american contemporary art (december 2010)

AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY ART

DECEMBER 2010

Essays by Peter Selz & Mariano NavarroEnglish, German, Italian, Spanish

Hardcover 144 Pages + 94 Illustrations $30

JORDI ALCARAZ dibuixosPublication Available:

Exercicis de Desaparicio II (Exercises of Disappearance II), 2010, painting on cardboard and plexiglass, 67 3/8 x 87 inches

357 N. La Brea Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90036 Telephone (323) 938-5222 www.jackrutbergfinearts.comJACK RUTBERG FINE ARTS

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11 SEPTEMBER - 30 NOVEMBER

CONTENTS DECEMBER 2010

PUBLISHER Richard KalisherEDITOR Donovan StanleyDESIGN Eric Kalisher

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS F. Lennox CampelloRoberta Carasso

ART AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY

Three Month Fever, 2010, acrylic, collage, mirror, on canvas, 75”x60”. Courtesy of Edgar Varela

Gallery in Los Angeles.

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EXHIBITIONS20 New York22 Los Angeles29 San Francisco32 Philadelphia34 Boston34 Denver35 Phoenix35 Charleston

FEATURESAllie Pohl 11

Letter from DC 14Gallery Spotlight 16

ARTISTSAlexa Meade 38

Christine Binns 40Natalie Gray 42

Ashleigh Sumner 45

On the Cover Samantha Magowan

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ARTMira Schor:Paintings From The Nineties To Now November 20, 2010 - January 9, 2011

207 W. 5th StreetLos Angeles, CA 90013

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“Superman flying naked and low to the ground in order to avoid radar”Charcoal on paper. 20x24 inches. Circa 2009.

S U Z A N N A F I E L D S

W A L K E R C O N T E M P O R A R Y450 h a r r i s o n a v e n u e b o s t o n m a 0 2 11 8 6 1 7 . 6 9 5 . 0 2 11 www. w a l k e r c o n t e m p o r a r y . c o m

Luc LeestemakerSongs of the Unconscious

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“ABSTRACTIONS: 1990 TO 2010”PAINTINGS BY HUGO ANDERSON

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Feature Artist Allie Pohl In Her Own Words

Allie Pohl, Ideal Woman: Jennifer Love Hewitt, 2010, porcelain, Swarovski crystals, 16”x6”.

12 A|C|A December 2010

am interested in critiquing how social norms and gender roles throughout Western history have influ-

enced the desired physical form that the female body takes on. Women are constantly inundated with images that culturally outline feminine beauty. Commercially packaged versions of beauty are often simply illusions created by advanced technology, such as digital image alteration and/or plastic surgery. My work reflects this repetitive effect. Society’s addiction to the ideal image has transformed beauty from an ideal to an attainable product. The image of the Western ideal has changed and evolved, and in response to the evolving technolo-gies, the materials I have used to represent the ideal have changed and evolved. I developed the “Ideal Woman” series by taking a “My Size Barbie” and dissecting her into pieces to make porcelain sculptures. I chose Mat-tel’s Barbie because she has been held up as the ideal since her creation over fifty years ago.

A strong social contract that women endure is hair removal. It is one of the most basic forms of feminine upkeep that women must abide by in order to maintain cultural acceptance. The works Ideal Woman: Herma-then, Enkolpizo, and Ankulopous have natural sprouts growing out of places where women often remove

(shave, wax, pluck, laser, etc.) away their unwanted hair: in the armpits, on the legs, and in the pubic area. Femi-ninity, by Western society’s standards, requires regular upkeep, just as in my series of pieces, the growth pro-cess of the sprouts require maintenance. The growth of sprouts articulates that, unlike Mattel’s presentation, the female condition is not plastic and shrink-wrapped.

Just as women have been forced to “maintain” their body hair, the Ideal Woman: Astroturf A is an artistic commentary on society adapting technology to elimi-nate body maintenance. Astroturf, a synthetic material, does not require maintenance or upkeep. It is a material that is more “perfect” than the “real”.

Ideal Woman: Evolution uses minimalist materials and aesthetics to guide the viewer through the evolution of hair removal on the bikini line and the progression of technologies through the stone, bronze, iron, and digi-tal ages. I compare the evolution of female hair removal with the historical progression of tool making technolo-gies to illustrate that women have altered their bodies throughout history consistent with the progression of these technologies. The advancements and progression of tools and materials have allowed women to easily al-ter their bodies, beginning with small cosmetic changes

I

Allie Pohl, Ideal Woman: 36-24-36, 2010, polyurethane rubber and polyurethane memory foam, 19.5”x9”x12”; mirror pedestal, 26”x28”; high definition two-channel video.

Feature 13

and leading to larger modern day surgical procedures.The image of the ideal in today's globalized and tech-

nologically connected society is now seen more quickly and more often. The "perfect” woman is constructed through the utilization of repetition, technology, and the idea of virtual. The virtual world has allowed indi-viduals to readily mediate what is projected and what is communicated. Yet, simultaneously, the reality of the "real" is getting much harder to find and understand. The advent and progress of technology has vastly changed our perception of what is real and of what ultimately matters. Women today are pushed to attain the idealized beauty that they see in magazines, on television, and all around them. This quandary leads to a conflict between the real and the mediated self.

Ideal Woman: 36-24-36 is a series that allows the viewer to see, squeeze, and mold the figures, just like society molds the ideal. It was important to me to create a tangible object of the perfect dimensions (36” 24” 36”) of a woman’s figure, using high-tech industrial materi-als (polyurethane rubber and memory foam) to further discuss the utilization of such technologies to augment the female form. The emerging sculptural figures are designed to sit on polished, uniform mirror pedes-

tals, which project the reflection of the viewer back at them, allowing the viewer to compare themselves to the ideal. The pedestals resemble pyramids and make the sculptural figures appear godlike, further elevat-ing the “ideal” woman. The emerging sculptural forms and the pedestals are displayed and positioned in rep-etition, reminiscent of factory lines, again demonstrat-ing the cookie cutter nature of what our society sees as ideal. The idea of the real is constantly changing. With the advent of technology, it is easier to see and chan-nel the “ideal” and allow the “real” to transcend reality. Through the use of new social networks, everyone can easily mediate and curate an online presence with the “ideal” in mind. The media projects an ideal and that ideal is repeated, reproduced, and continually executed. This results in people starting to look the same in reality and the mediated reality.

An exhibiton of Allie Pohl’s Ideal Woman works, enti-eld Perfect, can be seen through October 15 at the Marina Abramović Institute West Coast in San Francisco. For more information, visit bit.ly/MAIWest or alliepohl.com.

Allie Pohl, Ideal Woman: 36-24-36 (see left page). Detail: mirror pedestals, 26”x28”.


In his recent exhibition at Long View Gallery titled We the People, District of Columbia artist Scott Brooks continues to populate canvasses of all sizes with his own unique vision of “people” and also continues to advance the case for Scott Brooks to be considered as one of the re-gion’s leading artists.

To start, Brooks’ enviable technical skill is of the level seldom seen these days where theory seems to have all but buried the need for an artist to have any techni-cal facility. His remarkable ability to mar-ry this technical skill with a Brooksian vision of a world that both manages to attract and repel the viewer, elevates the artwork to the point where it goes beyond high art and begins to do what some truly great artwork does: deliver social and his-torical narratives that have an important point to contribute to contemporary dia-logue beyond the visual arts.

But where in the past Brooks has done this in a somewhat subtle way, in this show’s 12 works he rolls back his sleeves and assaults our visual senses with his messages, agenda and positions on such things as politics, culture and a populari-ty-obsessed nation. He does this in a bla-

tant but elegant manner that shouts with paint instead of noise and attacks with scale and numbers.

For example, in the painting We the People, Brooks uses his fear of empty space almost as a weapon by crowding the large canvas with images and artifacts full of almost Victorian-style clues and fascinating objects. The four main figures in the canvas, with the usual slight facial distortions that make Brooks’ works im-mediately recognizable, are presented to the viewer amongst a backdrop of hu-manity that assail the mind and eyes with their oddity and visual noise. The wor-ship of the “plugged in” hero (who just happens to be a snake charmer), standing on a symbolic money platform, all buff and strong and perfect, highlights the im-perfections of those worshipping him; all but the figure in the top hat to the left, as if a little dejection is creeping in. Mean-while, tiny video cameras broadcast the snake charmer’s victory to the world.

And if fear of empty space makes the case in this piece, it all but overflows out of Separation Anxiety: An Allegory for the Conflict between Good and Evil where Brooks truly flexes his artistic ideas in a

riot of color, forms, stories, mini-dramas within the stories and a mind numbing variety of figures and “peoples” within a canvas so full of information that it is im-possible to absorb it all in one visit. There are probably close to 100 figures, animals and things on this canvas, and yet, some-how Brooks still manages to aim our fo-cus and initial (and final) attention to the God-like child figure sitting atop a circus-like atmosphere bordering on madness of the senses. Meanwhile, those other 99 fig-ures and objects are punching your eyes with their demand for attention.

Brooks says that his disillusionment with Washington is central to this exhibi-tion. He adds that he “sees inherent flaws in a system that no one man can fix.” He feels that “the world is distracted, choos-ing to hide in denial behind such diver-sions as religion, indifference and reality television rather than face the dire truth, which is what Washington intends.”

All marathons start with one step, and in We the People Brooks succeeds in grabbing our attention and hypnotizing us into trying to react to his visual war of color and narrative. We’re no longer distracted.

Channeling Disallusionment into ArtA Letter from Washington DC by F. Lennox Campella


Since making her home in Los Angeles a scant five years ago, Annie Wharton has been a force to be reckoned with on the burgeoning LA art scene. A rare breed who operates simultaneously as an artist, writ-er, curator, and gallery director, Wharton is at home in all sectors of the art world and thus harbors a uniquely multi-layered perspective on its workings. On Novem-ber 18, Wharton opened her new gallery venture, Annie Wharton Los Angeles, as part of the Pacific Design Center’s Design Loves Art program. Initiated by PDC own-er Charles S. Cohen—who also sits on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)—and orga-nized by independent curator Helen Va-

rola, DLA brings together a cross-section of LA artists, curators, and gallerists for innovative programming that takes place in the PDC’s vast showrooms. I recently sat down with Wharton for a brief chat about all things art.

What kind of work are you attracted to and why? The artists I tend to gravitate toward all share an elaborate approach to studio and theoretical practice. They also take painstaking measures in their processes of thought and execution. The first show I’ve curated for Annie Wharton Los An-geles is called The Way the Morning Broke Was Quite Unusual, which is a line from

Annie Wharton Opens A New Gallery in Los Angeles

a Front 242 song, but it’s also the title of a work by John Espinosa that’s in the show. Most of the artists in it are LA–based: Es-pinosa, Alika Cooper, Peter Harkawik, Davida Nemeroff, Mary Anna Pomonis, and Bobbi Woods, all of whom created a bit of buzz in LA before showing with me. The two artists who aren’t local are Lina Theodorou, whom I was introduced to by a museum curator in Athens, Greece, while working on a public art project there in September, and Ingibjörg Birgis-dóttir, a video artist from Reykjavik that I’ve curated into several projects in the past. The work in the show ranges from sculpture to photography to works on pa-per to video, and all speak to the aesthetic

Carol Cheh Asks Her About Her New Venture

Feature 17

sensibility that I’ll bring into play in the future.

