LOS ANGELES, CA.-Javier Peres presents "Existing Outside of Another," the second Los Angeles solo exhibition by Chris BALLANTYNE. The artist will present a new body of work that includes painting, sculpture and drawing.

In an era of over-stimulation of every sort, exposure to an essential, almost primal kind of visual stimulus is like an act of ritual, of cleaning. Enter Ballantyne, psychologer of modern landscape, whose paintings and drawings serve as descriptions of desolate and consuming experience of lands known and unknown, their intoxicating dangers and earthly delights. Within these imaginary realms, we find inverse meanings, reversals and contradictions; fiction is reality, and the center is found at the circumference. Margins are at the center.

The title "Existing Outside of Another" was not submitted with explanation by the artist, but it may refer to the prevailing state of Ballantyne's world: he recently moved permanently from California to New York City. Given the subject matter of his paintings -- primarily suburban landscapes -- the subtle shifts in tonality that exist in his new works are now ominous. Because of the inversion of tones from light to dark and dark to light, the images present entirely different moods, and thus narrative associations.

Chris Ballantyne (b. 1972 Alabama) lives and works in New York and will be present for the opening. His work was recently the subject of a self-titled solo exhibition at the University Art Gallery of Chico State University, California, and was selected to participate in the "2006 California Biennial" at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California.

"Existing Outside of Another" will be on view at Peres Projects (969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, California) through July 28, 2007. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M and by appointment.