Eric LoPresti: Different Country
April 8th - May 8th, 2011
Opening reception:
April 8th, 2011 6:30-9:00pm
Monthly Artist Dinner:
May 22th, 2011 8pm RSVP Only

          The atom bomb represents the ultimate success of theoretical science, one that catapulted
it from being about unknown chemists laboring in obscure laboratories to constituting
the measure of global domination. But it also marks the ultimate moral failure of
science, as many of the bomb's inventors themselves acknowledged. And the fact that my
own family history is tied up with that story—that I grew up in its shadow and that my
dad, and my friends’ dads, did work they weren’t allowed to talk about—speaks to a dark
center that I still find fascinating.
— Eric LoPresti

The American landscapes that Eric LoPresti depicts in his new paintings and drawings is, despite
the soft hues with which he often inflects it, one that consistently reflects this "dark center".
Maintaining his established focus on the physical and psychological aftermath of the Cold War,
LoPresti renders landscapes bearing the scars of nuclear testing and subsequent environmental
clean-up campaigns, especially those near where he grew up, in the desert steppe of eastern
Washington state, near the Hanford plutonium production site. With nods to both Ed Ruscha's
take on the pop-inflected vista of the West Coast and Gerhard Richter's mastery of historically
burdened European equivalents, "Different Country",LoPresti's third solo show at Like the Spice
Gallery, achieves a kind of "desert noir".

LoPresti juxtaposes his landscapes with spectral color gradients and dark linear elements, pitting
his ongoing investigation into a specific technological, cultural, and geopolitical narrative with an
enquiry into the nature of perception itself. He often starts with a softly gradated color field a
signifier of subjectivity, a "wild card" seen differently by every viewer. After overlaying
landscape imagery based upon photographs he makes from chartered planes, LoPresti imposes
onto each view precise black lines, suggesting a systematic, perhaps even violent division of
territory. The lines hint at annotated military satellite imagery and formally echo the vector
graphics of early 1980s-era video games. The result is a sophisticated commentary on the human
manipulation of nature, that also reflects our ability to understand an image as at once highly
codified and open to divergent interpretations.

The title of this show is based upon a quote by Robert Oppenheimer: "The atomic bomb made the
prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass;
and beyond there is a different country." (1946)

Eric LoPresti (b. 1971, Denver) moved to New York in 2002 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. His recent exhibitions include "Afterglow" (Washington State University, 2010), "Fade" (Like the Spice Gallery, 2009), "Test Site" (New York Public Library, 2008), and "New Thought New Work" (Miami University, 2006). A winner of the Faber Birren Foundation Award and the Miami Young Painters Award, his work has received mentions in, among other publications, Art in America, Artforum.com, NY Arts, and the Village Voice. LoPresti holds a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art