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Marx & Zavattero

February 19 - March 29, 2009

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77 Geary Street 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94108
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Ring the Changes Planet X, #8
Marx & Zavattero are excited to present a solo exhibition of new, environmentally charged photographs by Los Angeles husband-and-wife team Davis & Davis. Marking their fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, Ring the Changes will be on view February 19 – March 28, 2009. In a distinct contrast to the team’s playful, staged toy-and-doll photographs of the past, this new series artistically and ominously documents the evidence, results, history, and causes of global warming. In the fall of 2006, Davis & Davis killed what little lawn they had at their Southern California home and set about replacing it with drought-tolerant plants (xerophytes). As the team collected eventually over 200 varieties of cacti and succulents for their new drier landscape, they became fascinated by the forms and colors of the plants and started to photograph them. During the past two years, the artists have also traveled to Alberta, Death Valley, Ireland, the Salton Sea and many other locations to shoot photographs for this new body of work. The resulting photographs from their travels, as well as those of the cacti from their home, images from NASA, and other archives, make up this fascinating new series. “Humans on this planet now see increased desertification, rising coastal waters, extreme weather, droughts, crop failures, and new disease vectors appearing as a result of global warming,” state the artists. “We have no choice but to adapt, as xerophytes long ago adapted, to this new changing climate.” Ring the Changes consists of a series of diptychs and triptychs juxtaposing a single cactus with another, intriguingly related image or images. These multiples portray connections between the common name, form, or color/pattern of such xerophytes found in the team’s garden with man-made objects and things found in the natural landscape. Also on view will be a series of iconic single images, portraying the reality of global warming more symbolically. As with the team’s past work, the striking, contemplative compositions and rich color combinations challenge both the viewer’s intellect and their eye. Davis & Davis have exhibited widely, most recently in And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon at Collectors Contemporary, Singapore; and The Art of Diorama at Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA. Their work has also been featured in the traveling exhibition Dangerous Beauty at the Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY and the Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Naples, Italy; in Oh: You Beautiful Doll at Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, NY; in solo shows at the Riverside Art Museum and TELIC in Chinatown, Los Angeles; and in Not So Cute & Cuddly: Dolls and Stuffed Toys in Contemporary Art at the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, KS, among many other public and private venues. Their work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Ulrich Museum of Art, the Jean Pigozzi Collection, the Chaney Family Collection, California State University Los Angeles, California State Polytechnic University Pomona, Genentech, Cypress College, and the Kinsey Research Institute, as well as many private collections. Their work has been reviewed in The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Contemporary Magazine, 34 Magazine, ArtUS, Art Papers, 7x7 Magazine, SF Weekly, SF Bay Guardian, LA Weekly, Artweek, and many other publications. Their book, Childish Things, was published by Santa Monica Press in 2004. The artists both earned MFA degrees at the California Institute of the Arts.