FANATIC : EDWARD WALTON WILCOX - Opening Reception May 15, 2010

With his gothic sensibilities and taste for the romantic period in painting Wilcox imagines the distances and expanses we all must navigate in our own subconscious landscapes. Wilcox explores our warlike inclinations in an installation piece titled A Little Paranoia Goes a Long Way, featuring two large glass cabinets containing ten Belgian assault rifles preciously displayed as if they were artifacts of reverence, objects of aggressive meditation, or apocalyptic contemplation.
The show includes paintings and works of sculpture that modulate between the stark realities of our age and the dreamlike musings of a mind in denial. Hauntingly beautiful, the work is overt in its reference to Gothic convention, in both content and physical facture. Wilcox's use of primitive materials, such as wood, glass, rabbit skin glues, Italian pitch and gesso lend an old world authenticity to the crockets, tracery and other conventions of gothic carpentry that caricaturize the multi-disciplined art of Edward Walton Wilcox.

LA Weekly and Village Voice’s David Cotner states, “Wilcox's work is a brilliant and romantic star hurtling through the same galaxy as fellow travelers Odd Nerdrum and Hieronymous Bosch, so if you like your aesthetic dread spiked with the imploding placid inevitable, then this is the art for you.”