Slow Chemical Orchestra

The official handbook for Jeff Koegel's 2013 solo exhibition, "Slow Chemical Orchestra" at Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles.

The paintings in "Slow Chemical Orchestra" oscillate, flicker and undulate through a particular dialect of visual language; the arabesque, the quilt star, the flag, the scan code, the infographic. The span of history represented in this imagery, from mystic medieval to machine-dialogue modern, gives Koegel’s work an enriched subtext. On another level, Koegel sees the formal building blocks of this imagery - dots, lines and points - as interchangeable code to break apart and remix, opening up possibilities for the transformation to new forms. Symbol becomes architecture, information becomes wild nature. But Koegel’s primary interest in his source imagery has less to do with its established meaning or identity - it’s really more about a specific quality in the imagery that lends to the paintings a charged optical effect.

Features commentary by art critic Shana Nys Dambrot.