On April 1st, new international project space Schur-Narula will be opening its inaugural exhibition, titled Better Luck Next Time. Featuring the works of two American painters, Luther Kroman and George Leo Sanders, the exhibition will use the aesthetics of athletic spaces to explore notions of human leisure, recreation, and productivity, as well as the feelings of nostalgia that these spaces evoke.
Luther Kroman – “Erased” (2013), Oil on Canvas; courtesy of Schur-Narula
Luther Kroman, an artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri, tends to focus on ideas of success and failure in his artwork. He uses a minimalistic approach to painting, reducing familiar subjects and places to the colors and textures that have come to characterize them in our memories. His subject matter is distinctly high school, from dusty baseball diamonds and gymnastics mats to chalkboards and tan lines; Kroman’s paintings take us on a very tongue-in-cheek walk down memory lane.
George Leo Sanders – “West 4th Street Courts” (2014), Acrylic and celluclay on canvas; courtesy of Schur-Narula
George Leo Sanders is a Santa Barbara-based artist who inverts the difference between wasted time and ‘time well spent’. Using bold colors and similarly reduced shapes, he zeroes in on the textures of conventional spaces of recreation, like clay tennis courts and swimming pools, giving them a humorous edge.
Both artists amplify the sentimentality of their works with the simultaneous absence and presence of human subjects. There are no people depicted in the paintings, but rather signs and markings of human activity. Through manipulation of color and texture, the paintings become “literal and figurative fields of human activity”. Unfinished games, dirtied fields, tanned skin; Better Luck Next Time is the high school yearbook of art exhibitions.
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Additional Information
SCHUR-NARULA
“Better Luck Next Time” – LUTHER KROMAN and GEORGE LEO SANDERS
Exhibition: Apr. 1 – 26, 2015
Opening Reception: Wednesday, Apr. 1; 6-9pm
Berthelsdorferstr. 8 at Oh Pamela (click here for map)
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Blog entry by Nora Kovacs in Berlin; Thursday, Mar. 26, 2015.
