Tierra del Sol Presents Planet Abstract, A Group Exhibition Guest Curated by Bill Marshall & featuring abstract art by Marlena Arthur, Manuel Guerrero, Bill Marshall, Ivan Saucedo, & John Peterson

March 9 – April 20, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 6-8 pm

Bill Marshall, Finding My Path, 2023, acrylic on paper, 24 x 36″

Tierra del Sol Gallery presents Planet Abstract, guest curated by Tierra Studio artist Bill Marshall. Marshall has been with Tierra since 2016 and this is his first curatorial program at the gallery.

Marshall’s abstract works are in a call and response with his Tierra Studio mates Marlena Arthur, Manuel Guerrero, Ivan Saucedo, and John Peterson, reminiscent of the collective of California abstractionists. Also known as the Post Surrealists, these historic artists formed a working group to explore the sensorial richness of the world around them. This contemporary group of Tierra del Sol artists similarly use abstraction to convey physicality, mood, and movement. For example, Arthur’s formality and order empower her unique Black super woman imaginary, and Guerrero’s color block works vibrate like kinetic Karl Benajmin pieces. Peterson’s impasto paintings echo Lundeberg’s palette and landscape perspectives, and Saucedo and Marshall’s hard-edge works demonstrate how expansively Feitelson’s 1950s aesthetics inform California makers across light, time, and place.

Marshall also includes his own site-specific video titled “Strangers Evil and Good” in Planet Abstract that calls to mind John Baldessari’s early film work. Like Baldessari’s provocative videos, Marshall’s video is self-referential and fun. Marshall playfully superimposes himself dancing over his abstractions, taking a wonder-fueled trip through a speculative universe of color and geometry that lends itself to possibility rather than categorization and exclusion.

Planet Abstract is an opportunity to celebrate the experiences of a community of artists who share a passion for the genre of abstraction. Together, these artists interpret what lies inside and out, creating worlds of color and emotion through investigations of formalism and its freedom. Marshall and his cohort recognize that abstraction unites their diverse subject matter with a common language that transcends their different ethnicities, genders, and disabilities. As Marshall notes, “I am glad I have a disability, because I feel like I am a hero and my art is my power…I want to tell my story… and show how my team envisions abstraction in their own way, as their own power.”

Bill Marshall’s Planet Abstract opens at Tierra del Sol Gallery in West Hollywood on Saturday, March 9, with a reception from 6-8 pm. The exhibition is on view through April 20, 2024.