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= Jeff Koegel =

Jeff Koegel is an American painter, illustrator and graphic designer.

Background
Koegel was born in Anaheim, California in 1960. He attended Cal Poly University, Pomona to pursue his interest in architecture where, while studying under Richard Saul Wurman, he realized he was more interested in two-dimensional work – drawing, symbols, information design – and was lured into graphic design by work being done by European designers like Neville Brody and Peter Saville, as well punk art made by Gee Vaucher for the band Crass and Raymond Pettibon’s work for Black Flag. Koegel holds a bachelor’s degree in art from Cal State University, Fullerton.

Work
In the exhibition catalogue for Jeff Koegel: Real Estate, Peter Clothier writes “Koegel’s early paintings invited us to contemplate acres of semi-abstract urban landscapes, industrial areas or abandoned drive-in movie lots, where empty space was given definition by the suggestion of hard-edge, architectural buildings, parking lots with multiple space divisions, billboards, swimming pools or concrete pits, chain-link fences... Subdued to the point of minimalism in both mood and palette, they often introduced a complementary note of the fantastic – even the spiritual with curious, intricate glimpses into what lay beneath, or behind, their bland exterior surfaces.”

Koegel is interested in how the landscape changes, but he does not suggest a cycle of death and rebirth, but rather one of constant change, never able to return to a prior state. Nature’s rules in Koegel’s work are ones of adaptation, metamorphosis, and recombination. Koegel’s imagery suggests that if any story is being told it is that the landscape is part of an organism in a state of entropy.

Carrying this notion further in “Carbon Rainbow” at The Merry Karnowsky Gallery in 2010, Koegel draws from a diversity of aesthetic models including Byzantine icon painting, aboriginal art, trickster lore, high modernism, technical schematics, tattoos and ikebana to reflect upon a world created by the manipulation of nature and, more importantly, the manipulated perception of our place within the scheme of nature.

In 2013, Koegel began to explore ecstatic qualities within the realm of the vernacular by working with the kind of textile-based craft seen in quilts, indigenous rugs, sophisticated wallpaper, etc. But for Koegel it is about the “specific aesthetics associated with those aspects of craft that lend themselves to a charged optical effect.” He is looking only a little bit at Pop Art like Johns’ flag-paintings, and more at Op Art’s concern with keeping the eye in motion; and mainly at Pattern & Decoration artists like Joyce Kozloff, and even the precursors to Pattern & Decoration like Bauhaus textile visionaries Anni Albers and Gunta Stölzl, and Victorian designer/object of worship for all modern adherents of motif-chic, William Morris. Actually, what he’s doing is kindling a reinvention of Pattern & Decoration, retuned for the contemporary vision much as artist’s of Kozloff’s generation did within their own historical context.

Koegel has participated in exhibitions with the Clayton Brothers, Mercedes Helnwein, Camille Rose Garcia, Ed Templeton, Max Maslansky, Lucas Reiner, Ali Smith, Laura Owens, Monique Prieto, Tony Berlant and Jane Callister, among others.

Along with his work shown in gallery spaces, Koegel has maintained an illustration practice since 1990, and has collaborated in editorial and branding projects with clients such as the American Craft Museum, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, American Express, The New York Times, and the University of Pennsylvania. Despite their functional differences, there is a reciprocal relationship between Koegel’s illustrative work and his paintings. Results from his experiments in painting are used as a graphic language to make illustrations with, and sometimes the components from illustrations take on a new life and meaning in the context of painting. Koegel’s graphic work has earned recognition from Graphis, American Illustration, Communication Arts and the Society of Illustrators.

Publications
Real Estate (2005) Catalogue for the solo exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art

Carbon Rainbow (2010) Catalogue for the solo exhibition at Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles

Sparkle and Decay (2011) Catalogue for the solo exhibition at the Brandstater Gallery, La Sierra University, Riverside California

Slow Chemical Orchestra (2013) Catalogue for the solo exhibition at Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles, isbn 978-0-9892085-0-5

The Sweet Song of a Fire (2014) Catalogue for the solo exhibition at Launch Gallery, Los Angeles, isbn 978-0-9892085-1-2