Weho, Los Angeles
Jake Cruzen
Do You Believe in Blue Gold
Thibault & SunderThibault & Sunder is pleased to present Do You Believe in Blue Gold, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist, Jake Cruzen. Jake Cruzen first began exhibiting his paintings upon moving to New York City in 2011, after teaching art theory and architecture for three years at Washington University. While living in New York, Cruzen became associated with an emerging generation of subversive young artists, many of whom were involved in the close-knit scene surrounding renowned artist-run space Bed Stuy Love Affair. Founded by Jared Madere, Bed Stuy Love Affair began as a domestic exhibition space located in Brooklyn, NY, and served as a platform for solo exhibitions for an impressive selection of artists, such as Jake Cruzen, Darja Bajagić, Sam Anderson, Jessi Reaves, Ben Schumacher, Valerie Keane, and others. After a brief intermission, Bed Stuy Love Affair re-emerged as a mobile gallery housed in a thirty-foot RV, the exterior of which Cruzen painted a mural on as part of solo project at the Whitney Museum of Art in 2015. In 2014 Cruzen moved to Los Angeles to attend the Mountain School of Arts, where he now lives and works. Formally, Cruzen uses Asger Jorn and Robert Ryman as starting points, then unites them with Fredric Jameson and other less-expected and diverse inspirations. Dwight Yoakam, David Mitchell, Glo Gang’s Lil Reese, the Wachowski Sisters, and entrepreneurial folk craft are just some of Cruzen’s populist aesthetic influences, all of which create signature styles that focus on loaded reinvention. Rife with invading concepts and imagery, Cruzen’s practice is free and evolving; coherent in its thoughtfulness, suggestive in its sentimentality, and consistent in its impact. As Artforum’s Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal states, “[Cruzen’s] works make a compelling appeal for an unironic turn toward so-called Sunday painting... his works may aim for the aesthetics of Hollywood Boulevard rather than the austerity of the gallery, but they do it with an earnest, awkward grace.” The paintings included in Do You Believe in Blue Gold are an array of preternatural figures and abstractions. Select paintings follow mandala-like patterns that warp between western decoration and eastern adornment; other paintings deploy hybrid faces reinterpreted across the canvas like hallucinatory fractals; while others offer subtle meditative strokes of abstract color and iridescence. Rodeo psychedelia meets Sunlife Organics’ Fountain of Youth. The artist’s series of solar panel paintings address the lifecycle of good intentions, while allowing the panel’s industrially designed beauty to live on as a distinctive support and weathered surface. The solar panel’s glass forces the various paints, including nail polish, to show starkly against their dark technological background, while the paintings on canvas are as ornate as they are scabrous. Jake Cruzen (b. 1979, St. Louis, MO) earned an M.F.A. from Washington University, St. Louis, MO, and a B.A. in Sociology from Southeast Missouri State University. Selected solo exhibitions include Prince Cherrie w/ Jared Madere, White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO; Skycity, Bed-Stuy Love Affair @ The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Keep It Love, Madam X, New York, NY; and Jake Cruzen, Young Art, Los Angeles, CA. Selected group exhibitions include Water From The Nile, Lodos Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico; Seau Banco Carbon, Bed-Stuy Love Affair @ Tomorrow Gallery, New York, NY; Kanacoka, Bed Stuy Love Affair, Brooklyn, NY; Doing and Undergoing, Columbia University, New York, NY; and Fast Times 2x & 3x, White Flag Projects, Saint Louis, MO.