Please Save the Date: Gregg Chadwick’s Art Coming to "The Other Art Fair" in Downtown L.A. March 15 - March 18, 2018

Gregg Chadwick
City Lights (Chaplin's Night)
48”x36” oil on linen 2017

Gregg Chadwick will have a booth at the inaugural Los Angeles edition of The Other Art Fair which comes to Downtown Los Angeles from March 15-18. Chadwick will show a selection of artworks from his traveling exhibition Mystery Train, which examines the mythos of America as seen through the physical and cultural history of the railroad in the United States, and also a new series of works that engage the viewer in the story of Los Angeles.

Hosted at the Majestic Downtown, and presented by the world's leading online art gallery Saatchi Art, the Fair showcases work by 110 talented emerging artists, each hand picked by a selection committee of art world experts. Art lovers can visit the fair with the confidence that they are buying from the very best and most promising emerging artists in a unique and immersive experience.

“Overflowing with creative talent” 
Time Out

"The Other Art Fair's got hipster credentials, but it's serious about nurturing talent too."

Telegraph Luxury

The Other Art Fair will make its LA debut at the Majestic Downtown from March 15th – 18th 2018. Tickets for the fair are now live and for more information about the fair program visit la.theotherartfair.com

Hours for the art fair are:

• Thursday, March 15: 6 to 9:30 p.m. (private viewing, with limited tickets available)
• Friday, March 16: 12 p.m. to 9 p.m.
• Saturday, March 17: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
• Sunday, March 18: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Early Bird tickets are currently available online for Friday, Saturday and Sunday admission for just $8. After January 8, tickets will start at $15. Admission to the private viewing on Thursday is $30.

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Details

Start:

March 15

End:

March 18

              Event Category:

art

Website:

http://la.theotherartfair.com/

https://www.greggchadwick.com 

Venue

Majestic Downtown

650 South Spring Street 

Los Angeles, 90014 United States

Website:

https://themajesticdowntown.com

Gregg Chadwick

Mystery Train (20th Century Limited)

60”x48” oil on linen 2016

"Elvis Has Left the Building" at L Ross Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee

by Gregg Chadwick

My paintings Pink Cadillac (Elvis at Graceland) and Memphis Train (Arcade Restaurant) have just arrived at the L Ross Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee for my latest exhibition. They will join my painting Suspicion (Elvis Presley) in the exhibition Elvis Has Left the Building which runs from August 2 - 31. This group show, which has become a notable annual event for the L Ross Gallery, will kick off with an opening reception on Friday, August 4 from 6 – 9 pm.

In my recent Clark Hulings Fund podcast with Daniel DiGriz, DiGriz caught me implying that Elvis is alive. On the walls of the L Ross Gallery this August, Elvis does live on, but as Fredric Koeppel writes,"his memory is slowly fading and becoming the stuff of rumor and legend tending toward oblivion." The show title makes this poignantly clear. I have been reading Ray Connolly's new book Being Elvis: A Lonely Life which deftly examines Elvis' life through the lens of Memphis in the 1940's and 1950's. Childhood poverty and class aspirations spurred Elvis on in a way that left no room for error in his art but left his life dangerously open to misfortune and eventual tragedy. 

At the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in Tupelo, Mississippi on September 26, 1956, Elvis played a powerful, homecoming show in the town where he was born in a two-room shack 21 years before. Elvis had left Tupelo when he was thirteen. In the interim, Elvis had become Tupelo's most famous person. As Ray Connolly recounts in Being Elvis: A Lonely Life : "Elvis put on a special show that day...It was staged outside the fairgrounds in front of a large tent, and, as he sang in the afternoon show, he could see over in the background, a long freight train rolling past." Starting on that day, as the concert closed, Elvis and the band slipped off stage through a trap door. No encores that day nor in the future. Instead an announcer would express over the PA system that "Elvis has left the building." 

Gregg Chadwick

Suspicion (Elvis Presley)

36”x36” oil on linen 2016

“Gregg Chadwick takes the opposite stance in the oil-on-linen Elvis Presley (Suspicion). Here, a familiar depiction of the singer is rendered in blurry, shadowy lines, as if his memory is slowly fading and becoming the stuff of rumor and legend tending toward oblivion.”
                          - Fredric Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal

Gregg Chadwick

Memphis Train (Arcade Restaurant)

Boxed and Ready for Unveiling

20”x24” oil on linen 2017

My painting Memphis Train (Arcade Restaurant), is steeped in the musical history of the city and pays homage to Jim Jarmusch's 1989 film Mystery Train. The Arcade Restaurant which graces the painting is a major player in Jarmusch's cinematic ode to Memphis and Elvis. Across the street from the Arcade is Memphis Central Station which opened for railroad service in 1914. My painting reflects the rich, diverse past, present, and future of Memphis. I listened to the Junior Parker song Mystery Train, which supplied Jarmusch his film title, as I painted. I also listened to Elvis' cover version of the song. Two brilliant renditions. 