Tell us about your background. I lived in Miami from 1994 to 2005, re-ceiving a BFA in sculpture from the Uni-versity of Miami in 1998. During that time I primarily worked as an artist but sometimes curated. I had shows in mu-seums, galleries, and alternative spaces internationally prior to moving to LA in 2005. During my first two years here, I spent most of my time in a studio in Chinatown, but then I began to write for art magazines, organize shows and video screenings as a way to get to know the artists in my community. The first show I curated in LA was at the wonderful but now-defunct JAIL Gallery in May of 2008. It was wildly successful in terms of sales to important collectors (one piece was purchased for The Whitney Muse-um), and I think that gave me the confi-dence to launch my own ventures. Since then, I opened a commercial gallery with a partner in what was the reception office of a motel in Chinatown, I’ve worked on a couple of public art projects and continue to produce curatorial endeavors outside of the gallery.

Is there any part of your practice that you enjoy more than the others? All the elements of my background have gone into my present focus as an art dealer. All of the components augment each other—the writing, the art mak-ing, organizing shows, doing studio vis-its—the compendium of parts has sort of amalgamated to form the intellectual and aesthetic framework that I draw upon when working as a dealer. I had over 2,500 people walk into AWLA on open-ing night, and by the end of the first week, we’d gotten about 10 very positive and encouraging press mentions (including being voted one of the top 10 shows in Los Angeles for the month of November by Saatchi Online Magazine). The posi-tive feedback from the public has really exceeded my expectations.

What next for you?In addition to the gallery, I have in the last few years been invited to do curato-

rial projects and video screenings inter-nationally. I’m now curating a show of video artists for the Frost Museum in Mi-ami, which will open in April 2012. I’m super excited about the scope of works, which will range from established young contemporary video artists like Kate Gilmore and Shana Moulton to practi-cally unknown artists like Tyler Calkin and Carl Pomposelli.

What is your favorite art thing in LA right now? I cannot answer this without prejudice, because Davida Nemeroff is one of my artists, but the best conceptual art piece in Los Angeles right now, is (in my opin-ion) her project called Night Gallery. It’s a quirky space located in a strip mall in Lincoln Heights with black textured walls that shows international artists and is only open from 10pm to 2am, Tuesday through Thursday. Do you know anyone else who does that? It’s shatteringly bril-liant.

What are your favorite pieces of art? I recently saw The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme, a 19th-century French painter, at The Getty and was utterly shaken by the work. Though Gérôme eschewed his avant-garde con-temporaries, he was someone who ob-viously influenced the Dadaists, and his approach to Orientalism was quite ironic and a bit sassy. His painting The Snake Charmer from 1870 would be one I’d love

to have. I’d also take a re-creation of Ant Farm’s classic Media Burn from 1975. Those guys have been delighting me since I first heard about them while in art school in the late 90’s. I’m not sure how I’d archive the piece while on the island, but it’d certainly be amazing to possess. Finally, Davida Nemeroff ’s Bridge which she is still in the process of making—I’d never shed tears in a studio visit before I saw this video work. There is some-thing so beautifully engaging on a formal level, but with an almost Plath-like sad-ness about Davida’s creative output. Her work employs a certain physicality of en-durance-based single shots versus stun-ningly framed imagery versus the sounds or music she carefully selects. She sensi-tively creates a sort of iconic visual and aural excursion within each of her works; it’s a language that absolutely speaks to the culture of now.

Annie Wharton Los Angeles is located in the Pacific Design Center, Suite B275, 8687 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, 90069. Hours are 12 to 5pm, Monday through Friday and the second Saturday of the month. For more information, visit anniewhartonlosangeles.com or call (305) 905-9304.

Carol Cheh is a writer and curator based in Los Angeles. She is the founder of An-other Righteous Transfer!, a blog docu-menting LA’s performance art scene.

(opposite page) John Espinosa, The way the Morning Broke was Quite Unusual, 2010, Grape Kool-Aid, memory foam, UV sensitive acrylic paint, black dye, water pump, copper pipe, fiberglas, wood, polyurethane, plexiglas tanks. (above) Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir, A Little Bit, 2010, videostill. Images courtesy of the artists and Annie Wharton Los Angeles.

Santa Monica Civic AuditoriumJanuary 13 - 16, 2011

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EXHIBITIONS

NEW YORK CITYJames MeyerMorgan Lehman New York[through Dec 23]

The strange, distant world of childhood memory is a consistent theme in these new sculptural paintings and works on paper by James Meyer. While never explicitly im-plied, the autobiographical nature of the artist's own childhood, in 1960's suburban America is the primary source of inspira-tion in this exhibition, After Kapka. But while these images, culled from seeming-ly personal photographic sources are the choice of the artist, they appeal to the view-er as both instantly recognizable memories from their own shared histories. Using a variety of media such as paper, wood, and brushed aluminum, Meyer creates mono-chromatic sculptural paintings that utilize repetitive images of children in motion and at play. In the case of his wood and metal works, negative space is created directly by the white walls of the gallery. His imagery is often repeated serially in different scale, material and size elevating the subjects to an iconic status. The black silhouetted im-age of a young girl hula-hooping set against a grid background of candy-colored squares

may not seem like a particularly ominous image, but in this work by Meyer, a pal-pable sense of dread is conveyed. As the viewer approaches the work, a topological "ball and stick" molecular model rendered in the negative is revealed. The cognitive association between the girl and the mol-ecule range from the innocence of an el-ementary school science class to the horror of complete nuclear fallout. It is this juxta-position of disparate, but psychologically linked images that is of primary concern in the artist's work. This level of reflection that comes with non-sequential images is what I want to capture in my work. The pieces in this particular exhibition show the duality of the molecule on the atomic level, as well as the planetary level. The relationship be-tween the two worlds shows movement as a static drawing. These works break down the image to a base of what the drawing is, without any complex painting. The combi-nation of images makes a new idea that the two separate things did not necessarily rep-resent on their own.

James Meyer: (from top) Summer, 48”x65“; Acrylic on birch panel

Untitled, watercolor on paper, 30”x44”;Piston, cut paper, 96”x120”.

In this solo show, Trine Lise Nedreaas de-buts a new 3-screen video installation, Smoke and Mirrors, together with other works created during her recent time in Berlin. The title piece brings us first the mystical Mac Donaldi - King of Soap Bub-bles, a master of his own universe. Omnip-otent and playful, he creates mesmerizing smoke-filled bubbles that hover in the air, their brief existence drawn to an inevitable close in a puff of smoke; Iryna - Backbender closes in on the fascinating, awkward and discomforting shapes of a contortionist, her unfaltering smile belying the efforts of her unbelievable deformations; In Yana and Noname a ventriloquist silently handles her jester dummy, the childlike world of make-believe revealing a sinister unspoken violence. Together these films present key elements in the artist's ongoing exploration of the human condition: our insignificance in a grander setting and our powerlessness over our own nature; our attempts to ac-commodate and navigate a complex world;

and the forces that manipulate and influ-ence our everyday activities, both mundane and profound. Pinned to the wall nearby in the gallery's industrial basement, a motley crew of ventriloquist dummies, illusion-ists and monsters hang alongside studies of spiritual leaders and their evangelized wor-shippers; Fan is a rogues gallery of sorts - a makeshift scrapbook of the artist's passing obsessions. Exploring the dual notions 'See-ing is believing / believing is seeing': Mind's eye is a collection of Rorschach mirror ink-blot images, mounted directly on to the wall - each subtly reworked, these ambigu-ous forms present a catalog of our own in-ner visions; Marvels is a series of polaroids in which the shape of a heart is captured in celestial scenes; and Why is a stereo-scopic toy where question marks leap out from stellar nurseries. Is there anything out there? Coupling wondrous curiosity with the looming sense of instability, Nedreaas circles around our hopes, fears, wonder and awe in a world of uncertainty.

Trine Lise NedreaasStephan Stoyanov New York[through Dec 20]

Trine Lise Nedreaas, Mac Donaldi - King of Soap Bubbles, 2009.

Exhibitions 21

EXHIBITIONS

Steve Ellisnine5 New York

[through Dec 10-24]

One of New York’s finest Pop Realist paint-ers, Steve Ellis is well known for his tech-nically virtuosic paintings. His dynamic representational technique uses pop cul-ture iconography to explore various issues emerging from contemporary consumer-ism, often favoring the depiction of single objects rendered with near fetishistic focus.The centerpiece of the new exhibition is the monumental Manifest Destiny (You’re Either On The Bus Or…?’), painted to appear as a collage of torn print media pages. Previous series have investigated the death of print media and the damaged, transitory beauty of American popular culture, featuring con-sumer detritus such as torn magazines, cig-arette lighters, knives, broken high-heeled shoes, and crashed cars. Following the tra-dition of Pop-art masters, the new exhibi-tion demonstrates Ellis’ skillful explorations not just of new content, but of a wider range of media, including silk screens, wallpaper, light boxes and mixed media installations. The colorful, satirical works communicate narrative with concision and economy, and frequently feature wordplay. Not immedi-ately apparent, the messages are placed sub-

tly throughout the canvases or hinted at in titles, compel-ling the viewer to look more closely in order to engage with the works on a deeper level. Born in Washington D.C., Ellis moved to New York City in 1989 to study at the prestigious School of Visual Arts, where he excelled in realism. Following his graduation, Ellis lived and worked in downtown New York, cultivat-ing his aesthetic by immersing himself in the vibrant subculture of the city’s nightlife. Ellis has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. in addition to several international shows. These include exhibitions at the AC Institute, the Gershwin Hotel, the Studio @ 620, SoHo House, American Fine Arts and the Lexington Armory. Ellis’ works are held in private collections in New York, Los An-geles, Chicago, Miami, and throughout the world. He is currently a painting instructor at the School of Visual Arts. Steve Ellis: (top) Manifest Destiny (you’re ei-

ther on the bus or…?), oil and acrylic on can-vas, 2010, 86”x170”; (bottom) Scars and Stripes,

oil on canvas, 2010, 24”x24”.

