Gemini G.E.L. is pleased to present LA Magic Hour, a series of fifteen new prints by acclaimed artist Tacita Dean. On view beginning February 4, 2022, the exhibition marks Dean’s third collaboration with the Gemini G.E.L. workshop. The works will also be presented in the gallery’s Online Viewing Room as part of Art Basel’s ‘OVR: 2021,’ February 9-12, 2022.
LA Magic Hour complements Dean’s previous lithographic project, LA Exuberance (2016) (also on view), which depicted white clouds contrasted with the bright cerulean blues of a typical Los Angeles sky. This time, the artist has focused on the iconic sunsets of Los Angeles. Dean began by working from the spray chalk drawings she created for LA Exuberance and narrowing the selection down to fifteen. The images were then inverted and rotated to find the desired compositions. Through a complex technique of layering transparent and semi-opaque colors, master printer Jill Lerner color matched Dean’s many photographs of colorful west coast sunsets. The fifteen lithographs appear effortlessly luminous, capturing the atmospheric space through a balance of blended and contrasting swaths of vivid colors.
When viewed as a whole, the series captures the variety of tones and colors shifting as the sun sets—taking us through the pale oranges and yellow tinged blues that begin a sunset, all the way to the electric magenta of its last breath. This is not the first time that Dean has taken up the subject of a sunset. For her film The Green Ray (2001), Dean traveled to a beach in Madagascar to capture an optical phenomenon wherein a briefly visible green spot can be seen for a few seconds atop the setting sun. To sit and watch a sunset is a universally familiar experience that encapsulates the passage of time, whether captured on celluloid film or as still images vis-à-vis lithography.
Separated from any specific horizon line, Dean’s cloudscapes depict the eternal mutability of the sky and the earth’s motion. Dean has been fascinated by natural phenomena throughout her career; images of trees, oceans, clouds, and landscapes are pervasive in her work. Her instinctive ability to focus on an everyday natural phenomenon, such as a sunset, recalls the wonder and complexity of a cloud in its ephemeral state. Each lithograph in LA Magic Hour represents a singular, unique moment in time and in the imagination of the artist, a beautiful synthesis of her fascination and studies in the colors and formations of clouds.
Tacita Dean was born in Canterbury, England in 1965. She studied in painting departments both at Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall and for postgraduate at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Despite being best known for her 16mm films, Dean has always made drawings, which are very central to her practice. She also uses a variety of other mediums, including photography, sound, found objects and printmaking as well as writing often about her own and other artists’ work. Highly regarded, Dean has been the recipient of several prizes including the Hugo Boss Prize (2006) and the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2009). She participated in the Venice Biennale (2003, 2005, and 2013) and dOCUMENTA 13 (2012). Recent solo exhibitions include Fudación Botín, Santander (2013); Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro (2013); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2012); MUMOK, Vienna (2011); and Tate Modern Turbine Hall (2011).