The city of Memphis itself tells many deeply American stories. Memphis can claim an important role in the development of the Blues and Rock n' Roll.  The legend goes that W.C. Handy, who lived in Memphis from 1909-1917, wrote one of the earliest blues songs, St. Louis Blues, in a bar on Beale Street in 1912.  During the 1940s and 1950s, Memphis was  home to B.B. King, Junior Parker, Johnny Ace, and Joe Hill Louis.  R&B and gospel music label Duke Records began in Memphis in 1952. Also in 1952, Sam Phillips started Sun Records, the seminal early rock and blues home.  Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins,  Jerry Lee Lewis, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner,, and Roy Orbison created powerful early recordings at Sun Studio.

Layers of paint today on "Memphis Train" #art #MysteryTrain #Memphis #culture @arcaderestaurant

A post shared by Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) on Apr 25, 2017 at 3:02pm PDT

Gregg Chadwick

Pink Cadillac (Elvis at Graceland) 

Boxed and Ready for Unveiling

24”x30” oil on linen 2017

My painting Pink Cadillac (Elvis at Graceland), like many of my artworks, went through a process of change and revision. Like a time traveler drifting into the past, Pink Cadillac, began in our present era and shifted as the painting developed back into the 1950's. As if in a dream, I found myself in front of Graceland watching Elvis slowly walk away. Knowing that Bruce Springteen had written his song Fire especially for Elvis, I listened to a mix of Bruce and Elvis as I painted. As Ray Connolly writes in Being Elvis: A Lonely Life: "at the time of Elvis' death" Springsteen was trying to get the song to Elvis in Graceland. Springsteen never learned if it reached the King.

Springsteen when remembering his childhood expressed that "I couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to be Elvis Presley." Springsteen's fandom reached a pinnacle when after a concert in Memphis on the Born to Run tour in 1976, Bruce jumped the wall outside Graceland that night and made it to the front door hoping to meet Elvis in person. Security guards told him that Elvis was in Lake Tahoe and not available and then escorted him back to the street.

 Springsteen described the night, "'And it took us out there in the middle of the night, and I remember we got outta the cab, and we stood there in front of those gates with the big guitar players on 'em. And when we looked up the driveway, in the second story of the house, you could see a light on, and I figured that Elvis has gotta be up readin' or somethin'. And I told Steve, I said, 'Steve, man, I gotta go check it out.' And I jumped up over the wall and I started runnin' up the driveway, which when I look back on it now was kind of a stupid thing to do because I hate it when people do it at my house.

'Anyway, at the time, I was filled with the enthusiasm of youth and ran up the driveway and I got to the front door and I was just about to knock, and guards came out of the woods and they asked me what I wanted. And I said, 'Is Elvis home?' Then they said, 'No, no, Elvis isn't home, he's in Lake Tahoe'. So, I started to tell 'em that I was a guitar player and that I had my own band, and that we played in town that night, and that I made some records. And I even told 'em I had my picture on the cover of Time and Newsweek. I had to pull out all the stops to try to make an impression, you know. I don't think he believed me, though, 'cause he just kinda stood there noddin' and then he took me by the arm and put me back out on the street with Steve. 

'Later on, I used to wonder what I would have said if I'd knocked on the door and if Elvis had come to the door because it wasn't really Elvis I was goin' to see. But, it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear, and somehow we all dreamed it. And maybe that's why we're here tonight, I don't know. 

I remember later, when a friend of mine called to tell me that he'd died, it was so hard to understand how somebody whose music came in and took away so many people's loneliness and gave so many people a reason and a sense of the possibilities of living could have, in the end, died so tragically. And I guess when you're alone, you ain't nothin' but alone."

Elvis has indeed left the building, but the echo of his presence remains.

Gregg Chadwick
The Alchemist (Elvis in Headphones) 
monotype, oil, and pastel on paper 14"x11" 2017 

Behind the microphone at Sun Studio in Memphis #lrossgallery #ElvisWeek #memphis

A post shared by Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) on Aug 12, 2016 at 9:18am PDT

Mystery Train at 10th Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk

Fresh from my solo exhibition at the Sandra Lee Gallery in San Francisco and the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair, a number of paintings from my current series of train inspired artworks will be on view at the Santa Monica Art Studios on March 12, 2016 from 12-5 pm as part of the 10th Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk.  