Posed: Physique Photography from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s features works by Bruce Bellas (Bruce of L.A.), Bob Mizer (Athletic Model Guild) and Don Whitman (Western Pho-tography Guild). The over one hundred vintage works on display are coupled with ephemera from the era. Bellas, Mizer and Whitman were pioneers in photographing the male nude, and instrumental in estab-lishing the field of physique photography. Working in tandem with physical culture and muscle magazines of the era, they each built a substantial mail order enterprise, largely catering to a gay audience. They, along with other photographers in differ-ent parts of the country, created the world of “beefcake”. Their broad influence can be seen in the works of artists such as David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Robert Mappletho-rpe, Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber and numer-ous others. Bellas, Mizer and Whitman de-veloped unique styles, taking photographs both in the studio and outdoors. There is a quintessentially American look to their

work from this time period. Well-groomed young men appear to be athletes, army or navy recruits, aspiring actors or models, and in real life they often were. Many were professional bodybuilders and most were straight. While some were hustlers, most just wanted some extra cash. Models were posed in a variety of ways, evoking classi-cal sculpture. Props would be used to sug-gest certain types, such as cowboy, bandit, or athlete. Dramatic lighting gave a Hol-lywood aura to many of the studio works, and the vast open skies and rugged terrain of the American West provided a dramatic backdrop for photographs of single models or pairs,. It was illegal in America to depict full frontal nudity until 1962, and illegal to send nude images through mail until the end of that decade. As a result, the models were photographed wearing posing straps, or G-strings. This allowed for the photo-graphs to be considered as athletically or artistically inspired material, and therefore not subject to censorship.

Bruce BellasBob Mizer

Don WhitmanJeff Bailey New York

[Nov 18 - Dec 23]

Bruce Bellas (Bruce of L.A.), Don Hawksley, 1955, photograph, 5”x4”. Series 2201-5.


EXHIBITIONS

LOS ANGELESBetwixt, a solo show by Cynthia Ona Innis, consists of a range of materials and tech-niques that challenge notions of the divide between painting and drawing. The subject of her work continues to be influenced by the cycles of nature and the investigation of forms under transformation. Exposing a transitional pivot—a moment of exchange as one thing becomes another—the surging biomorphic organisms suggest a physical and botanical reference amidst an environ-ment caught in flux. The markings are in-dicative of growth stages and changes with-in plant and animal life during the course of each season. Rather than interpreting sci-entific investigations, the organic composi-tions are loose abstractions that examine the implications of process and experience. Elements in nature change with the com-ing of a new season and the rebirth contin-ues each year. Innis explores the tension between sexual/reproductive, stiff/limp/buoyant, wet/dry, fresh/spent through a narrative created with drawing, paint and collage. The materials include the use of

satin, velvet and vinyl fabrics layered with ink and acrylic pigments while maintaining a strong emphasis on line. The composi-tions are built up to create areas of texture that are enhanced by the reaction to light. Different palettes in the works appropri-ately contradict each other to represent the four seasons. Hues of hot pink and electric orange are created with pigments on satin and canvas to represent summer while icy white and topaz blue are made with stains on vinyl and velvet to denote winter. The mood of fall is characterized by hues of burnt sienna, muted pink and ochre, while spring is shown using areas of mint green, opaque white and faint yellow. The controlled areas of collage nicely balance the spontaneity of the poured stains with tightly rendered clusters or pod-like forms interacting in unison. From these bio-morphic shapes, a series of linkage begins with the use of drawn lines and patterning. Some of the works are abruptly interrupted with a separation to show a comparison of application, contour and palette.

Cynthia Ona InnisWalter Maciel Los Angeles[through Dec 18]

Cynthia Ona Innis: (from top) Hub, 2010, acrylic and satin on canvas; Circuit, 2010, acrylic and

satin on canvas. Courtesy of Walter Maciel.

For curator Noah David, this exhibition. Gray Day, should “exist like the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt; it should repre-sent the line that has been blurred between art, commerce and celebrity.” In order to “demonstrate the apathy of the present mo-ment”, Davis felt it important to bring to-gether a large group of artists to work indi-vidualism in seeking a single objective, “to create a show that is entirely gray, an ode to group shows like Tony Shafrazi’s Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns and the Metropoli-tan Museum of Art’s exhibition of Jasper Johns: Gray. Works on view range from Larry Bell’s geometric drawings executed in the 1970s to Marlon Rabenreither’s film stills that formally echo Bell’s current col-lage paintings. A slide from 2001 by Kevin Galleazi displays a lottery ticket and a pho-tograph of American women on a trip to a third world country, surrounded by natives whom the artist has adorned with stars on their faces to illustrate the exploitation

of the voyeur on the indigenous people. A survey of contemporary local talent in painting includes standout pieces by Al-lison Schulnik, Charles Karubian, Joshua Aster, Mark Dutcher and Kristin Calabrese. James Brittingham’s acrylic and mylar wall pieces are instantly iconic, while Bay Area artists Michelle Blade and Mark McKnight both contribute consistent work habits, one in drawing and the other in photography. A smashed disco ball by Daniel Desure lies on the floor as if it has fallen ten feet to the ground, declaring the end of the party. A sizeable sculpture by Michaels Hayden is like a severed building that has been rear-ranged to comment on contemporary ar-chitecture, and a new sculpture by Natas-cha Snellman draws directly from the gray days of Seattle. Juan Capistran’s felt floor sculptures of a DJ mixer and speakers from the earlier part of this decade literally turn the volume up on Joseph Beuys’ sculptures made of the same material.

“Gray Day”Robert & Tilton Culver City[through Dec 18]

(top) Gray Day Installation View; (bottom) PJ Risse, What, 2010, performance during Gray Day opening reception. Photography by Tyler Jamison.

Exhibitions 23

EXHIBITIONS

William Eggleston: American Photogra-pher presents a rich offering of unique and historic prints dating from 1965 through 1985 including several of Eggleston’s most iconic images. Eggleston is widely recog-nized as one of the most important pho-tographers of the 20th century owing to his innovative and unconventional ap-proach to composition and early adoption and mastery of color photography. Over a more than thirty-year career, the artist’s selection of seemingly commonplace sub-ject matter lays bare the fleeting qualities of human existence while offering a tender compendium of his home, the American South. Designed to present insights into the photographer’s working methods and phi-losophy, this exhibition runs concurrently with William Eggleston: Democratic Cam-era Photographs and Video, 1961-2008, pre-sented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Eggleston’s work offers epiphany-like insight into the everyday. The interplay of opulent color and nonchalant forms in Eggleston's photographs honors his sub-jects while providing an additional layer of meaning, turning them into stunning visu-al metaphors of an alienated world. With an eye not to glorify the world in front of his lens, but with the intent to show things for what they really look like, Eggleston states, “I think I had often wondered what other things see -- if they saw like we see. And I’ve tried to make a lot of different photo-

graphs as if a human did not take them.” Refining this idea, exhibition curator, Car-ole Thompson, notes, “Eggleston’s color images flaunt their apparent formlessness. Although the artist acknowledges a debt to Henri Cartier- Bresson, his photographs reject Bresson’s decisive moments.” Rep-resenting a collaboration between Carole Thompson, a private art dealer whose cli-ents include several museums, and Edward Cella Art + Architecture, the exhibition of more than forty vintage photographs be-gins with several one-of-a- kind black-and-white, hand-developed photographs of the 1960s and also includes pristine examples of the vivid dye transfer work of the early 1970s. To Eggleston, the richness of pho-tography stems from the unexpected and uncontrollable, and the exhibition’s inclu-sion of the artist’s first experiments in color photography, unique Chromogenic-cou-pler prints developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, document his breakthrough with impromptu encounters with various individuals and scenes. Comprehensive in nature yet approachable in scale, the exhibi-tion features selected prints from six of the artist’s influential series, including the land-mark 1976 catalogue, William Eggleston’s Guide, Los Alamos project, and, for the first time in Los Angeles, offers examples from the artist’s Berlin Series. His oeuvre has pro-foundly influenced generations of photog-raphers, curators, filmmakers, and writers.

William EgglestonEdward Cella Los Angeles

[through Dec 31]

William Eggleston: (from top) Untitled (The Red Room) Tallahatchie Country, Mississippi (from the William Eggleston’s Guide Series), 1972, dye-transfer color photograph, 11.38”x17.25”; Untitled (Burning Brazier) Memphis, 1975 (printed 1981), dye-transfer color photograph, 12.25”x18.87”; Untitled (Man in Car), 1968, silver gelatin print, 6” x 9.5”. © William Eggleston

Zoe CrosherCharlie James Los Angeles

[through Dec 4]Zoe Crosher’s For Ur Eyes Only: The Un-veiling of Michelle duBois is comprised of images and ephemera bequeathed to the artist by confidante Michelle duBois, one of five aliases kept by the aspiring flight at-tendant who turned tricks to sustain her travels across the Pacific Rim in the 1970s and 1980s. She took on many different costumed guises and kept fanatical docu-mentation of her many dramatic transfor-mations. Until one day, she didn’t, which is where Crosher’s project embarks. Crosher explores ongoing themes such as identity, travel, transience and obsolescence. She has extensively re-photographed, scanned and re-ordered duBois’ slippery self-portraits into a re-contextualized archive, thriving in the soft spaces between fantasy and fiction,

documentation and theatricality, and indi-viduation and anonymity. The Unveiling of Michelle duBois opens with the final pub-lished photographs in the archive. The West Coast was Oklahoma-native duBois’ last American port of call before setting off for Asia, so it is fitting that Chung King Road’s Hollywood-ized take on Chinese culture should be the place to unveil duBois’ Ori-ental escapism. Crosher has fixed in on du-Bois’ transient obsessions, making pictures of pictures—of obfuscated faces, of repeat-ed shadows in dark black & white door-ways, of arched backs, of backs of backs of photographs and backs of necks—through which we are momentarily granted access into one woman’s fantastical worldview and performed sexuality, framed and reframed. Zoe Crosher, The Unveiling of Michelle du Bois,

details from installation, 2010.


EXHIBITIONS

Doug Aitken's work draws on a variety of media genres, including but not limited to photography, sculpture, books, sound, and video installation; all in service to interests in architecture, travel, technology and how our experiences of them affect our percep-tions of time, space, memory, and history. Popular with LA audiences for years (he’s a native), Aitken was catapulted to national and international attention when his ex-traordinary installation Untitled (Shopping Cart) was the hit of the 2000 Whitney Bien-nial and graced its catalog cover -- a bell-weather for a new era of appreciation for the contributions of LA artists on the national stage. Aitken has been commissioned to make a new piece for the MOCA Gala on November 13, celebrating The Artist’s Mu-seum’s mammoth two-venue exhibition of works by over 140 artists who have helped define the contemporary artistic landscape in Los Angeles. Aitken plans to transform the party into an experiential artwork. Ac-cording to the artist, his work, entitled WE, will be a “cultural ambush,” during which gala guests will be immersed in a kaleido-

scope of light, architecture, cuisine, and music, including performances by Aitken’s longtime friend: indie-rock pioneer, LA resident, and accomplished visual artist, Devendra Banhart. These days, for better or worse, Aitken must feel like something of a rock star himself, between the MOCA en-gagement, and a forthcoming monograph from Rizzoli. If this is not enough, all of this going in while he’s preparing for an antici-pated show at Regen Projects. By contrast with his exuberantly theatrical plans for MOCA, Aitken show at Regen will feature his newest film-based work, House, born of the more reflective strains in his aesthetic, such as manipulated time-lapse, expres-sive architecture, imagined landscape, and symbolic narrative. The film depicts a cou-ple whose built surroundings disintegrate around them as they sit motionless, star-ing into each other’s eyes. Aitken’s extreme technical skill and patient, detailed crafts-manship makes him a master of illusion, and he brings the full range of his talent to bear on this ambitious, enigmatic bit of cin-ematic poetry. —Shana Nys Dambrot

Doug AitkenRegen Projects Los Angeles[Nov 11 - Dec 18]

Doug Aitken, views of installation House, 2010. Courtesy of Regen Projects.

