Lainna FaderBrainfeeder audio-visual artist Strangeloop opened his new gallery show at Gus Harper Studios on Saturday night. The exhibit featured limited-edition prints of stills from his latest A/V release Fields, drawings, sketches, paintings, video installations, and performances from Teebs, Austin Peralta, Vanessa Fernandez, Micah Nelson, and JonWayne. Several hundred people crammed into the small Westside gallery for a celebration of the works of one of L.A.'s most-talented multimedia artists.
Gus Harper Studios; Credit: Lainna Fader
Austin Peralta and Teebs; Credit: Lainna Fader
Strangeloop–aka David Wexler–wrote Fields in three days after hearing the composition in his head during a particularly inspiring DMT trip in Portland. Spread across three movements–“Plants Inside,” “Ghostlines,” and “Becoming Fields”–it is an epic journey into Wexler's head as he explores altered states of consciousness, the nature of human perception, and his relationship to the Nawgu deity — you know, the God of Psychedelic Media.
Fields viewing room; Credit: Lainna Fader
Fields was projected against a curvilinear screen in one of the gallery's viewing rooms, allowing only a handful of people to experience it at a time. The film looped all evening, as attendees wandered through the gallery space studying the evolution of Wexler's art and taking in the sounds of his favorite beat-smiths.
With its Steve Reich-inspired minimalism and subtle textural soundscapes, Fields is quite different from Wexler's last A/V release, the heavily beat-driven dystopian opus 2010: [or] How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Technological Singularity. With Fields, Wexler explores something utopian and far more personal than his previous experiments, contemplating the patterns and feelings of our world.
STRANGELOOP // FIELDS mov. 1 of 3 from StrangeLoop on Vimeo.
The work endlessly folds and loops into itself, creating a tapestry of delicate beats and gentle bass, with tentacles of light swelling and bending. Beautiful and awe-inspiring, Fields creates a space that's both comforting and challenging, one that Wexler says he hopes viewers feel like they can always return to.
Fields – Enter the Loop; Credit: Strangeloop
Strangeloop's drawings; Credit: Lainna Fader
Wexler started making electronic music at age 14, helping found the electronic music department at his high school, and has been drawing since childhood. The son of Academy Award-nominated sound mixer Jeff Wexler and grandson of Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, his forays into the film world date back to his college days with Flying Lotus at the San Francisco Academy of Art. Several of his works have earned accolades at film festivals, and last March he performed a live score for Harry Smith's 1962 avant-garde feature film Heaven and Earth Magic at the Ann Arbor Film Festival with Flying Lotus.
Fields comes out Tuesday on Brainfeeder. He will perform at Low End Theory this Wednesday with Teebs and the regular Low End cast. The Fields gallery show will run through July 30th.
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