Dilexi

Dilexi - A multivenue retrospective
Curated by Laura Whitcomb

2019
parrasch heijnen, Parker Gallery, The Landing, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Crown Point Press, and Brian Gross Fine Art
Los Angeles, California

The Dilexi multivenue retrospective (summer 2019) was conceived as a dispersed retrospective that reactivated the gallery’s legacy across multiple institutions in California and beyond, with each site addressing a different facet of its history and influence. It encompassed parrasch heijnen, Parker Gallery, The Landing, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles, as well as Crown Point Press and Brian Gross Fine Art in San Francisco, collectively tracing Dilexi’s impact across generations of West Coast artists and audiences. Anchored by these gallery presentations, the project was supported by a coordinated auxiliary program that extended Dilexi’s reach into academic, literary, experimental music, and New York art-world contexts.

This auxiliary program included a presentation at the Anderson Collection at Stanford, which framed Dilexi within the development of West Coast modernism; an online panel hosted by City Lights that situated the gallery in relation to Beat-era literary and political cultures; and an Other Minds event at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, where a performance and discussion with Jim Newman, Steve Seid, and others—moderated by Charles Desmarais, former art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle—revisited Dilexi’s role in avant-garde film, sound, and media. The network was rounded out by a conversation in New York between Laura Whitcomb and Ed Schlossberg, which repositioned Dilexi within a bi-coastal dialogue on experimental exhibition formats and artist-driven practices, underscoring how a once-local gallery now resonates across multiple geographies and disciplines.