For its final exhibition before permanently relocating to Culver City, Mark Moore Gal-lery presents an inaugural Los Angeles solo exhibition of new paintings by Israeli artist, Yigal Ozeri. With tinges of Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, Ozeri, who has been widely ex-hibited internationally since 1988, brings an ethereal and uninhibited sensibility to his photorealistic tableaus. His portraits of distinctive young women in rich landscapes bespeak art historical underpinnings in mi-

mesis and romanticism, while also offering contemporary notions of sensual feminin-ity. Rooted in Carl Jung's concept of anima, Ozeri's depictions of a revitalized connec-tivity to nature prompt a confrontation of a subconscious effeminate identity, and reinstate the beauty of innocent authentic experience. In this body of work, Ozeri il-lustrates unadulterated freedom through model Lizzie Jagger – whose lineage and demeanor epitomize social autonomy.

Yigal OzeriMark Moore Santa Monica[through Dec 18]

Yigal Ozeri, Untitled; Lizzie in the Snow (5), 2010, oil on paper, 42” x 60”.

Employing an audacious palette and an unconventional painting systel, Katharina

Grosse is perhaps best known for her site-specific works that or-ganically expand over architectural spaces and en-able her to create larger-than-life paintings. In this process, she ex-

plores the concept of transformation and the experience of memory. With each col-or indicating a multitude of layers, Grosse "emphasizes color over brush-work, and movement over statis". She looks at not only the positive or painterly surface, but the negative or blank spaces that may lie be-tween the layers of paint. By dichotomizing forms, Grosse departs from the confines of the picture plane and explores the schisms that lay between. Through this fluidity of form, Grosse articulates the movement of time and space.

Katharina GrosseChristopher Grimes Santa Monica[through Jan 8]

Katharina Grosse, detail of Untitled, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 84.25” x 56.5”.

Exhibitions 25

EXHIBITIONS

In her new series of biomorphic sculptures, Laurie Hassold creates a tension between art and science, mind and body, as well as beauty and horror; these ornamental, bone-like structures are the future fossils of creatures that have gathered themselves together from the aftermath of human oc-cupation. Meanwhile, Jocelyn Marsh has created an installation called The Penweath-er House, a whaling lighthouse founded in 1712 by Archibald Penweather. In 1820, the whale-ship Essex was struck by an 85-foot bull sperm whale and sunk. This instal-lation is an account of the tragic tide that ebbed and flowed through the Penweather House. The artworks are three dimensional, sculptural objects depicting scenes of this

whaling narrative, displayed in a replicated section of the lighthouse. The artworks are jewel-like miniatures made from precious metals and wood. [The gallery will also be presented a trio of additional exhibits. Los Angeles Loteria By Aardvark Letterpress is a limited edition of prints of 18 artst's works, based on the Mexican game of chance. In the Project Windows, Jerico Woggons' Four Seasons is a four-part installation that will change with each season, including custom shapes and flourescent paint. Finally, in thte Project Window Annex, an installation project, The Man With Anal Eyes, by Brian Poor and Elizabeth McGraph presents an animatronic sculpture on the streetscape of our urban environment.

Alexa GerrityThe Company Los Angeles

[through Dec 11]

Laurie Hassold & Jocelyn MarshBert Green Los Angeles

[Nov 10 - Dec 24]

(top) Laurie Hassold, The Things You Left Be-hind, 2010, wire, tape, glue, resin clay, jewelry, toys, acrylic, and oil paint , 9”x11”x8”. (bottom)Jocelyn Marsh, detail of Chasing the Dragon,

2010, mixed media, 38”x32”x20”.

Alexa Gerrity’s solo exhibition, entitled The Venus Effect, is a phenomenon in the psychology of perception named after various paintings of Venus gazing into a mirror, such as Titian’s Venus with a Mir-ror. The viewer assumes that Venus is ad-miring her own reflection, but since the viewer sees her face in the mirror, Venus is actually looking at the reflection of the viewer. The single-channel video, Marked by Mercury, explores this relationship with the gaze. The myth of Narcissus is directly concerned with an element of human ex-perience. Narcissus mistook his own reflec-tion in the water for another perso, and this seductive doubling numbed his percep-tions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. In addition, a selection of new paintings, in-spired from the pages of OK magazine and

US Weekly, reflect common superficial projections and assumptions made about Southern California, from celebrity beach towels to invented Malibu sunsets. For the first time ever an artist will transform The Company bathroom into a sanctuary space with a series of personal affirmations in the piece titled True Potential. By repeating the statements into the mirror, the viewer is in-vited to unlock her true potential through repetition. Meanwhile, the single-channel video, Forever Young, is the result of a professional casting call, in which Ger-rity searched for Los Angeles actresses that shared the artist's physical attributes. The audition of these doppelgangers becomes strained, loses touch with reality, and the gaze of the camera/artist and the gaze of the actress become intertwined, feverish and hallucinatory. Alexa Gerrity, The Venus Effect (part of Marked

by Mercury installation), 2010, single-channel video, 5 min. Courtesy of The Company.

In easel-sized canvases, Greta Waller con-tinues her investigation of the still life as an exposition of painting's temporal char-acter; a struggle to harness the ceaseless motion or changing state of objects in the world. With a tightly-focused haste to the painterly surfaces, Waller's figurative works are almost puritanical in their doubts and convictions about the experience of see-ing as it is evoked in painting. In a recent group of works, Waller's stark palette de-fines hovering, closeup perspectives on large, irregular blocks of ice melting in unassuming, periwinkle-trimmed dishes;

lit by artificial light. The ice, in the process of changing states (melting into water), evokes the artist's iconographic prac-tice: The paintings carry out this Apollo-nian task; penetrating the stasis of the im-age on canvas by presenting objects that —in being seen—are experienced as having potential energy; for instance, melting or burning. The recurrence of subjects allud-ing to staples or necessities—blocks of ice or cuts of meat, each with their ephemeral textural behaviors—are paid a perverse at-tention in these sparsely populated paint-ings, as if luxuries in a context of scarcity.

Greta WallerMaloney Los Angeles

[Nov 6 - Dec 18]

Greta Waller, Melting Monument, 2010,oil on canvas, 18”x24”.


EXHIBITIONS

Standard Deviation, a group exhibition, cu-rated by Jenny Le and Janet Levy represents merging of the two idiosyncratic worlds. As its title suggests, the exhibition marks a shift or split away from the norm. In this de-parture and escape from the expectation of models regarded as the common value, the works selected showcase a collective that reaches away from any typical curation for-mula. Standard Deviation assembles estab-lished artists alongside fashion designers, photographers, directors, and architects in such media as sculpture, installation, pho-tography, and works on paper. Offering the viewer an opportunity to look at a variety of distinctive works interacting together rath-

er than formulating standards in which the works should derive. Jenny Le is an avid art connoisseur and director of Opening Cer-emony in Los Angeles. Janet Levy, founder and director of See Line, brings brings years of curatorial, gallery and marketing experi-ence to her success in promoting significant projects by prominent contemporary art-ists. The show features work by Alex Arti-gas, Reggie Casagrande, Taska Cleveland, Sam Combellick, Zoe Crosher, Sean Daly, Jen DeNike, Christopher Haun, Patrick Holeck, Seth Kaufman, Karen Lofgren,Sean Brian McDonald, Lesley Moon, Rachael Neubauer, Brooks Salzwedel, Natascha Snellman, Andre Vippolis, and Jason Yates.

“Standard Deviation”See Line West Hollywood[Nov 18 - Jan 7]

Rachael Neubauer, installation detail.

Dark Entries, a group exhibition featur-ing six Los Angeles-based artists use of the portrait in various forms as their point of departure, subverting and destabilizing the genre. They investigate internal and exter-nal realms, the psychological and the physi-cal, presence and absence, the psychic and the real. The works of the artists are char-acterized by a concern with memory, both personal and collective, often triggered by pop-culture references. Drawing upon a variety of fragmented narratives and ap-propriated source material, the images exist in a peculiar disjointed or dislocated space, invoking a sense of strangeness, unease and mystery. Influenced by illustrated medical texts from the 1950’s and 60’s, Jim Shaw cre-ates paintings populated by shirtless "men in pain" who exist in a highly abstract space and exhibit physical and psychic pain in their contorted gestures. Building up layers of imagery from inkjet prints of cakes fea-tured in mid-century homemakers’ maga-zines, expressionistic gestural brushwork, the Surrealist technique of decalcomania, and contrasting carefully rendered detail, the works display Shaw’s ongoing inter-est in revealing the emotional and psychic depth of the individual within the formal confines of the portrait. Similarly, Scott Marvel Cassidy’s paintings draw upon pop culture, particularly mid 20th century illus-tration, to address underlying and hidden psychological and aesthetic developments drawn from the personal and familial. Loosely based on the cut-up method of

Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs, Cassidy’s approach expands and collapses space and makes the human morph with the inanimate resulting in tableaux that are at once familiar and inscrutable. In Sarah Cromarty’s Dark Step, a lone figure in an urban landscape walks away from the viewer, going into a portal beyond, mov-ing from the familiar to the otherworldly. The surface, built up from painted layers of sculptural materials, subvert pictorial space, giving the work a compositional dy-namism and dimensionality, resulting ulti-mately in a profound sense of absence. Llyn Foulkes has made a career of subverting the portrait, destabilizing pictorial and com-positional space and confounding viewers’ traditional pictorial expectations, while harshly critiquing contemporary consum-er culture. In Foulkes diminutive Mous-chwitz, a monstrous portrait fuses with the immediately identifiable cartoon features of Mickey Mouse, the subject virtually ob-scured in a mummified mask-like state. Works from Dani Tull’s series Stone People, the only photo-based work in Dark Entries, obscures the subject’s identity and speaks of “morphic resonance.” Referring to the basis of memory in nature and to telepathic interconnections between organisms and collective memories, “morphic resonance,” as Tull notes, manifests what Jung called the Collective Unconscious within our spe-cies. Finally, Derek Albeck’s “self portraits” are highly abstracted objects of personal memory and identity, using flannel motifs.

“Dark Entries” Galerie Anais Santa Monica[Nov 13 - Dec 30]

(from top) Llyn Foulkes, Mouschwitz, 2006, acrylic on photograph on board, 10”x10”. Jim Shaw, Cake (Ethan) [rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees], 2010, oil on digital inkjet print, 37.5” x 47.25”. Dani Tull, Stone Woman 1, 2010,

archival pigment print, 22”x24”.

Exhibitions 27

EXHIBITIONS

Carol Es, Machine, 2010, oil, paper, pencil and embroidery on canvas, 40”x60”.

