Max Presneill is a Los Angeles based artist and curator, originally from London, UK.

[caption id="attachment_14528" align="alignleft" width="500"] Redact 024, 2014. Limited Edition Print by Max Presneill[/caption]

As an artist he has shown throughout the world including New York, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Istanbul, Sydney, Guangzhou and Tokyo and is represented by the Garboushian Gallery, Beverly Hills and Gallery Lara in Tokyo as well as the Durden & Ray collective. His work has been included in the Istanbul Biennial and the Yokohama Triennial as well as recently at the UCITY Art Museum in Guangzhou, Campbell Works in London, Gallery Lara, Tokyo, and Norte Maar in New York. He has upcoming shows in 2015 including the Freies Museum in Berlin, Hilger Contemporary in Vienna, Espace des Arts Sans Frontieres, Paris and others. His paintings deal with memory, identity, existential states and the possibility of political action through painting. 

Currently he is the Head Curator for the Torrance Art Museum as well as Curatorial Director of ARTRA Curatorial, an independent curatorial projects management team who organize international exhibition exchanges as well as the MAS ATTACK series of pop-up exhibitions. He has extensive experience internationally as a curator having organized exhibitions for museums, institutes and galleries in the US and UK, the Netherlands, Japan, France, Mexico, China, Turkey, Australia, and more. His curatorial interests are with artist led projects, emerging art, new models for curatorial methodologies and an international scope for partnerships and exchanges.

The core ideas in Presneill's practice have always revolved around notions of mortality, the mark as presence and the decisions and choices in painting that imply a type of existentialism. Max is concerned with issues to do with the nature of free will and choice and how invested beliefs in our lives allow us fulfillment – as the act of painting, a process of self-defined questions and answers within a larger language system, is inherently. The paintings concentrate on this act as both a literal thing – the making of a mark of presence, as well as a metaphor for the philosophical position.

Another important thread is the possibility of a political awareness engaging the viewer through the process of abstraction. The key word for Presneill over the last year has been REDACTED or our current relationship to government, corporate structures, et al, is at present. The zeitgeist of our recent times seems to reflect that distrust. Presneill's hope is that the constant applying of marks and their negation through further marks can act as a reflection of the struggles against Power and the constant battle for supremacy between the People and the interests of Authority.

Visit Max Presneill's PORTFOLIO to see the current selection of limited edition prints.

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Gertrude Stein has long been a source of inspiration for us; from her rule breaking writing to her infamous salon where she hosted meetings and discussions with the avant-garde artists of her generation like Picasso & Matisse. Always a keen lover and supporter of the visual arts, Stein has an infamous quote ' You can either buy clothes or you can buy pictures.' It is this quote that has served as an inspiration for our latest shoot. Some of our young collectors shed their clothing for their love of art, and together with photographer Justin Nicholas of Atmosphere Photography we have captured some fun images of collectors interacting with their TWFINEART limited editions: #love

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2015 also means the awaited release of a series of work by Jenny Sharaf in limited edition print. I used to work with the legendary artist Lynda Benglis and was always fascinated by her poured latex rubber paintings. Sharaf uses Lynda as inspiration and utilizes a similar technique to create masterful works of poured paint that are beautiful improvised works of color and form. In true post modern fashion, Sharaf's practice utlizes a variety of mediums to creates wonderful works that embrace not only art history but the sensation of contemporary culture. Sharaf was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in San Francisco, CA. Through painting, video, works on paper, and installation, Sharaf explores the mythology of the California girl, the role of the female artist, and the image of the 21st century woman in order to illuminate the evolving generational shifts of feminism and contemporary notions of the gaze. Working in abstraction, her imagery encompasses trashy reality media, sophisticated starlets, pop culture and psychedelic skin-referencing forms of bright color. While examining the complexity of feminism’s legacy, Sharaf works with images that reflect on this loaded history and explores her niche within a generation of women who appear disconnected from that struggle. As a California blond herself, she maps a history and discourse of blondes in the media and adopts tropes of pop art, abstract expressionist painting and low-brow media. Sharaf has shown in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. She also has a strong curatorial practice and is devoted to the Bay Area art scene. Her recent projects have been featured in the Huffington Post, SF Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal and New York Times’ T-Blog. [caption id="attachment_13301" align="aligncenter" width="628"] Flower Face, 2014. Limited Edition Print by Jenny Sharaf[/caption] [caption id="attachment_13300" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Poured Painting II, 2014. Limited Edition Print by Jenny Sharaf[/caption]  

