Jesse Draxler – “Table Of Losses”

“Table of Losses,” a solo exhibition by Jesse Draxler at No Gallery – 961 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Social Distance Reception: October 1st, 3-8 pm.

Dark times call for dark art: rich blacks, bleak themes and angry words. Dark times also call for the dark arts: concocting rituals, casting spells, and brandishing symbols for protection and solace. Jesse Draxler’s newest exhibition Table of Losses layers these impulses perfectly pitched to the individual and collective horror of the Covid-19 crisis.

On display in the former Black Dragon Society gallery space on Chinatown, Los Angele’s Chung King Road, Draxler’s most ambitious body of work to date captures the pain and despair of this historical moment while also offering glimpses of hope and even humor. Monumental panels featuring images of chandeliers are dense and textured, disclosing the tremors at our foundations that threaten to destroy fragile webs of value and beauty. Draxler’s “conglomerations” of works made before and after Covid arrived in the US combine mediums (paint, pasted paper, appropriated images) and formal languages from high, commercial, and street art in ritualistic combinations. The snarls of materials, signs, and symbols function both as sites for expression and shields from danger. Textual works reproduce and reinvent the cascade of messages coming from all directions, while silent screams ripple across serial appropriations. With tones ranging from deadpan to seething, the works in Table of Losses powerfully negotiate surface and depth, interior and exterior—what we keep private and what must become public.

Originally scheduled for July 2020, Table of Losses reveals important evolutions of Draxler’s visual art practice and is the artist’s third major solo exhibition with NO Gallery director Casey Gleghorn. It is the first exhibition in NO Gallery’s new pop-up format, which provides pointed and timely responses to local and global conditions.

The work of Jesse Draxler (b. 1983) has appeared previously in Los Angeles at NO Gallery (2019). Draxler had solo exhibitions in New York at the Booth Gallery in 2017 and 2016, and has been in exhibitions across Europe at galleries in Munich, London, Paris, Hamburg, and Berlin. Draxler collaborates with brands including Hugo Boss, McQ Alexander McQueen, and Ferrari, with original artwork appearing in Elle, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among other publications. He lives and works in Los Angeles.