE GUFFOGG
January 10 - February 16, 2009 at Leslie Sacks Fine Art, West Los Angeles
by Margarita Nieto
“The paintings are really an excavation of my thoughts, with the
original calligraphic markings being the most accessible part and the
final surface of the painting becoming the deepest part of the
excavation. Thought creates form and form creates thought.”
--Shane Guffogg, July 22, 2008
At first glance, the eighteen works that
comprise Shane Guffogg’s
“Communion” exhibition seem to be
streams and swirls of color flowing off
the canvas. In “Nodus Perpetuus et
Copula Mundi II (The Eternal Knot and
Link to the World)” electric blue lines
(the Eternal Knot) swirl on top of red
coils that cover a darker ground of
cobalt blue. In “As Above, So Below”
wide, curved reddish lines seem to be
infused with a mysterious source of
illumination. The dark red ground that
lies beneath suddenly becomes more
intense as the light strikes the surface.
Feathery blue symbols cover the
surface just below the reddish lines.
We become aware that the deep red
now emerges in strong broad lines,
penetrates into the canvas, and is
more vivid as the light plays across the
surface. These interrelationships
between light, color within and beyond,
lines and curves elucidate Guffogg’s
interpretation of what painting is: a rereading of “illumination,” a Renaissance
philosophical concept that entailed
seeing at once both intellectually and
spiritually.
Such luminosity seduces the eye,
shattering any desire to analyze as it
arrests one’s gaze. Now we become
conscious of the lines. Under the
shifting light, the surface gives way to
lines, squiggles and curves. Calligraphic
references? Fragments of obscure and
ancient scripts? As we try to relate
these lines to a recognized form, we
slowly begin to dissemble a painterly
language that is essentially abstract.
Born in California’s Central Valley, now
based in Los Angeles and a founder of
Downtown’s Pharmaka gallery, Shane
Guffogg interned with Gary Stephan in
New York while still a student at Cal
Arts and worked as an apprentice
assistant to Ed Ruscha from 19891995.
A seasoned traveler, his wanderings
have extended beyond geography to
mythological considerations of ancient
cultures, the West, Asia and cultural
periods, i.e. modernity, the classical,
the Renaissance and the contemporary.
He has discovered through these
explorations that painting expresses
what oral and written language cannot:
in his paintings, he has inscribed
hidden and visible signs, symbols and
patterning that reference spirituality,
and the hidden yet present dimensions
of Quantum Physics and Super String
Theory. Scientific references
notwithstanding, Guffogg’s way of
seeing is not predominantly a physical
but rather a spiritual journey. The
imagery traces the painter’s process in
creating the work. We have the option
of going along for the ride in our
encounter with it.
The complexity of these paintings is reflected in their working
process, which demands time and introspection. “Sacred Totality,” for
example, took more than a year to paint and consists of some sixty to
seventy layers of transparent glazes and oils. Cadmium red dominates
the work. Waves and curved lines are still reddish as if drawing from
the ground, but a golden contrast through light and glaze vibrate
across the surface. Allusions perhaps to the vibrating strings that
cosmologists have identified as the “matter” of the eleven dimensions
of reality that comprise our world, but which are hidden from our
perceptual capacity. Or yet again, their rhythmic presence subtly
opens up the depths of the surface seemingly allowing a glimpse into
the depths of the painting. In “Beauty and its Creation I” the orangered surface is diffused by white patterning that approximates graffiti.
The underlying green curls and waves are a delicate counterpoint to
the white graffiti-like lines. There is an interplay between color, line
and light, a dialogue underscoring the basic contradiction that is
painting: these static images move and dance as the light penetrates
the surface.
Fed by the myriad images of our technological culture, film, TV,
computer images, and thoughtful as to their implications, the finality
of that two-dimensional world becomes the painter’s challenge. His
response is, as the title “Communion” suggests, a sharing, “a mystic
interchange of ideas. . .innermost and spiritual. . .bringing strength
and solace between man and nature.” By embedding these richly
referential calligraphic elements in the layers and depths of his
paintings, he allows them to emerge from and into color and light,
those primary sources that both give and enrich our lives. This
presents a conundrum of sorts, for in so doing, the flat surface we
define as the canvas acquires great depth, and what we presume as
two-dimensional becomes instead, a three-dimensional experience for
both our eyes and our inner being.