Leslie Sacks Contemporary is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings and monoprints by Los Angeles artist Charles Christopher Hill entitled Five by Five. The gallery will also be exhibiting a suite of three large-scale etchings by Richard Serra, Levels, 2008.

Throughout his career Charles Christopher Hill’s paintings have investigated texture, finish, and materials. In his most recent body of work, Hill has created paintings that relate to the sculptural works of Finish Fetish artist, Larry Bell (the cubes) and Peter Alexander (the wedges).

In paintings like With Reflections, 2011, Hill paints bands across the canvas in excess of fifty times using a full spectrum of color with the final application being a dense red (or black). In between each layer of paint he applies an acrylic varnish. The built up layers of the two acrylic materials (the varnish and the paint) create a saturated, lustrous, glossy surface. Echoing the ideas behind the light and space / finish fetish movement the paintings play with light, environment, and special relationships.

Hill’s monoprints can be understood as the reversal of his paintings. An etching press is substituted for a brush and canvas, the result of which is a greater depth of color and a rich, coarse matte surface. The paintings require a step back to absorb the work in its environment, conversely the intimate scale of monoprints demand a closer look.

Charles Christopher Hill’s contribution to art in Southern California will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Best Kept Secret: UCI and the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California, 1964-1971, part of the Getty Research Institute’s Pacific Standard Time program.

Leslie Sacks Contemporary has worked with premier ateliers for nearly 3 decades to produce exhibitions of prints and multiples by some of the world’s leading artists. In keeping in this tradition, the gallery is presenting an exhibition of Richard Serra’s Levels, 2008 in collaboration with preeminent Los Angeles publisher Gemini G.E.L. This minimalist exhibition of three large-scale etchings bears a strong relationship to Serra’s sculpture, as they engage a sense of balance and space by altering the horizon line in the room. The works are exhibited without glazing allowing the gravity and weight of the etchings to be fully present and uninterrupted. The dense, asphalt-like texture in these etchings is reminiscent of the oil stick drawings that are currently on view in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition Richard Serra Drawing.