…tenderness of wolves… opens March 16, 2021 at TAG Gallery, 5458 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036. TAG is open 11am-5pm, Tue-Sat
To coin a phrase, the work of Edward Lightner could be filed under the headline “When Technological Nihilism Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade”. The artist utilizes the technical aesthetics of nuclear weapons testing to make seductively lush yet rigorous abstract painting.
Lightner came of age in the generation born under the omnipresent threat of the mushroom cloud. It is difficult to understate how ubiquitous the idea of nuclear annihilation was in the American psyche during the first thirty years of Lightner’s life.
He is well established for making bright, almost cheery geometric abstraction based on centered symmetrical compositions that have a conceptual foundation in critiquing the power of Mutually Assured Destruction. By basing the image in his pictures on the patterns of underground bomb blasts, the natural logic of the composition resolved itself. This granted Lightner the freedom to emphasize color as a creative liberation independent of the centrifugal pattern.
The subtext to adding luscious color to such a stark, nihilistic thing as a bomb blast is the ultimate in artistic liberty. What an artist can make their own is in some small way, something the artist controls. To have grown up when the atom bomb was both the symbol of America’s might and the ultimate symbol of death is to understand that need for a smidgen of control over the dualism of this symbology.
Lightner has used these underground test patterns as the point of departure in his art for the past ten years; before that he used documentation of atmospheric atomic bomb pattern imagery for about five years. But stretching back to the 1980s, the A‐Bomb and illustrations of its impact have been present in much of his work.
After all these years of creating unique pictures based on a series of these repetitious patterns, Lightner’s most recent work sees a more personal meditation on the theme. While the new work maintains the consistency and rigor of his oeuvre, there are collage elements that include slices of data reflecting the mundane aspects of his personal life. The radical break here is in presenting singular works as diptychs; a traditional presentation of one of his painted test patterns is accompanied by a personal collaged work mirroring that nuclear image.
Considering the thoroughness with which Lightner works on a theme, there could be years ahead with this series. There is fertile ground in the layered meanings that touch on the nuance of collage as self‐portraiture and the idea of existing as an individual amidst the ever‐present threat of nuclear annihilation—a late‐twentieth century fear that is suddenly, sadly again, not so distant.
Every picture ever made posits a viewer‐to‐artwork relationship that reflects the plight of the painting’s subject and the viewer’s empathy for it. Lightner has painted engaging pictures of the forces bent on destroying the very viewer who enjoys these pieces. With the images in the second panels of these diptychs, Lightner assures the viewer that when it comes to the calamity of our potential mass destruction, we are all in this together.
This work, therefore, is a vital signal of making connections with what it means to be human. It is also great abstract painting with the innovative formal inclusion of poignant collaged biographical reminders of the artist. Edward Lightner is an artist whose work alerts us all to care about our continued existence.
—Mat Gleason
About the Artist: Ed was born in the San Joaquin Valley of California in 1960. It is here that Edward became enthralled with colors and lines, shapes and form. He was fascinated by how the world is represented to other people through the eyes of other people. Naturally, against the best counseling of his mother, Edward chose to pursue a life in the world of contemporary art. Along with being an artist, Edward co-owned a gallery in Los Angeles for ten years, and is now serving on the Board of Governors at Otis College of Art and Design, also in Los Angeles. He has shown from Los Angeles to New York along with exhibitions in Australia, Asia and Europe.
About the Gallery: TAG is a fine art gallery located on Museum Row in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1993, the gallery represents award-winning contemporary Southern California artists working in all mediums and styles.