Exhibition

This exhibit was organized and presented to coincide with the opening of Pacific Standard Time, the Getty Foundation initiative to research, document and define art in Southern California, 1945 to1980. The purpose of the Frank Lloyd Gallery show was to focus on Craig Kauffman's early transition from biomorphic abstract painting to his iconic plastic works. Using 17 works, including drawings, collages, and paintings--including the earliest formed plastic works-- this show was assembled from research into the archives of the Kauffman estate. 

In a thorough and lengthy review, Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight described Kauffman's progression, and concluded with the following:

"Abstracted shapes in bright colors and razor-sharp contours suggest buttocks, magnetos, bosoms, pistons, phalluses, valves, vulvas, motor oil, bodily fluids and other human and machine parts. (Sometimes the drawing paper is a Frederick's of Hollywood mail-order catalog page for fetishistic stiletto shoes.)

In 1963 he began to paint on the backs of 6½-foot tall plexiglass sheets; when turned around, the sexual thrust-and-parry assumes a visual sleekness. Their va-va-voom is as clinically absurd as a monumental animation-cel. The technique was plainly inspired by Marcel Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" (1915-23), often called "The Large Glass" in reference to the transparent material on which it's rendered. Kauffman had seen the replica-version in the 1963 Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. Familiar with the plastics used by Bauhaus-era artists Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Antoine Pevsner, Kauffman employed simple technology used to make commercial plastic signs. Luscious color, organic shape, seductive image and glamorous object now fused into an arresting whole. An age-old erotic subject is played as an up-to-the-minute sign of the times. Like "The Large Glass," but in a manner wholly born of his own evolution as a painter over the previous five years, Kauffman's "sensual/mechanical" art (as the show is titled) is both intimate and remote. The riveting look-but-don't-touch visual appeal is almost voyeuristic."

--Excerpt from Knight, Christopher. "Art Review: Craig Kauffman: Sensual/Mechanical at Frank Lloyd Gallery." Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2011.