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TIM EBNER
Tim Ebner has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe since the mid 1980's and is in a number of prominent public and private collections. His work first began attracting critical attention in the early 1980's. Dana Friis-Hansen's 1988 catalog essay from "L.A. Hot and Cool" at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, provides a relatively accurate description of the work as well as an indication of how the work was typically perceived at the time:
"Since 1980, Tim Ebner has made abstract paintings which critique the nature and functions of abstract painting. Expanding upon the tradition of color field painting, the shaped canvas, expressionism, and minimalism in his elegant, highly-crafted single- or multi-panel works. Ebner's approach is nonetheless decidedly conceptual. With a savvy awareness of the contemporary art world, his process or product is embeded with an acknowledgment of galleries, museums, private collectors, interior decorators, theorists, art shippers and storage companies, who each contribute to the definition of his work. Ebner negotiates the double-edged sword of style and content, producing at once classical, visually elegant and clever, reasoned paintings."
"Ebner's calculated system for the determination of these glowing decorations follows the tradition of conceptualists such as Michael Asher, John Baldessari, or Sol Lewitt, though Ebner engages an object as well as the process in his critique of the painting as a commodity"
"Tim Ebner combines a visual elegance and unrelenting craftsmanship with a calculated intellectual investigation into the limited possibilities for painterly expression within a post-industrial mass market consumer society. Perhaps slightly flippant, his response is nonetheless sharp, sly, and seductive."
Then in 1992 in his first solo exhibit at Rosamund Felsen Gallery Ebner took off in a different direction.
"If you think you are familiar with L.A. artist Tim Ebner's work ... prepare to do a double take ..." - Susan Kandel, Los Angeles Times 1-10-92;
"Tim Ebner shocked his viewers by exhibiting paintings of monsters, dragons and beasts. Over the past decade he had built a considerable reputation showing slick, minimal abstractions ..." - David Pagel, Los Angeles Times 6-22-93;
"Tim Ebner was known in the late 1980's for abstract polished wood wall sculptures ... as he turned back to painting in ensuing years, his supporters became ever more alarmed ..." - David A. Greene, Los Angeles Reader 9-29-95.
Now that the dust has settled ...