It's Mostly About Me and Much Less About You, a solo exhibition of new mixed me-dia work by Los Angeles artist, Carol Es, is a new series of work that includes oil on canvas and linen mixed with paper and em-broidery, as well as drawings on paper and handmade dolls. Carol Es uses an amalga-mation of characters from her family and her apparel industry background to evoke abstracted, childlike narratives that drip in color and tattered threads to tell personal, visual stories. Paintings with paper gar-ment patterns and their scrap surround cartooned family members, and a new non-descript animal appropriately named

Dan. Black holes, gumball machines, and what appear to be misfit toys as haphazard characters crudely drawn, create a dark, yet light-hearted comic aesthetic that is seem-ingly as dichotomous as the artist. [Also available at the exhibition are a limited limited number Scribbles in a Sandstorm, a hardcover, hand-bound, no-expenses-spared artists' book published by Chance Press. It contains a removable spine, en-abling the accordion-folded text block to unfold and display a 40" color-printed pan-orama. On the flipside is an instant Carol Es art collection, including several prints and a bound-in excerpt from Carol’s sketchbook.

Carol EsGeorge Billis Los Angeles

[through Dec 31]

On Recognition, a solo exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Christine Frerichs, marks the artist's first solo exhibi-tion and presents a series of paintings and drawings demonstrating her ongoing in-terest in repetition and memory. In these works, she playfully examines the process of recognition or “knowing again”, by ex-tracting the visually and emotionally potent aspects of a memory—a person's flesh tone, the lavender sweater her mother wore, the particular green color of the grass in Bryant Park, New York. Using color, composition, texture, and form, she then systematically reconstructs these memories with layers of interlocking paint, resulting in expressively psychological portraits. Frerichs developed this language of pattern and portraiture through the consideration of repetition, as well the function of repetitive behaviors and their psychological relevance. A structural similarity exists between the construction of the paintings and the way the psyche de-

velops through repetitive interactions with one's environment and past experiences. In the case of these paintings, the marks that reveal themselves on the surface, also func-tion in partially concealing the previous layers beneath, simultaneously “showing one's face” and hiding one's past. Her work often calls up this relationship between ob-stacle and desire—layers of interrupting patterns, smudged or blurred faces—and the emotional responses associated with it, from longing or loss to humor and plea-sure. These ideas of memory and emotion materialize in the six-by-six foot painting, Two Figures in a Landscape. One figure is represented by shifting shades of repeat-ing purple hatches, each color shift noting a different day Frerichs attempted to match a particular purple sweater from memory. Through distinct formal means, the works of On Recognition reveal Frerichs' candid engagement with the process of recalling, resolving and revising memory.

Christine FrerichsKaycee Olsen Los Angeles

[through Dec 18]

Christine Frerichs, The Approach, 2010, oil on canvas, 18”x18”

New Baggage, an exhibition of paintings by Los Angeles-based artist, Larry Mul-lins. New Baggage celebrates Mullins’s re-turn from a 6-year journey into the depths of his human-ness and art practice. This exhibition reflects a deeper, more ambi-tious personalized painted ‘architecture’ for Mullins. Working under the influence of his southern upbringing, a passion for letterform and the raw, poignant lyrics of John Lennon, Lou Reed and John Lee Hooker, Mullins’s work is painted with all

the care and devotion a Baptist preacher might lavish on a Sunday sermon. Layer upon layer, words pop and fade. Colors brighten and dim to create a commingling of sweet high notes and low throaty growls. These paintings pulse and hum with the artist’s faith in his countless small deci-sions…tiny paintings within the painting. Of the work, curator, Christopher French, writes, “What makes this work singular is the boldness with which it fuses image and text into an emblematic abstraction.”

Larry MullinsBlythe Projects Los Angeles

[through Dec 21]

Larry Mullins ‘She’s OK’, 2007-2010, oil, spray paint, alkyd resin on paper on panel, 44” x 36”.


EXHIBITIONS

In his first solo exhibition, Historical Im-pulse, Justin Cole examines the culture of Los Angeles and its place within the Amer-icas. Born in Detroit, Cole now lives and works in Los Angeles. His holds a bachelor degree from the Maryland Institute Col-lege of Art in Baltimore and an MFA from UCLA. He is also a founding member of the performance group Ojo. With influ-ences ranging from Pre-Columbian art to

Beacon Arts continues its Critics-as-Cu-rators series with Densities: Line Becoming Shape, Shape Becoming Object curated by respected art writer Peter Frank. The exhi-bition features works in a range of media by artists Philippa Blair, Ran Harari, Tom Jenkins, Joel King, John White, and Jae Hwa Yoo, all with a sensibility that favors visual complexity driven by a profusion of active linear forms. Densities: Line Becom-ing Shape, Shape Becoming Object brings together six established and mid-career artists who work in various media and in different styles but with a shared sensibil-ity. That sensibility favors visual complexity driven by a profusion of active linear forms. The artworks themselves can be called ab-stract, but still brim with references to the observed world. All the artists live or have worked in Southern California, but their aesthetic is as reminiscent of work associ-

American music from the 60s and 70s, Cole addresses the complexities of these cultural histories using drawing, photography, and music to discuss the historical impact of the ever-changing cultural landscape of Los Angeles and the United States. Cole’s work has been exhibited at galleries throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as the Centre Pour l’Art et le Culture, Aix-en-Provence. Pepin Moore represents him.

“Densities: Line Becoming Shape, Shape Becoming Object” Beacon Arts Los Angeles[Dec 10 - Jan 30]

Justin ColePepin Moore Los Angeles[through Dec 5]

Jae Hwa Yoo, Wind City, 2010, acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Justin Cole, The Power of the lightjet, 2010, 16”x20”, edition of 5 +1AP.

ated with Northern California (such as that of William T. Wiley and other Funk artists), New York (Jackson Pollock, for example), or Europe (the elaborate painted images of CoBrA artists such as Pierre Alechin-sky and Asger Jorn fit with this, as do Sur-realist automatists such as Joan Miro and Andre Masson). In fact, this approach can be found in “high” and “folk” art alike the world over, and half the artists in Densities come originally from the Eastern Hemi-sphere. The artists work in oil and acrylic, wood and ink, collage and photo media. As curator Peter Frank says about his show, "Life is complex, and life in Southern Cali-fornia, genial as it may be, is especially complex. In their art these six artists have manifested both the intricacy of their own minds and of the elaborate social and topo-logical environment they share with us. You can almost see your house from here.”

“39 Now” den contemporary West Hollywood [Nov 17 - Dec 17]

39NOW unites thirty-nine exceptional artists, from the emerging to the well-es-tablished, living and around Los Angeles. Curated by Sophia Louisa, 39NOW is a conceptual exhibition wherein each art-

ist has created a new piece of work based on the circumstances of the here and now. The term "now" is a conceptual in and of it-self. The moment passes and soon becomes "then". Capturing the moment through art specifically created with the perception of now, through the talents of these artists—all of whom are women—is the basis of the exhibition. Initially inspired by Judy Chi-cago's The Dinner Party (1974-79), wherein thirty-nine artists collaborated on one piece, Louisa brings together the same number of artists to create an individual piece within the same time period (June-Sept 2010) to explore what is happening now, whether on a personal or public level. Collectively, each artist explores the elements of empower-ment, strenght, fear, independence, and the ability to keep moving forward.

(below) Laurie Hassold, detail view of Trying Not to Tell, 2010, mixed media. 29”x30”x7”. (right) Marnie Weber, Freeing The Stallion,

2010, archival pigment print, 23.5”x29.5”.

Exhibitions 29

EXHIBITIONS

SAN FRANCISCO

John Yoyogi Fortes’ paintings have been exhibited in California, Nevada, Chicago, New York and Norway and are represented in numerous private collections and muse-ums. In his new show, Parallel Boondocks, Fortes works with a term—“boondocks”—believed to have originated in the Philip-pines by American soldiers in the early 20th century, derived from the Tagalog word “bundock,” or mountain. Fortes’ use of boondocks in the title of his exhibition is a reference to his Filipino roots, but also his distance and isolation from it. Parallel Boondock is for Fortes, a play on his strad-dling the line between two cultures seem-ingly running parallel to each other, while attempting to find a place where they meet through his artwork. The centerpiece of this exhibit is a 7 foot by 10 foot horizontal painting, Runt, which explores notions that surround male sexuality. Fortes’ paintings include a broad range of technique from the dense layering of imagery, material and content to smaller works that appear to be fragments literally excavated from a

wall. All of his pieces in this exhibit beckon closer examination. On the humorous side, although with deeper reference, is a comic collection of smoking monkeys painted on discarded paint can lids arranged in clus-ters like hanging fruit. Hidden within the works of this exhibition, Fortes continues to address issues of identity through his quirky sense of humor and a raw painterly aesthetic. [Fortes’s work will be included in the IA&A rov-ing exhibition,Infinite Mirror;Images of Am-erican Identity,opening in Jan-uary 2011 at Syracuse Univ-ersity in NY.]

John YoyogiJack Fischer San Francisco

[through Dec 4]

John Yoyogi Fortes: (right) Runt, 2010, mixed media on can-vas, 84” x 120”. (above) Art Is Evil, 2010, Mixed medium on canvas, 18 .5” x 14.5”. © John Yoyogi Fortes 2010.

Yamamoto Masao’s new exhibition will draw from his earlier series, A Box of Ku and Nakazora, as well as the work from his most recent series, Kawa=Flow. Yamamoto is inspired by the Japanese philosophy of Zen, and the belief that meditation and the pursuit of beauty play an essential role in the development of human beings. Yama-moto’s philosophical and spiritual roots contribute to his distinctive photographic style, in which the ordinary is revealed as something extraordinary. Yamamoto’s ear-lier photographs are delicate small-scale prints that have been toned, stained, torn, rubbed and creased. The suggestion of the antique encourages a meditation on time and memory, a meditative quality that be-comes magnified in a gallery installation. Yamamoto displays the prints as a collection of harmonious, relational objects, adhered unframed to the wall in groups, which form a visual language based upon the group-ings of small details and moments. At the

same time, the prints stand-alone visually, each delicate object a cause for rumination, and a trigger that encourages the viewers to draw on their own memories and sub-conscious. While the images are simple and observational, their suggestive nature is what gives them power. In his newest se-ries, Kawa=Flow, Yamamoto explores “the world where we are and the world where we go in the future.” The images in this series are a reflection on nature and the relation-ship between the world and self. Evocative of harmony and contentment, they reflect Yamamoto’s philosophy that respect and humility toward the universe is achieved by uncovering quietude in oneself, a process found only through nature itself. Similar to his earlier work, Kawa=Flow reveals the or-dinary as something contemplative, as the images aide in the development of the hu-man mind and spirit. Yamamoto finds that the “idea that the photographs are looked at with affection gives them meaning.

Yamamoto MasaoRobert Koch San Francisco

[through Dec 24]

Masao, Nakazora #1174, 2004, 4.94”x4.87”.


