With pleasure, VSF Seoul presents Glen Wilson’s first solo exhibition in Asia, Meridian Dub. Wilson is a Los Angeles-based artist, whose practice is rooted in a pocket of Venice Beach, California known locally as Oakwood, just blocks from the water where Wilson has made his home for many years. In Meridian Dub, Wilson zooms out to meditate on the neighboring ocean and clouds, creating cosmic portals to redemptive realms that vibrate with the definitive and defiant pleasures of open space.
Venice is at the edge of the city and the continent, in a place that has long been a destination for those seeking new ways of living, thinking, and being - a nexus of creatives and surfers, psychonauts and explorers. Ironically, while this neighborhood, and others in the surrounding area are mapped along historical red-lines of segregation, they now chart astronomically high real estate values and are home to some of the wealthiest Angelenos. Despite the pressures and infringements of social and economic change, Oakwood remains a center of Black life on the west-side of LA. Edges, intersections, and entanglements are at the center of Wilson’s material and conceptual explorations and these words also describe the sited, rooted nature of his work and these neighborhoods by the beach.
The title of this exhibition invokes the meridians of the geographical polarities that encircle the globe, as well as the energetic pathways of the body. The title also references “dub,” an impressionistic musical form that explores the inherent rhythms and possibilities in existing reggae recordings. Dub music transcends its source material by removing vocals, emphasizing the rhythm section, and layering new sounds of various shapes and depths from studio recordings, performances, and often nature. This sonic and sculptural impulse is reflected in the works featured in Meridian Dub, as Wilson maps a global flow of energies related to presence, liberation, and well-being.
