Sweat Baby Sweat

Gildar Gallery invites you to get wet at SWEAT BABY SWEAT, a summer group show at our pop-up space in sunny Los Angeles. Curated by LA-based artist, Adam Stamp, this exhibition brings together friends of both Adams (Stamp and Gildar) from New York, Mexico City, Denver, Portland, and Los Angeles. SWEAT BABY SWEAT gathers a group of artists whose subjective concerns are integral to the fantasies and realities of Los Angeles - addressing the more obvious traits of heat, sexiness, carnality, obsession, excess, and outward mobility or the less told stories of loneliness, alienation, failure, and defeat. Whether looking at the shining surface or the dark underbelly of a land where big dreams go to live and die, a stalwart ability to laugh it off is requisite for long-term survival. So too a discernible sense of humor persists within the works in Sweat Baby Sweat. The term "sweat" circulates as an unencumbered cultural signifier, with its duel interpretation being equally valid in light of the show. While sweat takes into account the varied sensory experiences connected to vigorous pleasure, sex, dancing, summer, and the sun, it is equally connected to the notion of hard labor. Despite real-world/art-world obstacles, work flows uninhibitedly from each creator. The act of work is both an extension of the self and central to each artist's cult of personality, so any labor, in a traditional sense, comes naturally. For each of these artists, distinctions between exuberant play and strenuous undertaking dissolve in the heat of their oft-possessed creative practice. Los Angeles, the city that practically invented summer, is the ideal setting to gather this cohort of hot, hardworking artists from across North America. An exhibit that turns its back on the notion on summer group shows as lazy and boring, Sweat Baby Sweat makes a strong statement about the changing conditions of a 24/7/365 art-world. During the season of elaborate vacations and the coveted summer break, these artists just can't stop, won't stop putting in work.