EXHIBITIONS

ART AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY

This retrospective of works by Leonard Breger, one of the Bay Area’s most colorful, creative personalities, is a special, end of the year event. It will feature a range of works from the 90-year old Breger’s prolific and varied artistic history, ranging from earlier drawings and paintings to the distinctive and boldly colored shaped Masonite can-vases for which the artist is renowned. Bre-ger points to a dramatic aesthetic epiphany realized during a 1966 trip to the caves at Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain where he viewed prehistoric art that were organi-cally contiguous to their environment. This point marks the break between his use of rectangular canvases to the individually cut

and contoured paintings that the artist con-tinues to create today. His paintings are fan-ciful, almost psychedelic recreations of his personal impressions of the world, ranging from the commonplace moments of every-day life to homages of radical cultural icons. Breger’s previous shows include solo exhi-bitions at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the de Young Museum and, most recently, at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in July 2009. The artist has worked in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 5 de-cades, teaching at institutions such as the University of California and San Francisco State University. He continues to be active in his community.

Incidental Objects is an exhibition exploring the conceptual process of British installation artist Andy Goldsworthy. Though popu-larly known for his ephemeral pieces that disappear over time, Goldsworthy has dedi-cated a large percentage of his focus toward the completion of over 120 commissioned, permanent installations over the past 25 years. For the artist, these permanent and temporary works function symbiotically, with temporary or experimental works of-ten aiding in the development or realization of these commissions. Goldsworthy’s new exhibition highlights some of these “inci-dental” works, providing a rare view into the conceptual nature of the artist’s process. Works in the exhibition include proposal drawings for several permanent commis-sions, including Spire (a recently complet-ed work in the Presidio Park of San Fran-cisco), Wood Line (a forthcoming work to be completed in the Presidio) and Stone River (at Stanford University). These al-ternative proposals elucidate the complexi-ties of the artist’s practice. The exhibition presents a wide range of media, including

a video work docu-menting the cre-ation of two Rain Shadows, in which the artist lies on the ground dur-ing two subsequent rainstorms, eventu-ally revealing dry forms in the shape

of his body. His snowball drawings created while in California for a permanent com-mission at the Runnymede Sculpture Park feature the remnants of snowballs collected from his California travels. Left to melt on large sheets of paper, these snowballs leave abstract traces of earth pigments and wa-ter. These preparatory sketches and experi-mental works highlight the artist’s careful consideration of place, paying close atten-tion to the qualities of a given site, from its topography and materials to its history. The artist emphasizes that his permanent installations allow for opportunities to ex-perience the tactical, place-based nature of his work in person, while his ephemeral works can only be viewed through pho-tographic documentation and the artist’s written descriptions. In the works, the artist’s hand and the materiality of place is ever-present, illuminating the artist’s pro-cess of manipulation and experimentation. [This exhibition opens in tandem with the recent publication by The National Gal-lery of The Andy Goldsworthy Project, the only monograph featuring fully illustrated documentation of his commissioned instal-lations from 1984 to 2008 – more than 120 works that span three continents - as well as significant scholarly writing on the artist’s oeuvre. It will be available at the gallery.]

Andy GoldsworthyHaines San Francisco[through Dec 24]

Andy Goldsworthy: (directly below) Stacked branch, boulder, spire, Woody Creek, Colo-rado, August 2006, unique Ilfochrome print, 15.5”x15.5”. (bottom of page) Elm sticks joined with mud laid over the following day with elm leaves, November 18, 2002, two unique

Ilfochrome prints, Mount/each: 29.5” x 29.5”.

Leonard BregerSandra Lee San Francisco[through Nov 27]

Leonard Breger: (top) Homage: Whitman/Ginsberg, acrylic on panel, 48” X 64”;

(bottom) Hang On, acrylic on panel, 47″x64″

www.americancontemporaryart.net

http://www.acamagazine.com

http://www.californiacontemporaryart.net

http://www.acamagazine.com

Exhibitions 31

EXHIBITIONS

German artist Joachim Bandau presents Black and Red, new watercolors and lac-quer wall sculpture, and Bandau belongs to a protean group of German artists, along with Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, and Imi Knoebel, who came out of the Kuns-takademie Düsseldorf in 1961. Beginning in the late 70’s, Bandau created steel and lead sculpture which were anchored to the ground by sheer weight, then eventually pushed underground. Moving into the 80’s, Bandau synthesized his political and social commentaries in linear, geometric shapes, one such, a series of lead spiked sculptures titled Field of Tears that today are in the Ludwig Museum collections of Cologne and Aachen. In 1983, Bandau began mak-ing large format watercolors that arose from his densely hatched sculptor’s draw-ings. Measuring several inches, or feet, the watercolors resonate the lines of his sculp-ture, a slow precise brushstroke of various widths and density, layered on heavy deck-led paper, using Japanese brushes. The veil of pigments form a slow volume outlined

by fine pigments. Alternating a process of painting, then drying, the new works form a rhythmic syntax, moving from light to dark, and edge to edge. The dynamic brush-work may have a vortex within the format of the paper, then layer upon layer begin it’s ascent, or descent off the edge. Some of the nine watercolors on view were begun ten years earlier, with their resolution in 2010. At the same time, Cornelia Schulz will present a new series of small format paintings, which continue her exploration of shape, material and color. For over 46 years, Schulz has honed her skills in small abstract paintings of complex shape and color, utilizing independent supports that are joined as the painting develops. Inti-mate in scale, Schulz’s paintings are poured, brushed, inked, washed, and sanded until a complex juncture of form and surface ex-plode with color and texture. Offering an elaborate visual puzzle, Schulz uses a vari-ety of media to seductive effect; oil, oil al-kyd, acrylic, wax and ink aid her continued exploration of non-objective painting.

Joachim Bandau & Cornelia Schulz

Patricia Sweetow San Francisco[through Dec 18]

New York-based artist Mads Lynnerup works in a variety of media often creating humorous and poignant works based on observations he makes of his immediate environment. His new exhibition, The En-tire Exhibition Will Be Worn, is comprised of Lynnerup's recent sculptures, silk-screen prints and videos. Taking his inspiration from everyday life, Lynnerup's work com-ments on and draws attention to situations that might otherwise be overlooked in the day to day. In the video Untitled (Everything has a price), Lynnerup takes a walk in his neighborhood while keeping the camera focused on a grocery pricing gun, which

he uses to price various objects he comes across on his way, including an abandoned mattress, a tipped over plant and a dis-carded television. Now Firing, It's a Sign, and Build More Luxury Condoms are titles of Lynnerup's recent silk-screens on paper referring to the recession and financial cri-sis. In using these slogans, Lynnerup is not only focusing the viewer on national and international economic woes, but also re-flecting on how similar words can have op-posite meanings, for example 'hiring and firing.' This play on words and an interest in humor continue to be an important part to Lynnerup's artwork.

Mads LynnerupBaer Ridgway San Francisco

[through Dec 4]

While renowned Los Angeles painter Ed Moses is known for his innovative, non-ob-jective abstractions, the works in this exhibi-tion explore pattern and figuration through fabric stencils, animal motifs, and face-like forms. Entitled wic wack, this collection of textile-like paintngs can be a shock to those who identify Moses as a purely abstract painter. Large, vivid compositions feature mysterious offset patterns and silhouettes of paired “talking heads.” In works such as

Anima Kracker, exotic fauna such as zebras, tigers, and giraffes overlap and converge, like zoological quilts. Many animals sport their own patterns of stripes and spots, adding another layer of complexity to the designs. In some areas, patches of floral lace seem to cut through the canvas in dissolv-ing—or solidifying—forms. Many elements seem to vacillate between foreground and background, creating strong optical tension and a fluctuating sense of space.

Ed MosesBrian Gross San Francisco

[through Dec 23]

Ed Moses, Anam-Krackel, 2009, 60”×48”.

(top) Joachim Bandau, detail of Untitled (KR 1), 2010, watercolor on paper, 30” x 22 inches” (bot-tom) Cornelia Schulz, Guest Appearance, 2010,

oil / acrylic / alkyd resin, 23 x 18 inches

Mads Lynnerup, Take A Day For Yourself, 2009, 3 DVDs, 12 minutes, Edition of 5


EXHIBITIONS

Lynda Bengalis & Ann AgeeLocks Philadelphia[Nov 19 - Dec 30]

Lynda Benglis established herself in the 1960s with artwork that challenged the pre-scribed tenets of modernism and forged new approaches in process, and post-minimal art. Over the past forty years, her paintings and sculptures have blurred distinctions between these mediums and expanded the scope of artistic and non-traditional ma-terials, utilizing wax, latex, polyurethane foam, metal, glass, and ceramics. The artist has frequently chosen subjects that refer-ence the body or natural processes in states of flux. This exhibition presents new sculp-tures, cast in brightly colored polyurethane, and bronze with black patina. Benglis’ most recent exploration of materials recasts the artists’ vocabulary of sculptural, figurative or organic forms, in new light. In these works the artist reiterates the premise of the ‘frozen gesture’ using hard materials to stabilize moving shapes and ethereal con-cepts. This exhibition occurs during the first American stop of the artist’s traveling retrospective, Lynda Benglis, at the Rhode Island School of Design. The restrospective began at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland and it will be shown later at the New Museum in New York. Locks Gal-lery will also be presenting an exhibition of

PHILADELPHIAnew and recent work by Ann Agee. Rules of the Pattern. Agee makes her home the subject of her work—images that are both recognizable and unusual in their serial, accumulation. The artist explores the inter-section of domestic space and art produc-tion, illustrating the rooms of her home on porcelain platters and bowls, and creating large scale wallpaper installations. For this exhibition, Agee presents three sculptural works, each of which is comprised of mul-tiple, hand-built, porcelain platters and/or bowls mounted on steel armatures. Her images of interiors and furniture create an atypical china pattern and these flashes of domestic life, alternately comic and ordi-nary, suggest the human presence, although the figure is never shown. Agee will also ex-hibit a large grouping of finely crafted and elaborately sculpted white vases, itself an austere exercise in multiplicity and varia-tion of profile. As in previous installations, the artist will hang large-scale, hand paint-ed and stenciled wallpaper depicting ide-alized interiors. These expansive, inviting spaces drawn on the scale of 19th-century Zuber-like panoramas, recall Matisse’s Red Room and alternately the stark, clutter-free spaces depicted by Lichtenstein.

Lynda Bengalis: (top left) D’arrest, 2009, tinted polyurethane, 47.25”x45.75”x22.75”; (top right) Wing, 1970, cast aluminum, 67”x59.25”x 60”. (bottom) Ann Agee, Orange Room 1, 2008, Flashe & acrylic on mulberry paper, 148”x 154”.

