James Gobel, i, Claudius
November 6 - December 19, 2020

_schedule appointment
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James Gobel, I, Claudius
November 6 - December 19, 2020
2831 Mission St

*by appointment only

Et al etc. presents, “i Claudius", a solo exhibition by James Gobel. The presentation comprises works made by Gobel over the last two years. The south wall of the gallery holds Gobel’s largest painting to date, 9’x15’, titled “Beyond The Wall” (2019). The tryptic depicts a solitary striped cloaked figure standing at a crumbling wall. The image is a mosaic of hand-cut painted acrylic felt, and embroidery thread. The wall in question, is the surviving perimeter of Scarborough Castle, on the North Sea in the UK, that overlooks the birth place of film and stage actor Charles Laughton (1899-1962). As a closeted gay man his entire life, Laughton would create an entirely hidden personal identity opposite his larger than life Hollywood persona. Gobel’s interest in the duality of the actors life is echoed throughout the exhibition, including the title,"i Claudius", borrowed from a failed, unfinished Laughton film that serves as a metaphor linking together the otherwise disparate methodologies employed in the work. Smaller framed paintings of mounted vintage paper mounted on canvas capture Gobel’s drawing practice. The more recent drawings expand on Laughton, but also ruminations on retired NFL player Ryan O’Callaghan, the Ecce Homo portfolio of drawings by George Grosz, and event advertising found in 1990’s gay pornography for admirers of chubby and bear-like men. This swirl of content is seemingly hasty, but closer inspection reveals Gobel’s careful and detailed attention to image construction.

Born in Portland, Oregon, 1972, James Gobel received his BFA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1996) and his MFA at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1999). He has had solo exhibitions at the UCLA Hammer Museum (2000); Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York (1999, 2001, 2002, 2005); Marx & Zavattero, San Francisco (2008 & 2010) and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles (2008 & 2012). Gobel’s work was included in the traveling museum exhibition curated by Dave Hickey, entitled Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art from the Neon Homeland, Las Vegas Art Museum (2007), Surface Value- James Gobel, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, and Mickalene Thomas, DesMoines Art Center (2011), Kemper Museum (2012), Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (2014), Sheldon Art Museum (2012) Second Floor Projects in San Francisco (2016) and most recently at the McNay Museum, his work was acquired and featured in Transamerica/n: Gender, Identity, Appearance Today (2018). His work has been written about in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum, Art in America, and Beautiful Decay, as well as numerous catalogs.