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Launching this month will be a collaborative venture between Brooklyn artist Ed Granger and TWFINEART. We have worked together to bring to you 8 exclusive works by the artist in limited edition print.

Ed Granger's Art + Context

“At once composed and formless, I owe an obvious debt to the Fauvists’ supremacy of color over form, an aesthetic approach in harmony—or is it tension?—within these structurally informed compositions. Granger's background in architecture is evident is his compositions. Their controlled fluidity is an intentional effort to create something at once structured and formless, but also allowing the process to happen by chance. His works are about being synchronized in time and space and Granger's intent is to allow his work to act as a vessel to receive a conscious awareness of these subconscious events of daily life, which embodies one’s abnormal physical and psychological stages.”

Granger's work represents awkwardly beautiful fantasy worlds. Nature is a subtle, understated condition in my work. I have always been interested in creating works that asks the viewer to participate in the dialogue and or interaction between objects and their environment.

Granger collect things that have a nostalgic or dreamlike feel that would represent an oeuvre of spirited work that inhibit thought, and early nostalgia electricity with painterly qualities and color over direct representation and realistic values. As he works his way through each layer, the older, beginning layers start to fade away and allow them work their way into the foreground of the composition. Based on his experimental qualities, Ed chooses how the material and its physical presence can rely on another material to do something peculiar and sometimes obscure, to create a language of it’s own. By deconstructing these elements and putting them back together in a pure yet raw fashion, he able to find a repetitive process that engages the viewer and makes you question your senses, which is the source of matter and the space in which we exist. (through our senses is why we choose to live this physical existence) The overlapping of these materials is also way to collect memories or revert back to lost moments, dreams, or childhood.

[caption id="attachment_13264" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Smeared, 2014. Limited Edition Print by Ed Granger[/caption] [caption id="attachment_13266" align="aligncenter" width="542"] Checkered, 2014. Limited Edition Print by Ed Granger[/caption]  

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This week we collaborated with US artist Matt Sheridan to bring you his AMAZING work in limited edition print.

Sheridan's aim is to relocate, redefine and re-materialize spirituality in the age of the algorithm.  To that end, Sheridan imagines how the mediums of painting and video -- made concurrently and complementarily in his practice --  combine through orchestrated movement, location, and editing.  His paintings -- hand-painted actions spliced together on canvases originating from film editing techniques -- inform his videos and vice-versa.  Each painting compresses the time of its video counterpart into object; likewise, each of Sheridan’s “painting-in-motion” videos unpacks its painting analog into experience in the form of architectural projections and video sculptures.  Sheridan received his MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and his BFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts in New York.  He has exhibited his work internationally for two decades, most recently in Miami, the XXII Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia; France, Brazil and New York (all 2014).  Since a teaching stint in Singapore ending in 2010, Sheridan has participated in six prestigious artist residencies on three continents while receiving grants from the Center for Cultural Innovation, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and SECULT--Secretary of Culture, Bahia, Brazil.  For more information, please visit: www.msheridanstudio.com

[caption id="attachment_11617" align="aligncenter" width="448"] Analog Feedback Loop B, 2013. Art by Matt Sheridan[/caption]

We are so excited to bring you work by such an internationally respected and critically acclaimed artist! Visit his page in our SHOP.

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