Past Exhibition

Chuck Agro

everyone

October 29 – December 4, 2011
Opening Reception: Sat., October 29, 5 – 7 p.m.

IMAGES

CB1 Gallery is proud to present everyone by Chuck Agro. In Agro’s first solo gallery exhibition in Los Angeles in more than 6 years, he returns with a new twist on his iconic paintings of the working class. Writing has always been an important part of Chuck Agro’s work and has helped him define and bring to life the characters of his past works. Having studied and painted people for over 20 years his new work again explores their state, their emotion, their being.

For Agro, words work as a tool used to clarify and define his painting. In previous work, he would write a verse or stories about the individual or individuals and use this as the structure for a painting. “Everyone” started as a way for the artist to clarify an idea of the group and the individuals in the group; as a way to define the individuals need to display and then disguise emotion and opinion; and as a way to explore how the line between display and disguise blurs for each of us. After writing everyone he realized that everyone didn’t need an image to define it. What it needed was to fill a space and to make that space a poem the reader could inhabit, walking between the cadences and feeling the slurring, the mumbling, the enunciation and the volume of the words and the slipperiness of people’s lives.

everyone will be on view from Saturday, October 29 through Sunday, December 4, 2011. An opening reception for the artist will take place on Saturday, October 29, 2011, 5 – 7 p.m.

everyone

everyone is spirit / everyone is alone / everyone wonders why / everyone protects what they love / everyone wants to be free / everyone needs to relax

everyone dreams / everyone makes mistakes / everyone cries alone / everyone is beautiful sometimes / everyone wants to be different / everyone wants to be found

everyone has a story that they can never tell / everyone wants an answer / everyone knows the truth / everyone has a secret / everyone is damaged / everyone is a target

everyone wants more / everyone is hungry / everyone owes someone / everyone loves a happy ending / everyone wants it to stop / everyone doesn’t want it to end.

Chuck Agro was born in Buffalo, New York and graduated from Buffalo State College with a BFA in painting in 1987. He received his MFA in painting from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1989. Agro has been included in over fifty group shows and eleven solo exhibitions at galleries such as White Columns NY, Edward Thorp Gallery NY, Christopher Grimes Gallery, LA, and the Earl McGrath Gallery NY and LA. His paintings are included in the collections of the Castellani Art Museum, Lewiston, New York, the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, and The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, Florida.