FDP Collection and KDR305 present Getaways by Artist Johhny Defeo. DeFeo's paintings depict escapist tableaus of homes that emerge from a rich mix of fantasy and luxury, with views of sun-drenched domestic interiors in exaggerated environments. As a Plein-air painter, DeFeo begins each painting with a landscape, a place he either loves or longs to spend time within.

DeFeo defines each space with a series of parameters set by his senses, capturing a feeling of who may have lived or worked in these spaces. Each reimagined location is filled with vibrantly rendered furniture, paintings, sculptures, knickknacks, vegetation, and scenery, shaping an overarching portrait of the self that identifies objects and locations as signifiers of human characteristics.

DeFeo's works are a quiet commentary on the real estate industry and land ownership, simultaneously covetable yet absurd through his eyes. In the absence of people, the paintings sit as empty spaces encouraging quiet exploration, engaging a part of the mind that desires to know a place more intimately, or better yet, to tempt viewers to travel there themselves. The works will be exhibited alongside a curated selection of vintage furniture from the FDP Collection.

Johnny DeFeo is a Taos-based artist who earned his MFA from the University of Colorado. His works have been included in exhibitions at prestigious galleries, Chris Worley, Dallas TX; KDR305, Miami, FL, 1969 Gallery, New York, NY, The Valley, Taos,NM; Visions West Contemporary, Denver, Bozeman, Livingston; Van Rensburg Gallery, Milton, AUS; Meyer Riegger, Berlin Germany; and The University of Denver Museum of Art.

FDP presents Ríos de Agua Viva by artist Joel Gaitan. The title, inspired by his religious upbringing, is deeply rooted in Gaitan's beliefs and Nicaraguan family customs. Translated from the biblical verse (Juan 7:38), "Rivers of living waters will flow within believers, showered with the Holy Spirit." Gaitan's work studies the matters of self-identity, sexuality, and ancestral lineage by celebrating life, death, and the afterlife.

Nine of the sculptures in the exhibition represent portals to the afterlife. Each piece is an offering, protected by a storyline within the portal or directly on the vessel. Themes include memories, dreams, transformation, and lust. Playful personalities arise from each vessel, gracing us with an attitude that is both poignant and tender. All are uniquely titled. "Nicoya" is an exaggerated self-portrait that features a nameplate necklace which is the nickname for someone from Nicaragua, and "Tapuda" is a word used to describe the town gossiper.

The pieces are hand built using traditional clay techniques. Gaitan celebrates all the bodies he has always been surrounded with, whether big, small, or lumpy. The red-toned terracotta sculptures are fired with gold luster glazes, magnifying areas of importance.

Gaitan, raised within religion, still carries the music, verses, and lifestyle with his interpretation. From forgotten tongues to erased cultures, Joel keeps a sacred tradition from Nicaragua & Central America alive within a colonized world through his distinctive storytelling. www.joelgaitan.art

FDP presents Bounce (Back) by artist Thai Mainhard. Mainhard explores the human experience of life and death and of grief and adaptation through abstract works with dense blocks of color. Mainhard’s marks navigate the space between chaos and peace, reflecting impressions of the past and future. Shapes and forms are intersecting and merging, speaking to each other from opposite corners across the surface. The tension and the ultimate acceptance of a new self is represented in the intense imagery of the work – what Mainhard describes as "a way forward through the liquidity of the soul."

Originally from Brazil, Mainhard now lives and works in Southern California. Mainhard’s works draw inspiration from Abstract Expressionism, recalling the work of Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, and Joan Mitchell. Mainhard works with a variety of media – including oil paint, oil sticks, spray paint, and charcoal – to create intuitive imagery that externalizes her feelings and personal experiences.

FDP, Pace Gallery, and Mendes Woods DM present Calor Universal. Curated by German Dushá, this exhibition brings together a cross-generational group of artists including José Adário dos Santos, Tarsila do Amaral, Maria Auxiliadora, Lynda Benglis, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Carolina Caycedo, Sonia Gomes, Wifredo Lam, Patricia Leite, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Matta, Beatriz Milhazes, Paulo Monteiro, Louise Nevelson, Rosana Paulino, Solange Pessoa, Richard Pousette-Dart, Heitor dos Prazeres, Marina Perez Simão, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Antoni Tàpies and Rubem Valentim.

Featuring a diverse array of work across different mediums and styles, the show will examine themes of transcendence and transmutation through artistic expression. Including both figurative and abstract works, the exhibition explores the concept of “calor,” understood as sublimation, as a vehicle for transforming material states. Works in the exhibition are united by a calor universal, an energy flux that is explored in the landscapes, bodies, subjectivities, archetypes, and symbols on view. The bespoke design for the presentation will incorporate a number of plinths with shapes that guide visitors through a unique viewing experience.

