WERE GOOD MEN. Calvin Marcus

For his second solo exhibition with C L E A R I N G, Calvin Marcus has trans

formed the gallery space into a panoramic field of grass comprised of thirty-nine new paintings. Each canvas, an enlargement of a crayon on kraft-paper study, is
expressively executed in rich green oil stick over sandy brown grounds. The grasses are made with different levels of density, some so sparse that they begin to feel like body hair.

Dispersed among these depictions of nature are mannered portraits of war-ravaged soldiers, rendered with exaggerated features; purple faces, blood-shot eyes, blue fingernails, orange hands. Their tongues lay curled and splayed out in a grotesque expression of pain and mockery.

Using the motif of the uniformed soldier, Marcus observes the relationship between individual and collective identities. He marks each body with a different sovereign flag, depicting a single universal condition. The title of the show, Were Good Men, reads like an epitaph where all of the soldiers, once vital and living and human, are served the same fate, in the same way, in the same field, sinking back into the grass together.

Calvin Marcus (b.1988, San Francisco, CA) lives and works in Los Angeles where he received his MFA from UCLA in 2015. That same year he had his first exhibition at C L EA R I N G New York as well as a solo exhibition at Peep-Hole in Milan. Early 2016 he had his first solo exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. His work has also been included in several group exhibitions at Massimo De Carlo,
London; Gagosian, Athens; Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; White Cube, London; and Greene Naftali, New York to name a few . His work is part of the collection of MoMA, New York and MCA, Chicago.

Calvin Marcus is represented by C L E A R I N G and David Kordansky Gallery