Mr. Alex Weinstein provides a triumphant exhibition of rapturous Natural forms which extend into the appropriately fantastic with his Case for Beauty art opening at Leslie Sacks Gallery. His sagacity is in providing us with a florid of imaginative color to imbue our senses with something more than than an ocean-time memory, but one of a more seriously optimistic tone is captured throughout his paintings. In combination with his sculptural forms, we have the lovely introduction of beautiful fine art.

‘The Big Drawing, Neptune’s Net’ (2022)
Oil on canvas
85 1/2 x 108 inches. Courtesy of the artist Alex Weinstein and Leslie Sacks Gallery.

Central to his magnificence is the titularly presented The Big Drawing, Neptune’s Net (2022), a gargantuan 85 ½” x 108” (nearly 7’x11’). This is a confident artwork, of an artist that is absorbed into extending outward something more than memorabilia. But a judgment on how to approach the potential eternal. Does the event horizon welcome us, or does it inform us with a tincture of hostility? Self-evidently we are left awash in a flurry of yellow, so variegated in its visual representation we have an entire lexicon introduced to us! It is in this gradient of this natural color which is massaged into a warmth which moves us towards innocence; hopefulness; a gentle invitation into the abyss. Indeed, we are staring at one. But with the confidence in color (as I have proclaimed is necessarily good) Mr. Weinstein demonstrates more than blurs – it voids any semblance of worried and hurried thought as we are captured by an external idea of an external world which welcomes us to explore it.

(To Follow the Sun), 2021 60 x 78 inches. Oil on canvas over panel. Courtesy of the artist and Leslie Sacks Gallery.

It is this sentiment of Natural Beauty which the artist makes a terrific effort at fictionalizing. It is here, in the fantasy of the absorption of colors from his distinct impression of the shoreline, of its coastal cools and warmth which we are righteously exposed to; to help inform what is taken for granted by a Coastal Californian – and that is the perceptible limits of an ocean-horizon. Mr. Weinstein appeals for more than just the sumptuousness of the sun; he envelops his shimmery waters with that porous, pristine, air – to invite a dash of the tactile in our inhalation of that image which is beyond our ability to originate; beyond our control to form. This is the task of art, then: to inherit the Natural World and to extend its beauty in the most original of ways.

Ocean State #8, 2022
Polyester resin, fiberglass, oil paint
Diameter: 40 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Leslie Sacks Gallery.

Ocean State #2, 2022
Polyester resin, fiberglass, oil paint
Diameter: 20 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Leslie Sacks Gallery.

And this originality is seen not simply in what a cynic would detail as “embellishment”. His fiberglass ceramics are appropriately colored to give very discernible reflectances of natural illumination in their periodical movement through out the disk’s surface. There is more to Mr. Weinstein’s artwork than a simple replica of oceanic waves. His is an extension of the idea of the rhythmic tide to create a mental elixir of serenity amidst the cacophony of noisy waveforms which percolate invisibly through the air nowadays. It is, therefore, poignant that the artist chooses a circular object – that an aim at centeredness can be interpreted from such a representation of Natural formation.

For more details, please contact the Gallery:

Leslie Sacks Gallery

2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite B6
Santa Monica, California 90404

Email: gallery@lesliesacks.com
Phone: +1 310 264 0640
Fax: +1 310 264 0740