Opening Reception:
June 20, 6-8pm
Viewing Room, New York

Those who know don’t talk, those who talk don’t know

Viewing Room is pleased to present a solo exhibition of spells by the Los Angeles based artist and alchemist, L.

The cluster of spells in this exhibition is the entangled star to L’s recent show at Stems Gallery in Brussels, Facets of Endarkenment.

For over a decade L has been sought out for magical assistance by individuals in need of warding off unwanted entities, help in matters of love, health, and the full spectrum of circumstances relating to the human experience. Although L has no rules for working with people, temporal material desires are generally not addressed except in matters of urgency and survival. The focus then with L’s spellwork has become more about helping others achieve states of being – and the ultimate state is perhaps enlightenment.

But what is enlightenment anyways? The answer depends on who you ask. These spells manifest frequencial states of the soul related specifically to the self and enlightenment as perceived in the flesh. The one, as opposed to the all – the latter having been the topic of the vessels in Brussels.

The exhibition opens the day before Summer Solstice, the lightest day of the year. Yet each day afterwards will carry less light, and more darkness.

Also in the gallery is a bottle of perfume that visitors can apply to their bodies. It was made by the perfumer Christopher Gordon of Maison Anonyme for the exhibition. The scent’s name and invocation is Ex Luce Tenebras. As with the spells, the perfume is the entangled scent to one that Gordon made for L last Winter Solstice, In Lumine Lucem, which was featured in Facets of Endarkenment.

L (b. 1984, Salt Lake City) recently co-founded a collective open-source spiritual community, A.S.T.R.A.L.O.R.A.C.L.E.S. The community has had incarnations at Five Car Garage, Los Angeles; Sandwich Gallery, Bucharest; and CAPITAL Gallery, San Francisco. L has had solo exhibitions at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City; AND NOW, Dallas; Shoot the Lobster, Los Angeles; JOAN, Los Angeles; Martos Gallery, New York. Selected group exhibitions include Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills; Team Gallery, New York; Kerry Schuss, New York; CAPITAL, San Francisco; Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles + Bucharest; Venus over Los Angeles; Ellis King, Dublin; The LDS Church History and Art Museum, Salt Lake City; The Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince. L’s work has been reviewed and written about in Frieze Magazine, Artforum, New Yorker Magazine, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Spike Quarterly among many others.

L and A.S.T.R.A.L.O.R.A.C.L.E.S will conduct a ritual at The Getty Center in Los Angeles in July as a part of the institution’s Ever Present series. They will also set up new incarnations of the open source community with temples in Bulgaria, Sun Valley Idaho, and Port-au-Prince in 2019.

For press inquiries please contact
info@marlboroughgallery.com