Opening reception with light refreshments Saturday, July 2, 4-6pm

Install photography by Peter Clough

FDP presents Eternal Circle by artist Lucien Shapiro. Shapiro creates a body of work that ultimately returns to the root, to the center of the circle. He guides us through a journey to discover that things are neither formed nor destroyed, but open for connection and oneness. Lucien Shapiro’s art is rife with found objects, textures, cast forms, manipulations, raw substances, oddities and multiple personalities. Treating forgotten objects and memories as treasure, he creates a kingdom under which new life is born through sculpture. Shapiro’s work, a laborious craft and meditative consumption of time, transforms forgotten objects into nostalgically interesting and beautiful relics that compel viewers to re-evaluate what our everyday possessions represent and mean to us. Lucien Shapiro invites us to slow down, to not only gain appreciation for the artifacts that tell a story about who we are in this day and age, but to find inspiration in the value of time and craft. Says Shapiro, “The most important themes I draw upon in my art practice are transformation, repetition, meditation, and growth. In a world of rapid climate change, by utilizing materials most would discard, I create a raw conversation between treasure and trash.”

Lucien Shapiro (b. 1979) is a contemporary visual artist. Lucien has shown with MAIA Contemporary in Mexico City, Mexico as well as Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco, CA. Residences include Capri Marfa in Marfa, TX and Arvia in Los Angeles, CA. www.LucienShapiro.com

Exhibition Essay

The Living Room is pleased to present Crystallography, a collection of crystals specially curated by Elan Gentry.
Birthed from a lemurian vortex in Arkansas, this exhibition is a transmission from the Crystals themselves. Through Living Ceremony, Elan anoints groups into the multidimensional fabric of Holographic inner space, rehydrating temple codes of the Sacred into the fractals of everyday life.

Elan Gentry serves as a holographic artist who activates social permaculture with an ear tuned to the plant and mineral voices. The essence of her work embodies the protection of all that is Sacred, all that is magical, all that is living within and outside of us. She is also an advisor to the Calder Foundation and Kaiaulu, weaving the feminine spiral through land acknowledgment, ethnobotanical education, and social ceremony.

FDP and Ballroom Marfa are pleased to exhibit seven new pieces by Elaine Stocki that explore abstraction through a remarkable process that blend abstract expressionism, color field and assemblage.

Exploring her highly individualized relationship to materials, Stocki uses the oval as a basis to create paintings that explore the emotional and spiritual resonance of medium and form. In The Living Room setting, the shape simultaneously conjures up the domestic while rebuffing it with a unique relationship to process that operates on a frequency in opposition to the comfortable and knowable.

In the central grouping of the series (Oil Patch and Hornet’s Nest), stitched linen radiates from a central point; the workmanship of the piece heightened by the application of oil in subtle variations of colour. Stocki exceeds the space allotted for where the painting should occur, questioning the assurance of the oil surface with remnants of watercolour paintings that create a puffer halo surrounding the oval. The pieces celebrate the tradition of oil painting and defy it with a ring of hand stitched scraps.

A portion of the sales from Puffer Halo will directly support the programming of Ballroom Marfa, the non-profit arts space in Marfa, Texas.

FDP presents Isabel Rower’s first solo exhibition, A Particular Kind of Heaven. Working primarily with clay, Rower utilizes the forms of somewhat everyday objects to explore the transformative properties of material and the elements of nature. “There is a secrecy to working with clay. One feels connected to periods of ancient human activity, which serve as primary source records of cultural meaning and mysticism. The enigma is present, “ says Rower. “In processes of consecration, religious objects are transformed from the ordinary to the sacred. The object becomes linked, permanently or temporarily, with an immaterial sacredness or divinity. Yet it is not only religious objects which have this connection to the ethereal.”

A Particular Kind of Heaven explores transforming the functional into something simultaneously symbolic and sacred; into something beyond itself; investigating the gaps between the ethereal and real in forms intended for functional use. Ordinary objects have alterity, enigmatic presence. They may seem familiar to us, but they are slightly turned away. Although Rower’s objects are proportioned for use, it is through the process of transformation, of firing, and appreciation of its resulting form, that Rower bears witness to this fascinating state of existence.

The exhibition will also feature a selection of available furniture curated by FDP.

FDP presents Miranda Fengyuan Zhang’s solo exhibition, Shadows Spanning Two Nights. Through the weaving of recycled threads, Miranda Fengyuan Zhang reconciles her visceral experiences into an interplay of evocative shapes and colors. Zhang’s works unfold as multi-layered landscapes that transcend scales and painterly narratives. One can simultaneously read the movement of warp and weft, the crisscrossing patterns, and the overall figural compositions. In the current age of digital culture where the perception of the physical environment is constantly pixelated, Zhang’s works explore another form of registration through the resolution afforded by the very materiality and the techniques intrinsic to weaving. The pile of threads as such creates a level of autonomy that arouses manifold ripply sentiments. Zhang entwines an encounter between found materials and her multifaceted sensations. Her works span between personal recollections and shared sensitivities.The exhibition will also feature select furniture by Movels Bergamo, Pierre Guariche, Rino Levi, Sergio Rodrigues, Joaquim Tenreiro, and Demaian Quincke in collaboration with Mendes Wood DM.

FDP presents selected ceramic sculptures from Manson’s studio north of New York City. As a master of clay, Manson captures the vulnerabilities of nature that surround us. Manson’s sculptures express the relationship between beauty and decay; flowers lyrically hanging from a bag, a crimson poppy crumbling at the moment before dropping petals, expiring bouquets that are gleaming, a freshly skinned cowhide expressing the textural movement of hair, and leaves moving through water. These sculptures create a still life narrative that evokes the tactile mystery of life and death.