Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to present New Neural Pathways, an exhibition of new works by Brad Eberhard. Marking Eberhard’s second solo presentation with the gallery, the online exhibition includes a series of 12 paintings on canvas and 17 works on paper — showcasing the artist’s humorous and cosmic discourse with abstraction.

Eberhard is known for his complex and intimately scaled paintings, laboriously rendered with acute attention to spatial configuration, color, line, and pattern. Comprised of layers of washes and elaborate brushwork the compositions are built through an array of maximalist and reductivist painting techniques — in palettes ranging from 8-bit exuberance to creamy pastels.

The richness of Eberhard’s own continuum as a painter is accentuated in this new body of work, where the multifarious symbol of the snake is utilized as a reoccurring messenger for the central theme of the exhibition — that New Neural Pathways are possible. The paintings themselves, executed by means of the daily contemplative practice of a disciplined artist, can be seen as visual traces of the artist’s own distinct and personal navigation — suggestive pictures of what it might look like to burrow, channel, or forge past one’s own fancied obstacles.

In the painting, New Neural Pathway (2020), the namesake for the exhibition, the subtle snake appears to be exiting a labyrinthian subway map — the work is a commingling of both flatness and depth, representation and abstraction. And in the painting Roky Two (2020), inspired by Texan psychedelic rock pioneer Roky Erickson and his original band, the 13th Floor Elevators, Eberhard creates an illusory world of biomorphic and geometric forms — a still life chock full of folklore and mysticism. In all of the paintings, Eberhard explores not just the act of painting, but also the psychology of being an artist — and the desire to emerge from the briar patch of consciousness into uncharted territories.

The exhibition also features a series of ink and colored pencil works on paper, depicting snakes drawn in the shapes of letters that spell out the title of the exhibition.

Brad Eberhard lives and works in Los Angeles. He earned his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2007. Eberhard has had exhibitions at Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY; Irvine Fine Arts Center, Irvine, CA; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA; the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; and the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA. Eberhard’s work is included in the public collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA; and Pomona College Museum of Art, CA.