NOON Projects is pleased to present Family Feud/

Being Wrong, an installation of mixed media works

by David Shull. For his first solo exhibition in Los

Angeles, Shull brings to fruition a body of work that

has coalesced over the past decade. Underpinning

the installation is a cosmology of forms that

utilize the sum of their parts to relay narratives

about psychology, justice, the manifestations of

societal fears, and, generally, the residue of the

human experience through the intuitive

appropriation of formal art historical tropes.

Loosely inspired by quilt making, Shull’s paintings

have been sewn together with various textiles to

take the form of flags or banners. Without the

armature of the stretcher bar, these flags become

even more sculptural, hanging freely from the wall

on brackets and rods or from steel structures in

the middle of the gallery. For many of the works a

“digital zero” or “X” motif is used as the scaffolding

to explore gestural abstraction and minimalism as

if the paintings are saying “No” or “Wrong.” In

another work, Imagine Solitary Confinement

Abolished, jumbled panels with brushy gestures

of black ink on a white ground is conflated with

painted text. A nod to John Lennon’s, Imagine,

the work both challenges the viewer to literally

imagine something completely unrelated to

standing in a gallery and guides the viewer

towards a through line narrative that pervades

the exhibition. It is clear that the artist is nudging

the opacity of minimalism and abstraction in an

effort to explore how Painting communicates

meaning.

In the video work and namesake of the exhibition,

Family Feud, the gameshow is edited down to

the moments when contestants get the wrong

answer and, like in many of the paintings, an “X”

or multiple “X's” appear on the screen along with an

abrupt and jarring buzz. When out of context, the

wrong answers become social commentary that

highlight a perpetual disappointment or thwarted

aspiration.

On the whole, the installation forms an automatic

visual poetry that circles around the idea of

“othering” or being wrong. While enigmatic, there

is a familiarity in Shull’s work that usurps

inaccessible concepts in high art, making them

legible as he confronts real undercurrents of

societal dynamics.