All you Desire

All You Desire will examine the viewer's relationship to new abstract works as one of desire. As a starting point, the show considers artworks which update the 60's niche Los Angeles abstract movement known as 'Fetish Finish'. This movement focused on the visual syntax of pop industrial design, incorporating materials and techniques ranging from the fiberglass construction of surfboards, the language of aerospace forms, and the slick enameled surfaces of custom-painted cars, into the practice of abstract painting. The result was a fusion of brightly colored synthetic materials with clean edged minimal forms.

Rather than spotlighting formal aspects in abstraction, All You Desire considers the implications of the use of such design-derived materials in light of subsequent developments in branding and product design. The exhibition shows that new applications and materials are less a formal practice of "finish" than an affectation of our culture's constant bombardment of advertising and consumerism. For example, the iPod is a marriage of design and branding, where even an element as basic as the color of a set of headphones becomes a brand experience of Apple© 'individuality'. In this sense, the apparent finish of an abstract sculpture, painting, or video becomes a catalyst to an ethereal subjective and psychological experience – whether of luxury, power, or metaphysical transcendence.