Opening Reception: Saturday, December 10th, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent works by Los Angeles based artist Tom Knechtel. The show will consist of eight pastels, three ink on paper drawings, and three paintings in oil produced over the last four years.

Knechtel constructs complex narratives based on artifice and sexuality in which a cast of human and animal characters take on fluid identities. Severwwal threads run through the recent work—sexuality and mortality, lust and desire, theater vs. artifice. Knechtel explores the imagination's double nature, allowing for freedom but also narcissism and self-destruction. The paintings have a sprawling visual language, ranging from painterly and abstract, to precise, miniature descriptions. The drawings are more intimate and concentrate on a single image or narrative. Knechtel's newest drawings are about public and private revelation, unfolding in both intimate and stage-like settings.

Tom Knechtel was born in Palo Alto, California in 1952. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions including, The Drawing Center, New York, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2002 he had a 25-year retrospective entitled On Wanting to Grow Horns which opened at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery in North Carolina before traveling to the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, The Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii, and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington. He has had other solo exhibitions at Grant Selwyn Fine Art, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, PPOW Gallery in New York and Rosamund Felsen Gallery. His work is in the permanent collections of The Berardo Collection, Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Portugal, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Orange County Museum of Art and The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu. Tom Knechtel lives and works in Los Angeles.

Marc Selwyn Fine Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. For more information, please call Alisun at 323.933.9911.