PRESS RELEASE
Edward Cella Art+Architecture announces the debut solo exhibition of work by artist Davis Birks entitled, Strata. Expanding the vocabulary of the Minimalist line drawings of artists like Sol Lewitt and Agnes Martin, Birks incorporates the element of chance in his development and execution of simple systems that manifests visually in abstract, organic large format paintings. The exhibition features Birks’ ongoing series entitled, Spirals, which extract inspiration from topographical maps and natural structures. Birks utilizes these organic forms as a means to explore the spiral, an elemental curvilinear shape that lends itself to his process-based practice of purposely established limitations.
Conceptually motivated, Birks defies the heroic nature of painting by employing radical techniques and materials so as to deny evidence of the artist’s hand. Aesthetically, Birks’ work often resides somewhere between painting and photography. Deploying varying combinations of painting, drawing and carved Plexiglas, Birks skillfully blurs the boundaries between media and obscures the manufacturing of the art object. Nonetheless, Birks’ artworks retain a powerful sense of authority, possessing a presence characterized by their tangible visual sophistication and ethereal beauty.
Born in Seattle with a B.F.A. from Arizona State University, Birks is based in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and is recognized in Mexico’s burgeoning contemporary art scene. Birks’ work was most recently included in the critically accepted traveling exhibition, Mexican Report: Routes of Diversity, organized by the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio, Texas, and recent solo exhibitions in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Bern, Switzerland. Strata represents Birks’ first solo exhibition in United States in fifteen years.
Strata is a sponsored cultural activity of the Santa Barbara/Puerto Vallarta Sister City Committee, promoting the people to people exchange of culture and ideas between the sister cities of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and Santa Barbara.
