The Truth About Los Angeles

In this exhibition Hockney and Langer are viewed as two migrant artists living and working in Los Angeles and taking that town as subject.

To this end Hockney's work is focused on eight by ten inch colour photographs taken between 1970-1975. There is an emphasis on architecture and flora. The authenticity of the photograph in a pre-digital world is considered in relation to the title of the show.

Langer's new paintings, while more abstracted, allude to architecture and foliage in a deliberate yet oblique way. They are predicated on observation and memory and stand as a consequence of living in L.A. for the past two years. The concept of the pursuit for truth through painting is prompted by this idea of authenticity.

Hockney's photographs are part of a portfolio entitled "Twenty Photographic Pictures, 1970-75" and was published by Sonnabend Gallery, NYC in 1976. It's useful to note the use of the word photographic to qualify the picture. It is a subtle yet important displacement or remove of the mechanics of this picture-making and the content.

Langers paintings and works on paper in the show were produced thirty years later in 2004-05. Originally from Toronto, Langer has been living in Los Angeles for the past two years.

Part of the inspiration for this show comes from a videotape produced by veteran video artist Geoffrey Shea in 1986 and premiered in Toronto at Trinity Square Video that same year. It was called "The Truth About the USSR" and was the result of several weeks of videotaping in the Soviet Union, not to " express personal experience or value, but rather to interrogate the structures of documentary video production and the modes of our attention to facts relayed by media." (John Bentley Mays, Vanguard, Oct/Nov 1986). Screenings of this video and the text by Mays are available at the gallery on request.