David Lyle Lampoons the Works of Pop Artist Jeff Koons in The Creative Process (All Photos By Gail)

Lyons Wier Gallery is currently hosting Everyone’s A Critic, a new body of work by artist David Lyle. Working from found vintage and vernacular photographs, Lyle seamlessly composes works that harken back to 1950’s and 1960’s America – not as they were, but skewed and reimagined by the artist.

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Lyle’s painstakingly reductive painting process is a very crucial element to the evolution of his final images. Each piece is rendered using only black paint and turpentine. He begins his process by priming a panel with white gesso. Lyle then paints a thin, rich, oily black veneer over the primed panel, slowly and systematically developing his images by removing some of the black paint with a cloth. In doing so, he renders layer upon layer of various values of black paint resulting in his signature-style of luminescent works.

The Forgery

In Everyone’s A Critic, we see how the artists’ methodology, combined with his acerbic wit, creates an altered reality rife with cynicism and bursting with humor. Lyle is impeccably faithful to the vintage photographs that inspire his work – until a point in which he instills a cultural reference so familiar, yet iconoclastic, as to leave the viewer wincing, laughing, or really thinking – often it is all three.

The Genius

This series presents a wonderfully caustic commentary on the art world. Lyle, who is one part voyeur and one part participant, creates images that embrace much of what mystifies the public about the art world – art that is not made by the artists’ themselves, money as an end game, art-speak, etc.

The Masterpiece

David Lyle’s Everyone’s A Critic will be on Exhibit Through March 14th, 2015 at Lyons Wier Gallery, Located at 542 West 24th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District.

The Dealer