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.
At the center of the exhibition are new assemblages from Wilson’s Element series. These objects combine circular and oval photographic images that are printed, mounted, and layered with brass cymbals and percussive tools to create interactive, wall-mounted sculptures. Immersive patterns, constellations of the sea, and vistas of the sky absorb the viewer into an imagined space of reflection and redemption. Viewers are invited to engage with the percussive elements and generate their own vibrations in the gallery, a call to be present with the work and the space. The show’s single portrait, a Black surfer, suggests an interstitial moment of negotiation: this man has left the urban grid to commune with a larger body, the ocean. Black surfers are too seldom represented (but very present) along the mythic California coastline, and this portrait invites viewers to reconsider the liberating nature of moving from the gravity of the city to the buoyancy of the sea.
Alongside the Elements Wilson also presents two new works from his Gatekeeping series. Composed of salvaged chain link gates that have been disposed of by new homeowners who are updating the perimeters of their lots with more aspirational (if more divisive) fencing, these works also include photographs which have been cut and woven through the chainlink. Often Wilson uses the gates to showcase portraits, but in this case, he again highlights water and sky. Like the Element works, the gates invite interaction. Hinged to the wall, their functional aspects are maintained and they can be gently manipulated to show the front or back of the gate. The maintenance of their mobility suggests that the work opens a portal to another time, a memory, or a possible future.
Meridian Dub finds Wilson flowing through the grid of previous work to further engage in an abstract meditation on place and space. The subtle lushness of the works is accompanied by an experimental sonic layer, Infrasound Dub, a collaboration between the artist’s son, producer Reed Wilson, and legendary reggae bassist Ronnie “Stepper” McQueen. These sounds of discovery and buoyancy accompany the artist as he plays with perception, inverts expectations, and provides distinct portals for viewers to dive into.
Glen Wilson’s (b. 1969, Columbus, OH, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) multi-disciplinary practice is comprised of photography, sculpture, filmmaking, installation, and assemblage. Provoking questions around voice, visibility, and cartography, Wilson’s works suggest fluid narratives of place, diaspora, cultural heritage, and the intersections of individual and communal identity. Wilson received a B.A. from Yale University, New Haven, CT and an M.F.A. from the University of California San Diego. Recent group exhibitions include the Getty Center, Los Angeles; California African-American Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Honor Fraser, Los Angeles, CA; Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Quotidian, Los Angeles, CA; Torrance Art Museum, CA; Eastside International Los Angeles, CA; and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, CA. Wilson spent a year as a research fellow at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem, NY.