Mark Khaisman’s work consists of carefully layered strips of translucent packing tape applied on walls or backlit acrylic panels. The work presented in this new exhibi-tion, From Russia With Love, is composed of several series. The Portraits in Red series is based on photographs of elderly Russian emigrants. The Kiss 007 is based on stages of a singular kiss between the legendary James Bond and the beautiful Tatiana Ro-manova from the 1963 movie From Russia with Love. The tape installation portrays the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, Germany, One of the few places in the world where the United States and the Soviet Union stood directly opposite each other during the Cold War. Khaisman’s work reflects a repackaged ideologies, or the purification

Mark Khaisman & Sand TPentimenti Philadelphia[through Dec 18]

(top) Mark Khaisman, Kiss OO7, 2010, packing tape on backlit acrylic panel 20”x26”. (bottom)Sand T, detail of Las Pasmal, epoxy resin, graph-ite and paint on clayboard, 18”x18”x2.5”.

through aesthetics of a vanished era. Sand T’s work absorbs various elements: geomet-ric abstraction, repetition and minimalism. T works with a combination of medium, epoxy resin, graphite, and paint on archi-val tempered clayboard or acrylic panel. She draws lines using graphite in varying weights and grades. The resin droplets are placed on the final surface one by one. The interplay of the lines, layers of resin, and resin droplets create a 3D effect. Light plays a crucial role to maximize the viewing ex-perience. From side to side, the viewer will encounter sequence of moving lights. Minimal and complex at the same time, the work is a multi-sensorial experience. Sand T’s paintings will trigger your imagination and your mind will run wild.

Exhibitions 33

EXHIBITIONS

This exhibition of drawings includes work by Martin Brief, Richard Garrison, Molly Heron, and Mia Rosenthal. A familiar face in Philadelphia, Mia Rosenthal is currently exhibiting drawings in both Narcissus in the Studio: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits and Same: Difference at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. For her debut at Gallery Joe she will show two new works from her series Antoinette’s Stamp Collec-tion inspired by her late aunt’s voluminous collection saved over decades. Delicate, yet humorous, these intimate ink and gouache renderings are modest in scale, measuring 15 x 15 inches. The advertisement circulars in the Sunday morning newspapers serve as the inspiration for Richard Garrison’s

gouache and watercolor drawings. These schematic drawings record his observations and interactions with suburban life in the form of colors mapped onto grids. St Louis artist Martin Brief makes text-based works in ink on paper. Though the drawings bring to mind ancient scrolls, they are thorough-ly contemporary in subject matter. Brief is showing works from his Truisms, and Art Forum series. A touch of satire, a touch of humor, and a touch of reality make these conceptual works resonate. Molly Heron, a New York City based artist, will show col-orful gouache works from her line drawing series. Influenced by years of yoga practice and breathing exercises, her work is a study in light, color, line and edge.

“New Talent 2010”Gallery Joe Philadelphia[Nov 20 - Dec 18]

(top)Richard Garrison, Celebrate Memorial Day, 2010, watercolor, gouache and graphite on paper, 10”x10”. (bottom) Molly Heron, Linesvb01,then, gouache on paper, 7.25”x10.25”.

Martine Fougeron’s After Prom is the latest chapter in her Tête-à-Tête Project. In 2005, Fougeron began photographing her sons, presenting some of the subtlety and beauty of daily life through a series of informal portraits. Ultimately the project broad-ened to consider the relationships between the sons and among their circle of friends. Fougeron observed that most photography about teenage boys has portrayed dysfunc-tion rather than the routine angst, exuber-ance, and rebelliousness that characterize adolescence. Continuing to focus on day-to-day moments and seeming non-events, Fougeron chose to present what she saw as a more representative portrait of teenage life — filled not with despair, but with the rich and complex drama of growing up. She was fascinated by the inquisitive energy, the intense inner quests, the fabulous dreams and ideals in which they exulted. Speaking on NPR, curator and critic Charlotte Cot-ton called it “one of the best biographical stories that photography has crafted in the 2000s,” and New Yorker photo critic Vince Aletti said that “Fougeron’s pictures have a lovely looseness and spontaneity, but they never feel like snapshots. Color energizes the work and adds to its sensual under-tow.” With After Prom, Fougeron closes the adolescent phase of Tête-à-Tête, exam-ining a key rite of passage — the post-prom party. Fougeron’s images from this event evoke the abandon and the ambivalence of a moment when the familiar, comfortable

relationships of adolescence have begun to slip away. Ghost of Summer is an exhibi-tion of recent images by photographer Rita Bernstein. The scale and intimacy of these remarkable photographs belie the complex-ity and daring of Bernstein’s work. Her im-ages walk a delicate tightrope; they evoke a sense of memory and of keenly felt private thoughts, yet their poignancy is controlled and perfectly modulated by their austerity and ambiguity. They are tender and myste-rious, yet never stray into the sentimental. Bernstein further explores this dichotomy of heart versus mind through her print-making process, which demands a high lev-el of skill yet remains uncertain and seren-dipitous. The process involves liquid silver emulsion applied to delicate Japanese Gam-pi paper. With the fragility of the paper, it is impossible to produce a flawless print or make a print that is identical to an earlier one. Bernstein accepts and even embraces this inability to wholly control the process. It imparts individuality and subtle imper-fections that are in accord with the vulner-ability and humanity of her images. In the late 1980s, Rita Bernstein gave up a success-ful career as a civil rights lawyer to devote most of her time to making photographs. Her photographs have been widely pub-lished and exhibited, and she has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Independence Foundation, and the Leeway Foundation. Her work is in several museums throughout the U.S.

Martine Fougeron & Rita BernsteinGallery 339 Philadelphia[through Jan 29]

Martine Fougeron, Jacuzzi Bonding at Shelter Island, 2009, Digital C-Print. Rita Bernstein, Playhouse, 2008, hand-applied silver emulsion on Japanese Gampi, 7”x7”, Edition 15.


EXHIBITIONS

ACROSS THE COUNTRYBenicia Ganter describes her work like this: “The reductive landscapes that define my work are rooted in my experience of the natural world, yet manifest as images that are wholly unnatural — flattened, simpli-fied spaces, saturated with color, and popu-lated with both abstract and recognizable organic forms. The work explores the junc-ture between the natural and the built en-vironment, and superimposes a structural and systematic approach to the observa-tion of the natural world. These imagined spaces are like flashes of a dream, or déjà vu—both familiar and alien, shaped by the specificity of my own observations of the natural world and the drive to conjure new spaces to explore. The work is bereft of human presence, offering the possibility of an imagined wonderland, glimpses of a

hidden natural world. By using industrial “man-made” materials like acrylic and vi-nyl, I reinforce the idea that our experi-ence of the natural world is infused with artifice and largely synthesized. I splice and graft organic forms together, creating new hybrid forms, and render forms that bal-ance precariously in delicate symbiosis or parasitism. The work is bittersweet. I pres-ent imagined spaces burgeoning with life, often within a seemingly vacant, desolate quietude. I affirm the possibility of regen-eration of the natural world, as I invent forms that explore the genius of survival and adaptation. The work presents distilled pictures of fantastical spaces, both natural and constructed--evidence along the way, on a journey full of wonder, towards a still hidden Shangri-la.”

Benicia GanterWalker Contemporary Boston[through Dec 18]

Benicia Ganter, Upswell, 2009, vinyl collage on paper, 35”x45”.

Beginning the exhibition is a solo presenta-tion of one of China’s premier young art-ists, Chi Peng, featuring new and recent large-scale photographs from Mood is Never Better than Memory and Catcher in the Rye. Having quickly been recognized as a major new talent while he was a student at Beijing’s Central Academy, Chi Peng is emblematic of the inherent contradictions that come with the expansive freedoms, technology and prosperity enjoyed by con-temporary Chinese youth-culture. In this exhibition, Chi shifts between earlier series where his photographic land and seascapes are inhabited by figures in overwhelming numbers to the newer work with single or coupled figures surrounded by vast ocean and sky. Depending on the viewer’s cultural orientation, Chi’s respective series which address topics involving large gatherings of individuals, nudity and sexual orienta-tion, can be viewed as either subversive or liberating – or both. Children in the Rye is representative of the artist’s repetitive, fig-ural image style and optimistic mode where legions of happy children move through a field toward the imagined waiting arms of the artist with the promise of a bright fu-ture linked with the complex history of an

ancient, repressive culture. In the series, Mood is Never Better than Memory, swirl-ing flocks of seagulls swoop down on the tiny figures bearing sweeping and unmis-takable change, symbolically referencing the demand for a more accepting global culture. Chi Peng’s transcendent, layered imagery bristles with activity both by rev-eling in and acknowledging caution about pressing changes in sexual politics within his country and the world. The artist’s full embrace of a newfound sexual freedom as a central theme in his newest series certainly puts forth support for a different future for China’s even younger generation. Concur-rently, the gallery presents “EYTJ” (“Even Younger than Jesus”). This assembling of artists – each younger than Jesus’ 33 years - covers the spectrum of experience from students to artists who are establishing their careers. Regardless of where they are in their careers, “EYTJ” artists demarcate pivotal points in the ongoing creation of enduring art dialogue. William Lamson’s two-channel video projection entitled A Line Describing the Sun, will be exhbited, as will the prints of Isca Greenfield Sanders whose work derives from finds of discard-ed, often poignant, memento photographs.

Chi Peng and “EYTJ”Robischon Denver[through Dec 31]

(top) Chi Peng, Day After Tomorrow, C-Print, 50”x63”. (bottom) William Lamson, A Line De-scribing The Sun (detail), 2010, video, Ed 5.

Exhibitions 35

EXHIBITIONS

Iamikan’s passion to create is rooted in na-ture’s infinitecanvas extending into human nature, inspiring him to observe the subtle web in which everythinginterconnects and communicates. A pragmatic creator, he de-signs each piece as a collection unto itself, beginning first with visualization through the mental assembly of symmetrical and technicalassessments, bringing each piece “to life”. He has an uncanny ability to as-similate from nature’s example of evolu-tion and expansion, catalyzing change, first internally and then externally through his art’s spirit.Iamikan lived for over a decade in Paris, France and worked within a range of arts including theatre andfashion. It was while travelling through Turkey that he rec-ognized the unique artistry of mosaic col-ors and ancient techniques that influenced him to experiment with the properties of paint and natural forces. This observation led to the development of the science, now expressed as his original signature style. Iamikan does not consider his craft as a traditional way of painting, with brushes, paints etc. He describes his process as a co-creative experience within nature’s forces, as he activates oil and acrylic paint like a gradually erupting volcano. It is within

this form of liquid lava, transitioning into a solid statethat he designs the living force. Each piece goes through what he calls a metamorphosis, a periodduring which it is painted, prepped and placed in complete darkness to harden and stabilize. His cre-ations are large scale, and intermixed with abstract imagery of oils, acrylics and resins on a variety of mediums including canvas, wood, metals, glass and more.“My core de-sire is to express more than just a painting on a wall, but to create a living experience that can inspire a deeper awareness in the internal subtly of one’s soul”-says IamikanYears of mastering his art abroad prepared him to return to the states and showcase his collectionin Charleston, SC, an emerg-ing mecca of original art and artists alike. The Art of Core ConsciousnessGallery exclusively exhibits the work of Iamikan, proudly featuring his most recent collec-tion entitled -“The Algorithm of Acuity”, adding pine tree bark as his latest medium.In addition to what is showcased at The Art of Core Consciousness, Iamikan takes commissions, workingon both residential and commercial projects. His mediums translate into varied applications, such as tabletops and other practical uses.

