June 25th through August 6th, 2022
Leon is proud to present Denver artist s.legg, in his first exhibition with the gallery, including sculptures, photographs and videos.
Artist Statement:
I don’t give a rat’s ass about artists, i love Art. If artwork is done well, it far exceeds any intent by the artist. After finishing a piece, the artist needs to step back and let the work take on a life of its own. The artist is just a part of the process and is therefore no more important than the paint, clay, film or instrument that they work with. We are all products of the time we live in. All our thoughts, actions and creations come from our social, political and historical context. In a sense, we all made this artwork. Just like when someone gets gunned down or gives birth, we are all in part, murderers and creators by association. We are all connected, like it or not, for better or worse.
s.legg
Artist Bio:
Always restless, i had lived in Boston, New York, San Diego, Chicago, Miami, and for a brief while the Sahara Desert, before coming to Colorado. In the cities i learned that everyone has their own point of view on absolutely everything. In the desert i learned that silence is the most welcome opinion. After my desert sojourn i realized the two things i dislike most are noise and subjectivity. I also came to the realization that the photographic art i’d been making was no longer enough. I’d gone from glorifying highway overpasses, tree trunks (i called them torsos), covered cars, empty pools and other ostensibly banal things to assembling photo grids, making videos and creating outdoor installations. Finally, i left photography altogether and began putting together sculptures in the round. My love of the ubiquitous every day things that go virtually unnoticed in our lives carried over from my photography into my sculptural work.
I began assembling the objects that we see so often that we don’t see them anymore, together into singular pieces. I discovered that by combining the unseen and cast off it gave them power and strength. Ten years ago, in order to instill as much objectivity as possible in my life and work, and to achieve the quiet i yearned for, i began a year of silence. I wanted to just listen for a while so i could take in all points of view from those around me without tainting them with my own spoken subjectivity. My year of silence turned into over fourteen months as i did not want to go back to being “noisy” again. One of the many things i learned during that time is that we are all basically the same, and that we limit ourselves by striving to be separate. By categorizing ourselves into genders, races, political parties and religions, we limit ourselves with subjective ideologies. Therefore i vowed to strive to see everything from all points of view, and then later, from no point of view at all. I now try to make objective sculptures that are multifaceted. Assemblages of everything, that apply to everyone, and no one in particular. Work that doesn’t scream in your face, but whispers urgently in your ear and tells you things that deep down we all already know.