12.26 is pleased to present The Great Outdoors, a series of new photographs by Los Angeles-based artist David Gilbert. In his newest series, Gilbert documents temporal yet epic scenes imbued with romance, desire and dramatic light that he creates in his studio. The Great Outdoors marks Gilbert’s first exhibition in Texas.

Using found furniture, flowers cut from paper, and old floral bedsheets, Gilbert composes transitory tableaux in a little house that functions as an artist’s studio. Gilbert depicts and examines the grandeur of landscape, yet works in a small domestic space. This juxtaposition imbues the work with a bewildering sense of scale: the photographs are personal and intimate, yet they yearn for an infinite view of mountains, the sky and the sea. The resulting artificial landscapes are infused with romance and desire with subtle hints at Gilbert's own personal history with the use of well-placed imagery: ballerinas, clouds, lilies.

Paper flowers move and sway in the "wind," imitating gestures, dancing. The dramatic lighting suspends all of these moments in a quiet stillness reminiscent of a domestic Vermeer painting: the way light hits just so. In this way, Gilbert gives entry to his privately constructed environments, putting the viewer in the position of voyeur, contemplating these delicate, ephemeral scenes.

David Gilbert received a BFA from New York University in 2004 and an MFA from the University of California Riverside in 2011. He has exhibited nationally and internationally for over a decade. His work has recently been written about in Art in America, Artforum and The New York Times