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Martina Johnston Gallery

November 18 - December 31, 2012

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1201 Sixth Street, 2nd Floor
Berkeley, CA 94710 Berkeley, CA 94710
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Levente Sulyok Levente Sulyok, "Subprime Space", Aluminum Panel & Blue LED Module w/ Scrolling Text, 46” x 46”, 2012.
Sunday, November 18th, 2012 to Sunday, December 30th, 2012 Opening Reception: Sunday*, November 18th, 2012, from 4 to 8 p.m. Hours: Sundays 1 to 4 p.m.* or by appointment. Martina }{ Johnston is excited to present "All the Paranoid Monoliths", an exhibition of paintings and sculptural installations by Levente Sulyok, who has described his work as “a playful dialogue between forms of commerce and the language of art.” This exhibition serves as a forum for a conversation between divergent areas of critical inquiry, including a philosophical investigation into the nature of language, a reflection on the consequences of the financial crisis, a series of carefully positioned art historical references to modernist abstract painting and minimalist sculpture, an homage to the landscape as a force in American culture, and a provocation aimed at viewers' passive acceptance of received economic theory. Sulyok presents a series of large acrylic paintings which use loose, painterly washes of lush color to depict untouched landscapes which read as American, but avoid specificity of place. However, these landscapes are flattened and reduced to a mere frame for the work's most salient element - outsize boxy sprawls of overlapping text, rendered in an opaque white that messily drips down the canvas. The illegibility of these texts renders them abstract, leaving the viewer to puzzle over cryptic letterform remnants. These paintings are accompanied by an otherworldly music, somehow familiar in texture and harmony, that emanates from the next room. This is A Fistfool of Dollars, a record player modified to play - in reverse - Ennio Morricone's instantly recognizable theme to Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti western Fistful of Dollars(1964). Another strategy of abstraction; spiraling backwards, all the information encoded in the record is conveyed to the viewer, but the intended effect of the music is subverted. Sulyok first saw this representation of America as a youth in communist Hungary. He points out that “most of Leone’s films were entirely shot in Spain, by an Italian crew and props. As such, they construct the West as a fictitious place based on nostalgia and exaggerations.” In these films America is depicted as “a lawless and violent place where characters are motivated by money alone.” Returning to read the titles of Sulyok’s paintings - "Where Vision Gets Built", "The Strength To Be There", "The Power Of Yes", the letterforms are revealed as the corporate slogans of Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Washington Mutual - financial institutions culpable for and destroyed by the economic crisis. The words, with their crypto-fascist poetry, have collapsed in on themselves, leaving a raw absence in the landscape, yet remaining carelessly and belligerently superimposed on top of it. "Subprime Space" takes the form of an LED scrolling text display box programmed with financial advertising language, but turned against the wall so it appears as an ominous black minimalist square with a flickering blueish aura. Similarly unreadable is "Surplus", a small box of Marx's works - available yet abandoned, offered yet off limits. The inability of economic theory to translate to a praxis that directly and effectively addresses our current economic situation is echoed by the title of the exhibition, taken from Hakim Bey's manifesto "Chaos: The Broadsheets if Ontological Anarchism" (Grim Reaper Press, 1985): “Here we are crawling the cracks between walls of church state school & factory, all the paranoid monoliths. Cut off from the tribe by feral nostalgia we tunnel after lost words, imaginary bombs.” Born in Hungary, Levente Sulyok immigrated to the United States in 1991. He has a BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley, and an MFA in Painting from RISD. He currently works as an Assistant Professor in Painting and Drawing at Wichita State University. Since 2002 Sulyok has participated in 24 exhibitions across the country and internationally. Most recently he collaborated on the project Documenta Detour, a performance and critical intervention into Documenta XIII in Kassel, Germany. In January of 2013 he will have a solo exhibition at the Reynolds Gallery at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. Also in 2013 he will be unveiling a large-scale interactive public installation on the facade of the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, Kansas. We hope to see you at the Opening Reception on Sunday, November 18th, from 4 to 8 pm. Thank you! Indira Martina Morre and Farley Johnston Gwazda *Martina }{ Johnston is an artist-run house gallery located at: 1201 6th St., 2nd Floor, Berkeley, CA 94701 510.221.8315 Hours: Sundays 1 to 4 p.m. or by appointment *We will NOT be open Sunday, November 18th from 1 - 4 pm. *Please note that our opening reception is on Sunday, not Saturday as usual. To our disabled viewers - unfortunately our house gallery is located on the second floor, up a flight of stairs. We would be happy to discuss ways that we could make it possible for you to experience the show! Support for Martina }{ Johnston is provided by Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program.
Levente Sulyok Levente Sulyok, "Where Vision Gets Built", Acrylic on Canvas, 36” x 64”, 2012.
Levente Sulyok Levente Sulyok, "The Strength To Be There", Acrylic on Canvas, 36” x 64”, 2012.