Sandow Birk: The Leading Causes of Death in America
Exhibition Dates: March 4- April 15, 2006
 
Reception for the Artist: Saturday, March 4, 2006, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Discussion: Walk through with the artist on Saturday April 1, 2006, 2:00 -3:00 PM
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday: 10:00am - 5:30pm, Saturday: 11:00am - 5:30pm
Public Contact: 310-657-9843
 
Koplin Del Rio Gallery is pleased to announce its sixth solo exhibition of new work by
Los Angeles artist, Sandow Birk.
 
Following on the heels of his monumental adaptation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” into artwork, books, and film, Birk’s latest project began as a commission from the San Diego Museum of Art’s “Contemporary Links” program. Every year an artist is invited to peruse the museum’s back rooms and create new works based on specific pieces from the permanent collections. Birk was drawn to the works of American printer and painter George Bellows, whose works reflected daily life and social commentary on New York in the early 20th Century.
 
Using the collection of Bellows prints in the museum, Birk has created a suite of eleven copperplate etchings entitled “The Leading Causes of Death in America”. Completed in collaboration with master printer Paul Mullowney at the Hui No’eau Visual Arts Center in Maui in 2005, each print depicts one of the ten leading causes of death in various ways. The prints allude to the actual moment of death itself or, more often, depict seemingly innocuous events that lead to an American’s demise later in life. The series is presented in a finely boxed portfolio.
 
Birk’s latest paintings and drawings continue the preoccupation with death in America by looking at some of the other causes of ill health. Consumption of food and other products are depicted in still life paintings that expand out of the Dutch still life traditions. The Dutch paintings often depicted foods as symbols of wealth and privilege, as well as discussing moral underpinnings of decadence and the fleeting aspects of pleasure and life itself. Birk’s paintings however, depict foods as overabundant and threatening out of sheer quantity.
 
In his masterfully reminiscent still life entitled the “Average American”, Birk demonstrates the excesses and inadequacies of the average American by displaying statistically how many donuts they’ve devoured in a towering heap, juxtaposed with the single book they’ve managed to get through in a year’s time. In his large scale and elaborate drawings on paper, seemingly mundane scenes of daily life in Los Angeles similarly contain an ominous undertone that belies their everyday scenes.
 
Sandow Birk received his BFA from Otis Art Institute in 1988.  He has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a
 J. Paul Getty Fellowship, two NEA grants, and the COLA fellowship in Visual Art.  He has had several one-man museums shows at such institutions as the San Jose Museum of Art, the Laguna Art Museum, the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, and the San Diego Museum of Art.
 
 For further information or photos, please contact Ronald De Angelis at (310) 657-9843.