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The poet and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said,“Man cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.”Artists understand this concept better than most, often reconstituting elements of the past with the present in an attempt to translate human experience and forge a more cohesive relationship with the future. This synthesis is often complicated and sometimes painful, but necessary as a means of investigation wherein The Road Ahead becomes an endlessly shifting territory, a conflation of both history and time where the reality of any experience is inauthentic. As the artist Richard Tuttle once explained,“In our culture, imitation-based experience dominates reality-based experience. I find this an awful thing. But there are artists who know from the bottom of their souls that art is about the experience of reality. The reason we have art is because you can’t get areal experience from the world.”Nietzsche viewed the past as an inescapable and unbreakable chain, but each link on that life chain is a delineation of a particular event or idea, and the job of any artist worth their salt is to forge salient connections between these ideas and experiences, expanding the language by which we describe our lives to ourselves and to each other. The Road Ahead, a group show including DerrickAdams, Sebastian Black, Noah Davis, Michael Dopp, Egan Frantz, Eberhard Havekost, Israel Lund, Marisa Mandler, Barry McGee, John Monn, Betye Saar, Ed Templeton, Kehinde Wiley and Lisa Yuskavage, attempts to broaden and in some cases intensify those connections between the past and the present, in creation of the future --where we have come from and where we are headed culturally. Ultimately, the artist reflects both time and space in its continuum as Marcel Duchamp so aptly put it wherein “the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

Egan Frantz

Egan Frantz
Baguette, 2012
Bread and epoxy resin
22 x 4 x 2 in

Ed Templeton

Ed Templeton
Deanna #1, 2009
Silver gelatin print from an analog 665 Polaroid negative, spray paint, ink
58 x 48 in

Israel Lund

Israel Lund
Untitled, 2012
Acrylic on raw canvas
11 x 8.5 in

Betye Saar

Betye Saar
Dreams, Dreams, Come Play Your Dreams, 1981
Hankie collage with assemblage
10 x 10.5 in

Michael Dopp

Michael Dopp
Untitled, 2012
Acrylic and cel-vinyl on canvas
23 x 26 in

Michael Dopp

Michael Dopp
Untitled, 2011
Acrylic on canvas
14 x 17 in

Michael Dopp

Michael Dopp
Untitled, 2011
Acrylic on canvas
20 x 24 in

Derrick Adams

Derrick Adams
Head #13 (Floor Plan), 2012
Mixed media collage
36 x 36 in

Sebastian Black

Sebastian Black
Period piece (LLLL), 2011
Enamel on engraved dibond
10 x 6 in

Eberhard Havekost

Eberhard Havekost
Goin' Off, B10, 2010
Oil on linen
47.25 x 31.5 in

Sebastian Black

Sebastian Black
Study for Portrait of John Lennon after Self Portrait by John Lennon, 2012
Oil on canvas
20 x 18 in

Israel Lund

Israel Lund
Untitled, 2012
Acrylic on raw canvas
11 x 8.5 in

Israel Lund

Israel Lund
Untitled, 2012
Acrylic on raw canvas
11 x 8.5 in

John Monn

John Monn
RFLCT, 2012
Melted army men and epoxy resin on canvas with metal coating
35 x 32 in

Betye Saar

Betye Saar
Mudra, 1980
Hankie collage with assemblage
13.75 x 13.75 in

Betye Saar

Betye Saar
He Who Guards the Night, 1979
Hankie collage with assemblage
13 x 13.25 in

Egan Frantz

Egan Frantz
Baguette, 2012
Bread and epoxy resin
22 x 2 x 2 in

Israel Lund

Israel Lund
Untitled, 2012
Acrylic on raw canvas
11 x 8.5 in

Israel Lund

Israel Lund
Untitled, 2012
Acrylic on raw canvas
11 x 8.5 in

Israel Lund

Israel Lund
Untitled, 2012
Acrylic on raw canvas
11 x 8.5 in

Marisa Mandler

Marisa Mandler
Untitled (Imperfect Machine), 2012
Bleach compounds on paper
23.25 x 23.75 in

Noah Davis

Noah Davis
Phantom Painting, 2012
Oil on canvas
72 x 48 in

Egan Frantz

Egan Frantz
Baguette, 2012
Bread and epoxy resin
18 x 2 x 3 in

Marisa Mandler

Marisa Mandler 
Level Drawing 1, 2012
Bleach compounds on paper
95 x 36 in

Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley
Houdon Paul-Louis, 2010/2011
Bronze with polished stone base
34 x 26 x 19 in

John Monn

John Monn
PXLT, 2012
Airsoft ammunition and epoxy resin on canvas with metal coating
20 x 20 in

Barry McGee

Barry McGee
Untitled (Pimple), 2008-2012
Mixed media
34.375 x 37.25 in