Lois Lambert Gallery presents Dave Quick’s Return from the burn and other work.

Dave Quick’s Return from the Burn and Other Work includes Quick’s 2024 wall-mounted, kinetic works from his Santa Monica studio. Rotisserie of Despair takes a shot at global warming with a toasty brown Earth rotating on a spit, over an open flame -- evoking the image of Earth as a hot air balloon, drifting through space. I can row a boat, Canoe? continues Quick’s lifetime fascination with the kinetics of extravaganza (he considers Busby Berkeley a predecessor) with four 24” green canoes rhythmically swaying to and fro. Three of Quick’s signature “white wall” museum satires are also showing; Yosemite museum, lingerie museum: ascension of Eva Gardner’s pantaloons, and Loo Louvre. A salute to the legacy of Marcel Duchamp, Pig descending a staircase, completes the show.

After decades of building, displaying and even performing kinetic art, Dave Quick joined Burning Man ’22 & ’23 with his large scale kinetic/assemblage “backpacks” and Siren, which lords above the wearer with a female torso mannequin, supporting wooden crutches extending left and right with twelve dangling poles that light up fire-red, a visual “phoenix.” Cymbal is hyper-kinetic with a male torso/head loudly crashing into a brass cymbal, the artist’s attempt to ridicule the frenetic, crazy, at times almost violent environment that is Burning Man.

Dave Quick, an alumnus of UCLA and a Santa Monica resident of over three decades, has been building and showing kinetic art since the 1970’s. The artist has participated in scores of exhibitions. Credits include: artist-in-residence Yosemite Renaissance (twice); artist in residence Kohler Museum; City of Santa Monica commission (along with fellow artist Elena Siff) for the inaugural GLOW Festival; President of the Board of Directors of the Museum of Neon Art (MONA); co-authored the book Motion Motion Kinetic Art with kinetic artist Jim Jenkins; Reporter-at-Large Santa Monica Mirror (including art reviews); and, Quick’s 2012 Santa Monica solo show, All Systems Go was part of the Getty’s Pacific standard time: art in L.A. 1945-1980.