BRET SLATER

Marty Walker Gallery presents new, luxuriously layered
acrylic paintings by Bret Slater. Mastering a balance of
simplicity and material, Slater bridges color-field abstract
painting with contemporary plasticity of surface, intelligently
piling hues like icing on a cake. Intentionally ambiguous, the
unassuming canvases recall Richard Tuttle and Piet Mondrian
with a cartoonish twist that are, according to Glasstire’s
outlook for this spring’s exhibitions, “deliciously palatable …
with a jolt of punkish energy.”
Bret Slater’s first solo gallery exhibition in Chicago received rave
reviews and was chosen by Modern Painters magazine as one of “100
Artists to Watch” and one of the “Top 100 Best Shows of the Fall 2011”.
Since completing his MFA at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 2011, his work has rapidly
gained attention among art circles and is one of Marty Walker Gallery’s hot new artists. Slater
received a BFA from SUNY-Purchase and has exhibited nationally in New Mexico, New York, Chicago,
Dallas, and was part of an artist-in-residence program in Lyon, France. In addition, the artist’s work
will be exhibited at the upcoming Art Brussels and the Dallas Art Fair. Slater lives and works in
Dallas, Texas.

VIDEO ROOM: KEVIN COOLEY, SKYWARD
Skyward is a video portrayal of Los Angeles’
manufactured landscape and its complex relationship
to the natural world. The work is a metaphysical gaze
upwards, past the gridlock of street-level to the
pristine blue sky promising freedom and limitless
possibility. This ten minute journey transcends the
routine to reveal fantastical moments in everyday life.
Traveling through this networked ecology that
physically defines
Los Angeles, we discover interdependent ecosystems
largely overlooked in everyday life.
Time and space become fictionalized, which itself
becomes an allegory for the city. The journey ends in flight high above the fog of the beach near
Palos Verdes, turning back just for a moment towards the shoreline and the ever-sprawling
megalopolis on the horizon.
Cooley works in photography, video, and public installation. His work examines the interaction
between the natural environment and the one that we fabricate. Making use of unusual or
overlooked moments in everyday life, his work becomes a meditation on our evolving relationship
with technology, nature, and ultimately with each other. Cooley has shown his photographs and
videos at the Swiss Institute NY, White Columns, Massimo Audiello, Site UK and is included in a
number of important private and public collections including the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum.
The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY