Nino Mier Gallery presents Spring Wind, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Jake Longstreth. Longstreth is well-known for his atmospheric landscapes of Southern California that capture the region’s specific topography, flora and light. Longstreth marries a stark, contemporary realism with a landscape painter’s sensitivity to mood and tone. The artist’s distinct style is epitomized by the glowing, softly gradated skies that serve as a backdrop to his renderings of eucalyptus, pines, and the charred remnants of oak trees in Malibu. Step towards the paintings and you will see how subtly painterly they are –– repetitive, terse brush strokes depict clumps of pine needles, short curvy strokes show eucalyptus leaves, various dabs and lines constitute bark.
Often, a foreboding and piercing light emphasizes the artist’s attention to bleaker aspects of the idyllic environs: thick smog, raking shadows, sunbaked earth, slicing roadways and burnt branches. For Spring Wind, this underlying mood is exacerbated by our knowledge that summer is around the corner. Winds are not breezes after all –– they announce that changes are afoot, new conditions imminent. Will the season bring barbecues and trips to the beach or scorching, weary days and wildfires? Probably a bit of both. Yet considering how tired yet resilient the trees in these paintings appear to be, we’re likely in for a long, hot summer.
Jake Longstreth (b. 1977, Sharon, CT; lives and works in Los Angeles) received his MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. He has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions at Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco; Crisp Ellert Museum, St. Augustine, Florida; Monya Rowe Gallery, New York; M Woods, Beijing; and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles. This is Jake's second solo exhibition with the gallery.