Fabien Castanier Gallery is excited to announce our next exhibition in Los Angeles, Mark Making, featuring work from Aaron De La Cruz, Alex Kizu (aka Defer), and Mark Dean Veca. Each of these artists present work that is built on a foundation of mark-making, recalling a variety of styles, including abstraction, design, and graffiti. The artists are most familiar with creating large-scale installations, pieces that envelope the viewer in realms of meticulously detailed line-work and hypnotizing compositions. The exhibition will include paintings, sculpture and installation.

Aaron De La Cruz presents paintings and sculpture that incorporate patterns and motifs that at their core are very simple, but when gathered together create complex, labyrinthine compositions. His pieces, with bold lines and distinctive use of color, straddle between the practice of painting and design. He reduces his expression into its most minimal form, keeping in mind the surface that he paints on as his patterns seem to flow over and within the walls and canvas. The artist’s marks are more often than not unplanned and instinctual, work that he hopes the viewer will infuse with their own narrative. By combining a minimalist aesthetic and often purposefully minimal materials, he seeks to create affecting work with maximum impact.

Alex Kizu’s work stems from his culture and connection to graffiti and the urban landscape, representing a profound artistic language which distorts the lines between street art and fine art. Kizu, aka Defer, was one of the pioneer members of the first generation of Los Angeles graffiti writers, and he has distilled the hand-style developed since his youth into abstract pieces that incorporate not only typographic but also cultural motifs, and complex patterning. Kizu’s paintings are highly detailed examinations of line and color – frenetic structures that flow organically with multi-layered abstractions creating a borderless visual depth and complexity.

Mark Dean Veca’s newest work evolved out of the textures and patterns found in his more representational compositions. By distilling the line-work aesthetic he has used in part, Veca’s paintings and installation focus upon the mark-making which has grown organically from his oeuvre. The visual motifs in these “Dither” paintings are improvisational – spontaneous and abstracted tessellations that exist un-tethered to any particular orientation. By observing his paintings and stepping into his installation, the viewer is engulfed within an optical meditation. While purely abstract, his forms express a refined organic geometry and a sense of depth and illusion contained within a balanced yet tumultuous array.