HVW8

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON – LOS ANGELES

A two person collaborative exhibition by Kosuke Kawamura and Cali DeWitt

“Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse” – James Dean

“My whole life has been decided by fate. I’ve never planned anything that’s happened to me.” – Sharon Tate

HVW8 Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to present HOLLYWOOD BABYLON, a two-person collaborative exhibition featuring works from Kosuke Kawamura and Cali Dewitt, with a public opening Friday July 1, from 1-6 pm.

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON is the counterpart to The Evil That Pursues Me Is The Same Evil That Pursues You, Kosuke and Cali’s first collaboration at S01 in Tokyo earlier this spring. In this follow-up collaborative exhibition, the two artists borrow methods of early hip-hop and punk methodology to assemble direct, poster-like images. Kawamura utilizes his signature “shredding” technique to remix and collage DeWitt’s iconic image/text dialectic compositions to create new dark pop interpolations of original monochromatic works that feature images of iconic and tragic celebrities.

Repurposing the title of Kenneth Anger’s book of scandals from Hollywood’s golden age, HOLLYWOOD BABYLON takes this theme one step further, updating the dark narratives of Hollywood with contemporary characters such as Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson, amongst the familiar fallen mainstays of Hollywood’s past. With titles of famous B-movies creating new seemingly dark but apt slogans, we derive new messages from the iconic images.

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON will be the first time Kosuke Kawamura has exhibited in Los Angeles.