Woaw Gallery Presents "Rear Projection" By Jake Sheiner @ ART021 SHANGHAI

WOAW Gallery is pleased to present REAR PROJECTION, Jake Sheiner’s debut solo show with the gallery. The showcase features thirteen works completed over the last year, and marks the occasion of the artist’s first exhibition in Asia.

In REAR PROJECTION, Jake Sheiner’s vertical landscapes are set against the suburbs of Los Angeles, where the artist grew up and is currently based. The acrylic paintings are both voyeuristic and autobiographical, drawing from day-to-day moments in the artist’s life in Southern California. With deft strokes and a subtle touch, the artist portrays, in his cinematic and intimate paintings, quiet spaces that are abandoned, in-between, and frozen in time. Working in the tradition of artists such as Edward Hopper, Fairfield Porter, David Hockney, and Lois Dodd, Jake Sheiner’s work juxtaposes the undercurrents of isolation and loneliness one feels amidst the urbanscapes of Los Angeles, obfuscated by the near perfect weather. “My fascination is with how Los Angeles often feels like a giant set waiting for a director to call ‘Action!’, the artist says. “I am constantly searching for moments worthy of investigating through the act of painting.”

The title REAR PROJECTION can be read as referring to both the tail lights of a passing vehicle—an unnatural source of illumination that features in the artist’s work—and the camera technique often deployed in driving scenes in film that combines foreground performances with pre-filmed

backgrounds. The name is a nod to the central presence of automobiles in Southern California, as well as the significant role that driving itself plays in the creation of the artist’s works: the car is the space within which the artist contemplates and seeks out the moments and places across the city that will eventually manifest in his work.

The landscapes in the paintings mainly depict the Northeast region of Los Angeles, first photographed on his phone as compositional sketches. Bushes lit up red by brake lights down the road, streets bathed in halogen, a vivid Southern California sunset over a distant horizon, a kiddie pool left out in the yard overnight—these scenes uncannily evoke a nostalgia for a place the viewer may have never visited in person, a pseudo-memory arising from the persistence of the Los Angeles landscape in pop culture. With REAR PROJECTION, the artist offers a window into his quotidian, blurring the demarcation between the public and private.