Normally, I wouldn’t post a PR, but Mad King and Julia Sanders are two artists I’ve grown to love over the years—they’re worth checking out and, if you have bare walls, collecting and supporting. Check it:
Here’s the press release:
ORGANIZATION: SPACE GALLERY
EXHIBITION: Julia Sanders and Mad King at Space Gallery
ARTISTS: Julia Sanders and Mad King
DATES: April 6th to April 13th
RECEPTION: April 9th
HOURS: 7pm til late
LOCATION: Space Gallery
ADDRESS: 1141 Polk Street
THIS EVENT IS FREE
SPACE GALLERY is announces a very special showcase of two of Colorado’s most exciting emerging visual talents. The work of Julia sanders both captures and emotes a lyrical magical realism in classically inspired oil portraiture. Mad King’s describes his work as, “technically driven process heavy urban contemporary with a strong design influence on wood panels” and that particular mouthful really has to be seen to appreciate. The best words to describe the work of these two artist would be stunning, unique, with a subtle beauty that is easily accessible.
For their opening reception they will be joined by Time For Trees and Papyrus, provide delectable and eminently danceable minimal techno and IDM that the Boulder underground music scene is well known for. The opening reception goes from 7pm til late into the evening at 1141 Polk Street, San Francisco, CA. This event will be free and open to the public over the age of 21. For more information please contact Julia Sanders, who will be curating the event, at 303.817.3699
The opening reception promises to be both memorable, exceptional and a rare opportunity to see some very exceptional young artist while they are still up and coming.
ARTIST BIOS
JULIA SANDERS
With technical skills beyond her years, Denver based artist Julia Sanders has taken to the permanence of the recently rehabilitated old masters as a historical fount of sensibilities from which to fix her recent body of portraiture. With her innate talent for chiaroscuro, Sanders illuminates dreamlike scenes of lucid characters that certainly qualm the rampant neophilia among art-seekers. Aesthetic, competent, and doughty, her figures cut a weighty presence against often murky and imprecise stages. Self-proclaimed “artist-vigilante,” Sanders puts her sights on rekindling the vital intimacy in the field of representational portraiture, a style she fears may some day be referred to as a dead art form. At the young age of twenty-three, Sanders has loaded her palette with several exhibitions in New York, Denver, and New Orleans, and is currently arranging tours along the west coast and Europe this upcoming year.
You can contact her at 303.817.3699 or visit www.artcollision.org
MAD KING
Mad king (A.K.A. Jake Johanson) currently resides in Boulder, Colorado. Jake is a self taught artist, which has given him a unique perspective on both composition and technique. His work has been seen gracing album covers, party flyers and skateboards, placing Mad King’s work in the current social zeitgeist. His work has also adorned the walls of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Arts and the Rohsska Museum in Gothenburg. Some of the celebrities who own his original work include; Lorin Bassnectar, Tipper, Proem, Matmos, Miskate, Frivolous, {a}Pendics Shuffle, Stephen Beaupre, The Brandon Brown, Joshua Twentythree, Attentat, Jantsen, and Eric Mcintyre.
When he isn’t making art some of his hobbies include: production and promotion of music events, installation work for parties, and furniture design.
You can contact him at 303.999.1942 or visit www.madkingproductions.com
TIME FOR TREES
Time for Trees (A.K.A. josh23, Les Freres Courvoisier) likes to stay busy. Having lived the last eleven years of his life steeped in electronic music culture, these days he finds himself running record labels (Rope Swing Cities, Dope Recordings), producing music (RSC, Dope, Archipel), events and festivals (Communikey). A set by Time for Trees is an emotional and ever changing experience. With a rotating cast of techno, house, disco and electro stars, Time for Trees always builds a unique and enjoyable sound environment from the bangin’ warehouse jam, to the quiet, sophisticated wine bar.
You can contact him at 303.641.5695 or visit www.ropeswingcities.com
PAPYRUS
Papyrus (A.K.A. Rick Boykin) is a Boulder, Colorado DJ and software engineer. A core member of Communikey (Colorado’s preeminent electronic music production crew) he has opened for (a)pendics shuffle, Lorin Bassnectar, Proem, and Geoff White among many other internationally reknowned artist.
