And there it stood for years, stranded like some gargantuan dream beside Sunset Boulevard. Long after Griffith’s great leap into the unknown his Sun Play of the Ages, Intolerance, had failed; long after Belshazzar’s court had sprouted weeds and its walls had begun to peel and warp in abandoned movie-set disarray; after the Los Angeles Fire Department had condemned it as a fire hazard, still it stood: Griffith’s Babylon, something of a reproach and something of a challenge to the burgeoning movie town – something to surpass, something to live down. – Kenneth Anger, Hollywood Babylon

BELLWETHER is pleased to present ADAM CVIJANOVIC’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Working in his favored medium of Flashe and latex paint on Tyvek, Cvijanovic will transform the main gallery into a stage set, surrounding viewers with theater flats depicting his interpretation of a scene from D.W. Griffith’s epic film, Intolerance, in which tens of thousands of Babylonians are overcome with the realization that they are about to be invaded by the Persians. Painted in a purple grisaille evocative of silent film, this gigantic painting installation explores themes of aspiration, ruin, cultural evolution, and the folly of creative hubris.

Cvijanovic’s inspiration for this exhibition is based upon the dramatic rise and fall of a cinematic pioneer. Fresh from the controversial success of The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith invested all of his wealth into a massive four-part narrative film called Intolerance. It was by far the most expensive cinematic undertaking of its time, due largely to the enormous, lavish set for its scenes of ancient Babylon. The film proved too challenging for audiences of the early 20th century and as a result Griffith succumbed to financial ruin, and the set of Babylon faced a similar fate, condemned to loom over downtown Hollywood for over a decade.

In this exhibition Cvijanovic conflates Griffith’s experience as a filmmaker and visionary with Los Angeles’s slow, entropic transformation from an untamed land full of promise to a city whose identity is defined by an increasingly commercial entertainment industry. In addition to the main painting installation the exhibition will contain two other components – a triptych painting of the rural, wild landscape of Hollywood as it was nearly a century ago, with Griffith’s set dominating the background, and a room of storyboard-style paintings on Mylar depicting everything from scenes from Intolerance to the gas stations and parking lots of contemporary Los Angeles. The overall effect is of a collapse in time, in which the dramatic deterioration of Griffith’s vision is aligned with the less spectacular, but more profound, societal transformation of Hollywood.

Cvijanovic’s decision to create a work of this scale and content – a contemporary historical painting based upon a film whose imagery was itself derived from the history of painting – comes at an important moment in the discourse of art and politics. The theme of hubris that pervades this exhibition applies to a range of eras and subjects, from the artist’s struggle with his own ambitions and creative ego, to the present-day conflict in Iraq – the modern-day Babylon. Cvijanovic does not propose a reconciled solution to this issue, opting instead to meditate upon the complex emotional and political implications of our choices as people and as nations.

Adam Cvijanovic has exhibited extensively in the US and abroad, including solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Notable group exhibitions include Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA Today at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and Adam Cvijanovic and Peter Garfield: Unhinged at Mass MOCA, Massachusetts. Cvijanovic will also participate in the upcoming PROSPECT.1 Biennial in New Orleans, and the Liverpool Biennial at Tate Liverpool.