Awkward x 2 at The Green Building Gallery

May 2nd – July 27th, 2012
Opening Reception: Wednesday, May 2nd, 5-9p
Gallery Hours: Monday through Thursday 9a-5p Friday 9a-10p, Saturday 10a-10p

Awkward x 2 is the collaborative team of Los Angeles based artists Rebecca Norton and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe. Individually, Norton and Gilbert-Rolfe's work share a similar sensibility in style and context, so they decided to begin their Awkward x 2 alliance during the summer of 2010. The resulting outcome of their joint efforts has created both a stunningly beautiful and a dynamic body of work.

The Awkward rule is that the painting isn’t finished until neither artist is sure of who did what. They start their paintings by combining two very different kinds of grid systems, and proceed to generate unpredictable and complex surfaces, combining color and space to evoke energy and movement operating according to a logic which neither painter could have generated alone.

Awkward x 2 uses science and technology as a starting point for much of the work. Paintings range from references of the unimaginable speed at which light particles leave a black hole to technological connections of artists through history who have attempted to replicate the brightest whites known during their lives (i.e. Manet replicating electric light, Mondrian recreating the light from movie projectors, and for Awkward the light of the computer screen).

More than the cultural, art historical or the scientific, however, Awkward x 2 is about sensation. Immediate and involuntary, the paintings filled with movement and color demand that viewers spend extended time with them to allow the works to fully unfold their character.