Gregg Chadwick’s Mystery Train and Open Studio

SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2016

12-5 PM

Studio #15

Santa Monica Art Studios

3026 Airport Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90405

Free parking outside the hangar.

More on Mystery Train at www.greggchadwick.com

#mysterytrain

Gregg Chadwick Artist Talk on Feb 27th 2016 - Last Week for Mystery Train at Sandra Lee Gallery and More Studio Notes from Gregg Chadwick - Winter 2016

  I reorganized my paints yesterday after fervent months in the studio painting the work for Mystery Train. Tubes of oil paint squeezed into empty twisted shells and stray caps marked only by a tell tale ring of color  were discarded. Brushes, newly cleaned, stand at attention ready for new work. A clean glass palette now sits on top of a used stack of brightly daubed surfaces. Painting trains seems to bring daily reminders of change, of process, of journeys. When a train or plane turns around for its trip back home, there is little time for introspection. Vehicles are cleaned, engines refueled, often a new crew is added - new passengers and new travels await. As Mystery Train prepares to depart San Francisco, I ask you to celebrate with me at a closing party and artist talk on February 27th at the Sandra Lee Gallery (details below) if you are in the Bay Area. I have listed below a series of events, exhibitions, press, and more that give a glimpse into the excitement around Mystery Train and my art. Thanks for taking the time to look at and ponder my paintings!
Hope to see you soon. - Gregg Chadwick

1. Artist Talk and Closing Party for Mystery Train on Saturday, February 27, 2016 2-4pm 

      Santa Monica-based artist Gregg Chadwick  has been painting for three decades. His current studio is an old airplane hangar where the flurry of takeoffs and landings on the runway outside seems to creep into Chadwick’s paintings as he explores movement and travel within his light-filled paintings.  His current series of paintings is entitled ‘Mystery Train’ and evokes the railways of America that Chadwick says run in his blood. His grandfather worked as a fireman, stoking coal in steam engines before advancing to train engineer on the Jersey Central Line. Chadwick often says that family gatherings brought the rhythms of the rails home. The sounds of railroad workers echoed in the music that Chadwick’s relatives played in the shadows of the train lines outside. For Chadwick and many others such as writer Greil Marcus, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, and musicians Junior Parker and Elvis Presley, the enduring mythos of America and its legacy is wrapped in the blues notes of the song ‘Mystery Train’. Chadwick will speak about these influences and how they shaped his current paintings.

       Sandra Lee Gallery 

      251 Post Street, Suite 310

San Francisco, CA 94108

415.291.8000

art@sandraleegallery.com

2. Gregg Chadwick's 'Mystery Train' Celebrates the Rhythms of the Rails! by Kathy Leonardo
Read more about Mystery Train in the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-leonardo-/gregg-chadwicks-mystery-t_b_9203570.html?utm_hp_ref=arts&ir=Art

3. Much thanks to Alan Bamberger for his photos and comments on the "Mystery Train" opening at Sandra Lee Gallery on Feb 4 -
Sandra Lee Gallery: Mystery Train - Gregg Chadwick.
Comment by AB: "Dreamy dynamic portrayals recall the heyday of rail travel and the nostalgia it evokes."
More from Alan at: http://artbusiness.com/1open/020416.html

4.  Mystery Train: Influences and Inspiration (Videos and More) http://www.greggchadwick.com/Gregg_Chadwick/Mystery_Train__Influences_and_Inspiration_%28Videos_and_More%29/Mystery_Train__Influences_and_Inspiration_%28Videos_and_More%29.html

5. A selection of Gregg Chadwick’s paintings from the Mystery Train series was exhibited at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair from February 11-14 in the Sandra Lee Gallery booth. 
(Photo by Eric Minh Swenson) Gregg spoke at the booth on February 12, 2016. Jersey Rain (Across the Tracks) was illustrated in the catalog and Gregg’s talk was featured as well.
http://www.palmspringsfineartfair.com/gregg-chadwick/

6. A solo exhibition of Gregg Chadwick’s paintings entitled Cities in Time, hangs through March 2016 at Vedder Price in Century City, California.

7. Gregg Chadwick’s painting Pigalle is featured on the cover of the latest issue of
    Black Fox Literary Magazine.
http://www.blackfoxlitmag.com/

8. A Balance of Shadows: Gregg Chadwick's Paintings 
    Authored by Kent Chadwick
    Hardcover – February 6, 2016

     Available Online at Amazon