Corey Helford Gallery presents

SHAG
“Autumn’s Come Undone”

Opening Reception Saturday, November 21, 2009 from 8‑11pm
On View November 21 – December 9, 2009

Corey Helford Gallery
8522 Washington Boulevard           
Culver City, CA  90232               
T: 310-287-2340               
www.coreyhelfordgallery.com

Corey Helford Gallery is proud to present the highly-anticipated exhibition of new works by Southern California artist Josh Agle, better known as “Shag”. For the past decade, Agle’s iconic environments and playful narratives have sublimely captured California cool, mid-century modern design and lifestyles of the retro glamourati. His new exhibition “Autumn’s Come Undone” represents a turning point for Agle, adopting darker themes and a deeper palette to explore life’s excesses.

“Something happened to me in the last year – call it an unexpected change-of-heart, if you like, but a lot of the unfettered hedonism my artwork espoused has begun to catch up with me,” Agle explains.

Somber hues of okra, burnt oranges, and delicate grays, replace Agle’s signature acid brights, and as his subjects near the autumn of their lives, they venture away from suburban comforts to embrace a simpler, more authentic way of life. For the exhibition, Shag will unveil a series of “dreamscapes” rendered as diptych and triptych giclee prints on canvas, each a limited-edition of 5, as well as a series of original paintings. Open to the public, the reception for “Autumn’s Come Undone” takes place on Saturday, November 21, and the show will be on view until December 9, 2009.

Josh Agle is a painter and designer from Los Angeles who is probably better known by the name he signs on his paintings, “Shag.” Agle has spent the last decade creating a body of work based on his idiomatic aesthetic preference, a world of mid 20th century modern architecture and design, populated by hedonists, supplicants, and indifferent women.  

The paintings themselves celebrate consumerism and consumption on vividly colored, sharply rendered panels; the characters drink, smoke and eat in lavish, stylish surroundings. But Agle sees the visuals of his work as window-dressing or stage scenery.  He’s more concerned with the narrative of the art.  “Most of my paintings are set in the middle of a story or situation -- characters are interacting and reacting to each other and to outside events.” Agle doesn’t offer too many clues about the stories, preferring that the viewer create his or her own narratives to fit the situations.  

While Shag’s work might easily be dismissed as retro-kitsch, the influential New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith, has called his painting catchy and witty, saying “the eye is snared by Mr. Agle’s economic use of saturated colors -- sharp greens and warm lavenders, smoldering reds, sour ochres -- and the tinted-gel space created by his thin-on-thin paint handling.” Interest by museum curators and academics culminated with a solo exhibition of his work at the Laguna Art Museum in early 2008. For more information about Josh Agle, please visit shag.com.