New Exhibit at Double Break Gallery

Reported by Katherine Sweetman

Press Release

‘Good Grief’
New Work by Matt Coors and Louis M Schmidt at Double Break

Opening reception Friday, June 22, 2012 (6-10PM)
Exhibition runs through Saturday, July 21, 2012

Free, and open to the public!

We’re very excited to announce Good Grief, an exhibition in celebration of Double Break’s one-year anniversary! On this momentous occasion, artist-owners Matt Coors and Louis M Schmidt will show their own work, including new drawings, prints, publications and more. Both recent MFA graduates of UCSD’s acclaimed Visual Arts Department, Coors and Schmidt share interests in the machinations and narratives of history, in pattern (and pattern disruption) as design and metaphor, in all things curious and mind-blowing, and lastly, in linguistic sword fighting, i.e. pun wars.

Good Grief quotes the famous, exasperated utterance of Charlie Brown, Charles Schultz’s character from his comic strip The Peanuts, created in 1950. Easily one of the most iconic post-war comic characters in American history, Charlie Brown is much more than the archetypal born loser. He is “failure” with a capital F, a sort of anti-hero set against the myth of the “self-made” individual, who issues a constant wake-up call to all those lost in the fog of the American dream. The flip side of that half-century old narrative is a character who weathers the storms of a disappointing existence, sometimes gracefully—most times clumsily—but always in a way that brings relief to his audience. That being said, however, if there’s anything that Coors and Schmidt both love, it’s wordplay, and Good Grief evokes a particularly pleasing dichotomy. Paired together, “Good” and “grief” suggest both exasperation, and the enjoyment of grief, and as such, the cycle of grief. Compounded by the allusion to Charlie Brown as American anti-hero, “good grief” suggests cycles of failure, patterns of discord and unhappiness in perpetuity. The works in this exhibition embody a myriad of sentiments, from the stoic and memorial to the whimsical and awestruck- come see for yourself!

From the artists:

Matt Coors: “A lot of my recent work is a meditation on the human need to organize things in order to cope with or pretend to comprehend the vastness and complexity of the universe, the world, our history, our surroundings, and our uncertain future. I am often interested in exploring the similarities and differences between the acts of articulating the world and summing it up, and the feelings that can be conveyed through either of these strategies.”

Louis M Schmidt: “What he said.”

Double Break

1821 5th Ave

San Diego, CA 92101

619.238.2325

info@doublebreakstore.com
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