WHEN:
February 8 — March 29, 2025
For more information visit the Vielmetter website.
WHERE:
Vielmetter
1700 S Santa Fe Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90021
A spokesperson describes the event as follows:
“...Tuning the Signals marks the debut of Lewis’s latest body of work, featuring twelve sculpted pieces on paper alongside a new video that showcases the artist’s focus on systems, patterns, and their intersections within the natural and cultural landscapes we inhabit. Lewis is renowned for his intricate figurative works on paper, which combine elements of photography, drawing, painting, printmaking, and paper sculpting to create textures reminiscent of cellular tissue and topography. His techniques are shaped by his background as a critical care nurse and his interest in the diagnostic aspects of medicine, as well as his understanding of the body on both macro and microscopic levels.
Primarily utilizing black and white, Lewis subtly integrates color into his otherwise monochromatic studies. The monochrome theme relates to the aesthetics of X-ray imagery; Lewis further elaborates on this connection by comparing X-ray imaging to various printing methods. For him, using black and white also conveys the distinct moods of each piece, which he contextualizes as movements within a symphony or musical score. The figures are depicted mid-movement, with limbs intertwined against backgrounds of embossed textures, fabric rubs, colored inks, and curvilinear shapes. Their motion introduces a human element, enhancing the choreography present in nature–movement patterns resembling those of bird migration or the flow of the wind. Each composition uniquely captures the sensation of the motion it represents through the patterns etched into the paper's surface.
Lewis’s works portray dancers and capoeiristas in motion. After years of studying and practicing capoeira–an Afro-Brazilian martial art that blends acrobatics, music, ritual, and self-defense—Lewis is attuned to the intricate physicality of the art as well as its political and cultural history. Likewise, in Lewis’s predominantly black works, the frottaged musical score embeds a historical act of cultural resistance. This score originates from William Still Grant, who composed Symphony No. 1 Afro-American Symphony, the first symphony created by an African American and performed by a major orchestra in 1931. Lewis’s figures vibrantly ebb and flow with the notes of the symphony’s arrangement..."