August 3 - September 2, 2023

First Thursday Reception: Thursday August 3, 5:30-7:30pm

The gallery is pleased to present Wanted: Ed Bereal for “Still Disturbing the Peace”, featuring new sculptural installations. The exhibition continues Bereal's many year examination of socio-political themes of racial inequity and corruption in the United States, but with a new material exploration using innovative technologies.

Known for his gestural drawings and meticulously crafted oil paintings and assemblage sculptures, for this exhibition, Bereal has created vertically suspended large-scale three dimensional artworks which the artist terms topographical drawings. These are the first works of their kind by Bereal and present a significant new direction in his practice with their embrace of new technologies like 3D scanning and 3D printing to further explore more traditional methods of mark-making like sculpting and drawing.

Each artwork is a kind of rendering etched into the substrate of clear nylon exposing the contours of a figure that appears to be entangled by, or fighting to emerge from, clear acrylic bars which resemble the stripes of the American flag. When lit, the shapes and lines of the artist’s drawing ethereally appear to float in midair, revealing Bereal’s political aims: pointing to the illusory promises of the flag, and the implicit contradictions of what, and for whom, it stands.

The Elizabeth Leach Gallery is excited to announce our participation in Art Basel Miami Beach 2023. The gallery will feature a solo exhibition of historic works by Ed Bereal including drawing, photography, and video. Ed Bereal: Disturbing the Peace will be on view in the art fair’s Survey Sector December 6 – 10, 2023.

Ed Bereal attended Chouinard Art Institute from 1959-1962 and later taught at University of California, Irvine and Western Washington University. His work is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); The Smithsonian Institute (Washington D.C.); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA); Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX); and The Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn NY) among others. Recent exhibitions include the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France) in 2006 and Moderna Museet (Stockholm, Sweden) in 2009; L.A. Object & David Hammons Body Prints, Tilton Gallery (New York, NY) in 2006; as well as participating in Pacific Standard Time at The Getty Museum (Los Angeles, CA) in 2011. His first museum retrospective, Wanted: Ed Bereal for Disturbing the Peace at the Whatcom Museum of Art (Bellingham, WA) in 2019 and Bereal’s recent APEX installation at The Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR) was on view February 23, 2020 through June 27, 2021.