Reviews
oil on canvas and paper
60" x 30"
1997
oil on masonite and paper
2003
Two art shows in Santa Monica not to be missed
May 2010
Two shows in Santa Monica worth seeing are David Florimbi “The Sky’s the Limit” at Frank Pictures, closing June 16th and the Mattias Merkel Hess Project at 18th Street Art Center, closing June 25th.
“The Sky’s the Limit” is about just that - looking up at the sky through the branches of trees, something we never do enough. Florimbi paints on a grand scale, large pieces on eclectic canvases like birchwood and steel. He brings nature indoors, and any interior would benefit from his vision of beauty.
Who is it that responds? A school teacher needing a print commemorating a class, a searcher looking for the meaning of life in art . Hess is an accomplished artist, and because the requests he gets can go in any direction he is up for the task. “Commenting on the economic status of artists and how our society values artistic labor “ the 18th Street Art Center notes on their site (which is an excellent website, by the way) is definitive indeed. You can follow his blog and track the progress at http://fineart6263943963.com, or visit the Art Center to view works in progress and completed works.
May 29, 9:59 AM
Santa Monica Fine Arts Examiner
Laura Craven
David Florimbi
Forces of Nature
September 2006
Written by Joe Dirosa
Tuesday, 05 September 2006
DAVID FLORIMBI’S NEW PAINTINGS, “FORCES OF NATURE” FOLLOWS HIS HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL EXHIBITION, “REAL ESTATE” AT FRANK PICTURES GALLERY ON SEPTEMBER 10, 2006
David Florimbi’s new show, Forces of Nature, continues the discussion of what is original and what constitutes a copy that Florimbi began in his first Muybridge referenced exhibition of paintings, “Pinturas Matadores” in September of 2004 at Frank Pictures and again with “Real Estate” in September of 2005. The paintings, like those in Pinturas Matadores, are motion studies, in this case, replacing scenes of bullfighting with car racing, surfing, horse racing, rodeoing, birds in flight and tornados. Like their predecessors, Forces of Nature incorporates the use of multiple still images enlarged from Florimbi’s original photographs off the moving images on television. Once he selects his subject from the photographs, he then paints an original small scale oil painting of the scene, then enlarges the paining digitally and repaints over it – rendering a copy (the photograph) into an original (the oil painting) into a copy (the digital enlargement) into an original (the over painting in oil). “As a painter, I’ve always been fascinated by the problem of capturing the passage of time,,” says Florimbi, “A single second in any event is rife with action, most of which goes unnoticed. When E. Muybridge, back in 1883, first photographed a galloping horse, we were finally privy to a moment heretofore guessed at. Four hooves did, indeed, leave the ground at once. In my latest series, Forces of Nature, I’ve used Muybridge’s revolutionary photographs as a departure point, and using paint, photography, and film, tried to capture the myriad unseen moments that occur inside the briefest flash in time.” Florimbi’s exhibition is currently on view in the Bergamot Station gallery and will officially open Sunday, September 10th from 6:30 to 9:30 and will run through September in conjunction with Flow, Fine Artists Create Original Limited Edition Surfboards, which will run concurrently in Frank Pictures’ second gallery.
Reviews
2006
Centuries later, not much has changed in property listings, except the medium: carefully cropped newspaper ads, text calling old houses “classic” and dilapidated barns “rustic,” bright signs on lawns and banners on billboards.
Happy Canyon, 2005, oil and mixed media on canvas, 48" x 40", at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum
In his solo show for Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum’s Bloom Projects, Imminent Domain, Santa Barbara artist David Florimbi examines the motives, and results, of both mediums as they’ve been used to depict and advertise land. Marrying contemporary design elements with classic painting techniques, he calls into question the concept of selling real estate and the conventions employed to do it. Pending, Available and Upgraded, for example, all feature meticulously hand-painted green pastures—an effect that would seem classical if the paintings weren’t flattened and modernized by bright orange backgrounds and red vinyl stickers with white fonts cutting the canvas at a diagonal.
At the same time, the fixture of a steer is depicted in each pasture as a haunting promise of what’s to come. In Available, the steer is detailed and central. In Pending, he has faded almost completely—suggesting the irony that once land is purchased, that which made it valuable is almost always destroyed. And, in Upgraded, the steer is merely the white shadow of the animal in Available, asking if perhaps the idea of the steer is better than its reality.
Equally striking are a series of paintings that mimic actual real estate ads. Hidden Treasure shows a small, unimpressive home advertised as a “hidden treasure.” Happy Canyon depicts dry, barren land demarked by seemingly arbitrary boundaries. The time-consuming craftsmanship shines light on the “art” of inflating value and manufacturing desire, while at the same time pointing to the absurdity of such a notion.
The third component of Imminent Domain combines all these ideas. Crossing the boundaries between visual art and performance art, Florimbi also created an advertisement in a local newspaper using Happy Valley as its centerpiece star property. Like real ads, he featured three smiling Stepford realtors next to the photo—but in Florimbi’s version, all three are doctored self-portraits: the blond Davis Davidson, the 1970s-porn-star Bernie Flowers, and the token ethnic guy, Ernesto Mentira (which means “earnest lie” in Spanish).
The ad serves not only as a real advertisement for Florimbi’s show, but as a satirical jab at the real estate world and its cult of personality. The piece, which was published in the February 17 issue of Casa Magazine, looks so realistic, it’s hard to tell if it’s real or a fake—which could be said of the image presented by real estate ads as well as the realtors themselves (many of whom used outdated photos of themselves making them look younger and thinner than they are).
Together, the pieces in Imminent Domain shed harsh light on the issue of buying and selling something intangible through exaggeration, of trying to sell dreams through artistic deception. The effect is delightful mockery that, at the same time, is wholly intolerant of insincerity—in any century’s terms.
- Molly Freedenberg
