Apr 07 2016
Conversation | Alex Israel with Simon Castets
Thurs | 7pm
On the occasion of FADE IN, please join us for a conversation between Alex Israel and SI Director Simon Castets, in which they will discuss the artist’s forthcoming SPF-18, a feature-length teen coming-of-age movie, set amidst the glowing sun and beach culture of Malibu.
Alex Israel lives and works in Los Angeles, where he was born in 1982. Deeply entwined with his hometown, his work explores popular media, Hollywood, and the cult of celebrity, while positing LA as central to an understanding of American culture and the American dream. He received a BA from Yale University where he studied sculpture, and an MFA from the USC Roski School of Fine Arts. Notably, Israel has transcribed his interest in the culture of entertainment into a web series – As It LAys – in which he conducts interviews with recognized Los Angeles icons. For the current exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis, Israel has collaborated with the celebrated author to create text paintings—fragmented narrative combined with lush stock imagery—that mine their native landscape. At the center of it all is Israel’s logo-like Self-Portrait, in profile and wearing Freeway sunglasses of his own design, which brands his work across an ever-expanding variety of media. Israel’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Le Consortium, Dijon; The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; and currently, The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. It is included in numerous museum collections worldwide including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Image: Noah Centineo and Carson Meyer on the set of SPF-18, Malibu. Photo by Rachel Chandler.