GO WEST: David Ellis & Kris Kuksi

Following GO EAST – the first incarnation in a two-part "gallery swap" project with Joshua Liner Gallery (NY) - Mark Moore Gallery is pleased to announce GO WEST: David Ellis and Kris Kuksi, featuring two concurrent solo exhibitions curated by Joshua Liner. While the show makes for Ellis' third solo exhibition in Los Angeles, it will be Kuksi's first local solo presentation of new work.

Drawing upon a formative childhood in a musical household, David Ellis composes syncopated rhythms, playful scores, and intricate beats with the most homespun of resources. Trash bags, empty paint pans, and crumpled papers shudder, crunch, and rustle in a meticulously programmed arrangement that emulates Ellis' fondness for the authenticity of hip hop and improvisation of jazz. Showcasing his belief in the musical "flow" present in all aspects of daily life, 2011's "Busted Plume" (previously exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego) stages an audible but unassuming performance born of painstakingly placed springs, wires, and solenoids within a standard municipal trash can. Similarly, Ellis' large-scale paintings feature the reoccurring presence of uninhibited motion as black swaths of paint bob and weave their way through an amalgamation of quotidian images, objects, and colors; elegantly forging a cadence analogous to the artist's aural compositions. Kris Kuksi, featured in the Project Room, is also heralded for his scrupulous craftsmanship. Rife with the chaos of man's struggle for survival and power, Kuksi's sculptural wall works portray apocalyptic dioramas. Elaborate scenes of industrial-meets-Old-World pandemonium present miniature soldiers, skeletons, animals, factories, and military structures wreaking havoc in otherworldly ruins. Ornate in his depiction of "the fallacies of Man," Kuksi's three-dimensional works are not simply replicas of fantasy, but rather shape a macabre likeness to our ultimately futile quest for accumulation.

Born in 1973 in Springfield (MO), Kuksi obtained his MFA from Fort Hays State University (KS). He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Seattle, Basel, Toronto, and Portland, among others. David Ellis was born in 1971 in Raleigh (NC), and earned his BFA from Cooper Union (NY). Solo presentations of his work have been staged in New York, Los Angeles, Auckland, Houston, Osaka, Philadelphia, and Tokyo, and he has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (CT), and Musée des arts Modestes (France), among others. His work appears in the Margulies Collection, Deutsche Bank Collection, Saatchi Collection, and the Hadley Martin Fisher Collection.