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More on Mad King:
About the art:
It’s hard to describe the works of Mad King without resorting to adjectives that are either paradoxical or dualistic, when in actuality his paintings are meant to be contemplative exercises of form, balance and color. His work is often described as organic and technical while capturing a sense of a moment out of time. There is a recurrent theme in his visual language dealing with the creation of patterns and how they break, evolve, or become distorted. His relationship to the creation of his art is that of a working meditation where he is transcending the more limiting patterns of his own life by reshaping the abstract representations of those patterns in his compositions. Mad King composes nuanced and subtle images that reveal hidden depths not visible to a cursory examination, in an attempt to capture and cast shadows and reflection of the inner workings of his heart and mind. His approach to making art has always been about the inseparable nature of being and doing; that by taking disparate elements and producing balance between them that he is creating the same effects in his own life.
The influences behind his work are as diverse and broad as the entire history of culture and art, where Moorish mosaics and seventeenth century Chinese lattice designs have the same impact on his visual language as commercial illustration, street art and contemporary graphic design. It is the distillation of these influences that make his work refreshingly new, while intimating a timeless familiarity.
The production of his work is technically driven and process oriented. Part of his compulsion to create is the life time process of gaining new understanding of composition, color and technique. There is an intellectual engagement to his work that is visible in every piece that Mad King does and that is clearly evolving within his oeuvre. There is no aspect of the construction of his work that he doesn’t intimately take part in. From picking out the perfect wood veneers to constructing and finishing the panels that he paints on
The work itself is meant to be viewed in natural light and due to the techniques he employs his paintings reveal subtle nuances when taken in multiple times over the course of the day. This gives his paintings a calm and subtle dynamism that his collectors have come to appreciate, often discovering new facets to their paintings months after purchasing them. Due to his extensive use of metallic paints and multiple sheens of poly-acrylic, the true depth of Mad King’s work can only be appreciated in person.
Philosophy:
“There is a quality to the act of creation that is the most transcendent experience that man is capable of. It is the best high I’ve ever known, my greatest joy, an ongoing and unspoken challenge always waiting for me.”
“Only within the last few years have I become fully cognizant that there is no separation between being and doing. That simple realization has become the driving force in how I live my life, and defines the relationship I have to what I create. I’ve found that what we create are both aspects of what we are and also what we are becoming. Looking back over all the work I’ve done through different media and means I’ve realized that I created work to exorcise demons, to prove that I was still capable of beauty, to qualify my humanity, to remind me why I kept living, and sometimes just to give me some respite from depression.”
“I try to create subtle and beautiful things, that somehow through making them I’m further defining and giving rise to those aspects in myself”
“Even though the work I do is very much technically driven my approach to painting is that of a working meditation of the chop wood, sweep floors, and haul water variety. Somewhere contained within that process there are epiphanies and insights that are revealed about self, art, and the tenuous yet inner connected nature of reality.”
“There is something that I tell all of my collectors in the deepest of sincerity and that is ‘owning original work will change your life’, the making of it has changed mine… everyday.”
Biography:
Mad king (A.K.A. Jake Johanson) currently resides in Boulder, Colorado. He was raised as one of five children in a cultured blue collar family in rural Colorado. He grew up listening to jazz and opera, and reading classical literature. From a young age he knew that his future lied in a path devoted to the arts. Over the years that compulsion has lead him down a few different paths while working with and developing his understanding of different mediums. His father, a fine woodworker by trade helped to foster a sense of being able to design, conquer, and construct any given project.
The name Mad King is derived from the alter ego of the protagonist from his first multi-media novel finished when he was seventeen. It was at this time that he began signing his work as Mad King.
Jake is a self taught artist, which has given him a unique perspective on both composition and technique. His work has been seen gracing album covers, party flyers and skateboards, placing Mad King’s work in the current social zeitgeist. His work has also adorned the walls of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Arts and the Rohsska Museum in Gothenburg. Some of the celebrities who own his original work include; Lorin Bassnectar, Tipper, Proem, Matmos, Miskate, Frivolous, {a}Pendics Shuffle, Edit, Stephen Beaupre, The Brandon Brown, Joshua Twentythree, Attentat, Jantsen, and Eric Mcintyre.
Though the influences to his work are diverse, his primary inspirations are his friends, community and especially music.
When he isn’t making art some of his hobbies include: production and promotion of music events, installation work for parties, and furniture design.
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