Feature Inc. presents two one person exhibitions of works on paper. Both use a modest inventiveness and reveal delight in that. As well, they are each reductive on a variety of levels, are human in scale, and have an engaging physicality to their presence.

David Moreno: recent works on paper The recent works on paper of David Moreno are made using basic materials and simple rules. The titles name the iterative procedures which determine the compositions, and the works themselves reveal the physical process by which they were made, a performance of sorts. While there is an overall sense of reserve and restraint, it is there with a smile. Somehow the repetition along with a micro / macro sense of scale magnify procedure into meaning. It is curious that this is so clear yet exactly how it is achieved remains elusive.

Jerry Phillips: Phantom All the drawings in Phantom are found images that have been assembled into a collection of pictures that are less about debunking the documentary myth of photography than they are about utilizing what is at hand to create a personal menagerie. While we understand that images are used to manipulate, the artist takes these images and alters them for his own pleasure. There is an interest in the nebulous nature of depiction that leads into a place of uncertainty. Among this batch of drawings are two derived from the same source image. One is a manipulation of details in a photo of Brazilian prisoners who have been corralled on the roof of a prison after a riot, and the second further reduces the same visual information and presents the subject as residual abstraction. The working process is very slow and a day’s work often results in only a few inches of graphite on the paper’s surface. There is a continual struggle with craft, and as the artist noted, “I will disavow my relationship with technique until the end.”

David Moreno was born in Los Angeles in 1947, and lives in Brooklyn. He attended University of Arizona, Tuscon, 1982, and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, 1984-85. His first Feature Inc. exhibition occurred in 1989 and this is his tenth exhibition with the gallery.

Jerry Phillips lives in Little Rock, Arkansas and was born in Marshalltown, IA in 1958. He attended Florida State University, Tallahassee, for his BA, and California Institute of Arts for his MFA, 1993. He has made six solo exhibitions with Feature Inc., his first being in 1997.