TONIGHT!

Chad Attie
The Girl With The Golden Eyes
May 12-July 8, 2011

Opening reception Thursday, May 12, 6-9pm

Kana Manglapus is pleased to present the work of artist Chad Attie.

Attie’s practice is rooted in a quintessentially urban impulse to salvage a sense of beauty from the mundane trappings of the contemporary world. There is also a strong metaphorical significance in the way his... [read more]

TONIGHT!

Chad Attie
The Girl With The Golden Eyes
May 12-July 8, 2011

Opening reception Thursday, May 12, 6-9pm

Kana Manglapus is pleased to present the work of artist Chad Attie.

Attie’s practice is rooted in a quintessentially urban impulse to salvage a sense of beauty from the mundane trappings of the contemporary world. There is also a strong metaphorical significance in the way his works seem to have been made, by a hand often as much at the mercy of his materials as in control of them. “The Girl With The Golden Eyes” asks the question if it is ever possible to control what we see and attain what we desire, or whether by engaging with it we destroy what we touch.

Throughout Attie’s career his work has been influenced by extensive travels to such places as Morocco, Russia, Burma, Vietnam, Japan, Turkey, and Cambodia. Many of the ideas in “The Girl With The Golden Eyes” have come from such contrasting cultural notions as well as environments, textures, and objects he has photographed or detritus collected in his travels. Original photographs, thrifted paintings, broken toys, discarded book jackets and torn children’s illustrations are transformed by Attie into resonantly colorful images that simultaneously signify the material transience of the urban environment and the multiple layers its experience can manifest upon its inhabitants.

At the core of Attie’s works is a set of rather dark ideas – the fragility of beauty, the inevitable loss of youthful innocence, and an uneasy sense of the rapaciousness of the male gaze. “The Girl With The Golden Eyes” exemplifies this in sampling eclectic representations of the female form from Hellenistic slaves to film stills of Brigitte Bardot. “The Girl With The Golden Eyes” ask the spectator to look at the world as he does, as a place rich in poetic and marvelous subjects, but also a place full of contradictions and betrayals.

Chad Attie was born in Los Angeles, California. He attended UCLA and Boston University and was an N.E.A. Presidential Scholar in the Arts. Attie also spent a year studying at Villa Rosa School of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy. Attie is always inclined to incorporate found and innovative material in his work. His works are primarily mixed-media paintings and collages, which incorporate emotionally and sexually charged abstracted figures and landscapes. His smaller-scale works on paper include “The Wonderlust Series” which consist of over 700 personal stories and illustrations, and “Princess Paintings,” which were made inside vintage fairy tale books. Attie has had solo shows at Caro d’Offay in Chicago; Frank Pictures, Carl Berg Projects, and Newspace in Los Angeles; and Wooster Projects in New York. His work has been included in group shows at galleries and museum auctions including Ace Gallery, Beverly Hills; MoCA, Los Angeles; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica; and the Zimmer Museum, Los Angeles. In 2008 Attie was the subject of a short film, “The Experience of Art,” by Michel Comte. He was also commissioned by Mini Cooper to create 6 paintings for their “Creative Use of Space” campaign and an accompanying magazine. Attie’s work will be featured in the upcoming book “Gaga Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art About Lady Gaga.” Chad Attie lives and works in Los Angeles.

Kana Manglapus, of Kana Manglapus Projects, has been an active bi-coastal presence within the art and design communities for many years. Prior to relocating to Los Angeles in 2006, Kana was the director of Milk Gallery in Manhattan. After her departure from Milk Gallery, she opened Bahay Home, an interior design gallery in the flourishing Culver City area. In 2009, she began representing fine artists for gallery exhibitions and private sales in Los Angeles, New York and internationally. In January 2011, Kana opened Kana Manglapus Projects at 1346 Abbott Kinney Blvd. in Venice, CA.