IamikanThe Art of Core Consciousness

Charleston, SC[through Dec 18]

Jun Kaneko was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1942. He came to the United States in 1963 to continue his painting studies at Choui-nard Institute of Art, whereupon his intro-duction to Fred Marer drew him to sculp-tural ceramics. He later went on to study with Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, and Jerry Rothman in California amidst this time now defined as The Contemporary Ceram-ics Movement in America. Kaneko's most recognized sculptural form is the boldly glazed, monumental dango (Japanese for "rounded form"). As the distinguished philosopher and critic, Arthur C. Danto has noted, "They communicate instanta-neously their friendly and reconciling as-surances, and wear the real world as well as the brilliant coverings that Kaneko has given them." His artwork appears in nu-merous international and national solo and group exhibitions annually, and is included in more than seventy museum collections. He has realized over thirty public art com-

missions in the United States and Japan and is the recipient of national, state, and organization fellowships. Continually ex-perimenting with the technical aspects of the ceramic medium, his enormous dango forms challenge the physical limitations of the material and the firing process. As he wrote in 1996, "Oftentimes I am asked why I make such large-scale work. In making any object, we cannot escape the problems of scale. I believe each form has one right scale. Whether I'm making a large or small object, in the end I hope it will make sense to have that particular scale and form to-gether and that it will give off enough visual energy to shake the air around it." Based in Omaha since 1986 and in his current stu-dio since 1990, Kaneko works fluently in diverse media and fields in the arts. He is currently collaborating with the San Fran-cisco Opera, designing the sets, costumes, and lighting for their next production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute".

Jun KanekoBentley Phoenix[Dec 9 - Jan 29]

Jun Kaneko: (top) Wall Slab 10-07-19, 2010, glazed ceramic, 22.25”x29.25”x2.5”. (bot-tom) Dango 06-12-01, 2007, glazed ceramic, 26”x16”x9.5”.

Iamikan, Infinite Possibility.

T H E

G A L L E R YHAPPENING

M A R I N A D E L R E Y

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F I N E A B S T R A C T A R TB Y

N A T A L I E G R A Y

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m i d d l e : W A L L S T R E E T 4 8 x 7 2a b o v e : a s e c t i o n o f

E Y E C A N D Y 3 6 x 6 0

W H A T H A P P E N S T O T H E C A N S

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m i d d l e : 2 0 0 C A N S - S O L D

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T h e H o t e l E r w i nV e n i c e C A

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G A L L E R YHAPPENING

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http://www.thehappeninggallery.com


EXHIBITIONSARTISTS

Alexa Meade

eldom has a young artist entered the Greater Washington, DC, art scene with such presence as this 23-year-old has since arriving in DC a year ago. Alexa

Meade’s work was immediately noticed by the usually morose DC area press; she exhibited in New York and soon came to the attention of major art world players. It is no surprise, therefore, that Alexa Meade’s first DC exhibition bypassed the usual exhibition path of working one’s way through multiple group shows before being “noticed” by a gallery. On top of this, Meade’s DC debut took place at Irvine Contemporary, one of the capital region’s blue chip galleries.

This is all because Alexa Meade is doing what many of us thought was impossible: something truly new and innovative in the visual arts. She took the most tradi-tional of all painting genres, the trompe-l’oeil painting technique that in the hands of a master can fool the eye to appear to compress three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional plane, and dragged it into a 21st century dialogue.

She does this by fusing installation, painting, performance, photography, and vid-eo art. She also removes the painting part from being a representational picture on a flat canvas. Instead, Meade paints — and she paints superbly well — directly on people and other three-dimensional subjects. The subject and its representation become one and the same. Essentially, her art imitates life on top of life.

The resulting work blurs genres and borders and certainly redefines what painting is and can be, giving the old medium a new and powerful footing. It has also at-tracted immense and rare attention all over the world. Meade will soon be exhib-iting at the Saatchi Gallery in London and having her first European solo show at the Pool Gallery in Berlin.

For more information, visit alexameade.com or irvinecontemporary.com.

BREAKING THE PICTURE PLANE

by F. Lennox Campella

Alexa Meade: (clockwise from the top-left) Transit, 2010. C-print, direct painting on hu-man subject, artist’s installation, 16”x20”; Exposed 3, 2010. C-print, direct painting on human subject, artist’s installation, 20”x16”; Mediation 1, 2010. C-print, direct painting on human subject, artist's installation. 18”x24”. Courtesy of Irvine Contemporary Art.

S

EXHIBITIONS

Artists 39


EXHIBITIONSARTISTS

A relative newcomer to the art world, Christine Binns has experienced fabalous success over the last four years. We sat down with Binns to learn more about her work, her artistic method, and her recent move to Los Angeles.

California Contemporart Art: Thanks for joining us today. As you’ve sold more work, how has all of this addtional expo-sure affected you? Christine Binns: Honestly, it makes me a little nervous. I feel like opening

myself up to such a large audience could possibly burst the amazing bubble I've been living in the last several years since I began showing and selling my work. I've truly had an amazing amount of positive feedback and I guess I accredit that, in part, to the small amount of people that have been in my bubble with me. ACA: Tell us a little more about your artistic journey. How did it begin? CB: I’ve been an artist my entire life. It was in my blood before I picked up my first crayon and ate it!

Christine Binns

ACA: So, that’s when it all started! CB: Yes. (laughing) ACA: Did you go to school for art or train with anyone? CB: I’m self taught. Money was an is-sue growing up, and I never dreamt I could actually be an artist. It took me a good couple of years to get comfortable with saying I was an artist. I completely admire those that went to school or have had the opportunity to train with great artists, but I am also grateful for the lack of influence in my work also.

IN HER OWN WORDS: An Interview

EXHIBITIONS

Artists 41

ARTISTS

ACA: Where did you grow up? CB: I was actually born in the biggest little state in the Union, Rhode Island. I moved to Belleville, Illinois with my mom and two sisters from age 9 until I was 23. I was restless with small town liv-ing and decided to move to Las Vegas to continue a career in the Casino Industry. I was a casino dealer for 13 years and then a supervisor for 4 years at the Wynn Resort before resigning in '09. ACA: And now you’ve made the move to L.A. How has that worked out? CB: It’s been amazing! I had never been part of an actual art community be-fore, it’s been so embracing and inspiring! I currently reside in West Hollywood and find tons of inspiration just walking the streets. The concentration of people here is overwhelming, in a good way for me.” ACA: When did you begin showing your work and how has the art market treated you? CB: I only began showing and selling my work in 2007. As unbelievable as it is

still is to me, I have sold about 70 paint-ings all over the United States and as far as China, London and Dubai. I have to be so grateful to have this blessing, it truly blows my mind! ACA: In what medium do you work? CB: Currently and for the last several years, it’s been abstract paintings, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, although I am interested in any and every form of creating. I look forward to one day work-ing with glass and metal as well. ACA: How would you describe your technique? CB: I primarily only use my hands and spatulas to create. I really love the feel of the paint on my hands and massaging it into the canvas. ACA: And how would you describe your work in general?

CB: Others seem to do a much better job in describing it, but I’ll try. My paint-ings have been described as powerful, full of emotion, inspiring and also soothing. I have people tell me that they have felt a sense of strength, power and/or under-standing when looking at my work. It's pretty miraculous to have some literally brought to tears when they are viewing a

painting I created. I feel my paintings are an expression of emotion during experi-ences I have had or others that share their stories with me. I feel very blessed to have that kind of reaction, it's what drives me.

ACA: Where do you hope to see your-self in five years? CB: In terms of my art? (ACA nods.)I see myself going more international. I would like to have a reputable and re-spected gallery representing me so that I am left only to create and live. The busi-ness part of this is so contradicting to my person, I'll be happy when it's someone else's job to care for that part of it!" ACA: Any final thoughts? CB: Just to say thank you and hope that anyone reading this realizes that when you do something you’re passion-ate about, life is great! I’m proof of that.

Christine Binns’ collection is available for viewing at Studio 900, 900 E 4th Street, by appointment or during the L.A. Down-town Art Walk, which takes place every second Thursday of the month. For more information, visit christinebinns.com.

Christine Binns

(opposite page) Ride the Wave, 24”x36” (this page, clock-wise by bottom left) Between Heaven and Hell, There’s Us, 24”x30”; Beautiful Chaos, 24”x24”; Lake of Dreams,

24”x36”; Manifesting the Power Within, 36”x48”.


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Natalie Gray

On Comparisons to Pollock and Her Artistic Journey

ome people who actually knew Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, have come into the gallery and hailed, “Surely, you are Jack-

son Pollock’s daughter.” A 95-year-old artist, who used to restore paint-ings for Krasner, sat in my studio just staring at the drop cloth on my floor. As he pondered it, he said, “This is just like Pollock’s studio,” He then drew his attention to a diptych of mine called Blu Ray. He stared at it for a few minutes, then said, “You have the same depth as Pollock.” Then he leaned in, as though telling a big secret, and said, “But, you know, he used to drink a lot. Your lines are more controlled.” I had goose bumps for days!

From when I was a kid, my back-ground was in custom work. I was sell-ing my work internationally from age 15 and had bought my third house from my artwork by the time I was 25. I worked so hard. I collapsed several times from exhaustion and even wound up in hos-pital in Toronto. I would paint seven days a week and had six people taking orders for custom paintings. I was essentially a painting robot! And then, 10 years ago, I

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IN HER OWN WORDS

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Natalie Gray

sort of fell apart. I had just completed the Sistine Chapel Mural. (It took me 520 hours while Michelangelo needed 520 days. But I had Starbucks.). I had all these paints and supplies left over from the mural. I just started smashing paint around and stabbing the canvas with brushes. I was terribly miserable, so I shut myself in my apartment for 30 days and produced 44 abstract canvases. I'd never even painted abstract before;

I thought it was for people who couldn't draw. I was totally ignorant of its power. I painted in this trance-like state, and it was really as though something had taken over me and I was chanelling this force—like a Ouiji board, but with brushes.

For a year I didn't show anyone the pieces, lest they know how messed up I had felt while creating them. But then my shyness about them slipped away as trusted friends would enthuse "Oh, I love that one!" Next thing I knew I had a solo exhibit at Edgemar

Center for the Arts and was discovered by an enormous interna-tional investor. He flew out to see my exhibit. I'd never been so nervous in my life, my hand, the one that has the steadiness of a steel pipe when I track a line, was shaking like a leaf. He looked at my work for sixty seconds and said, 'We're sending you a con-tract. You're the next Jackson Pollock. I hope you like to travel."

Oddly, I had been completely unfamiliar with Pollock's work and only knew he had been the subject of a movie. It was all very strange for me. Now, I own my own gallery and so much work has sold I can hardly keep up. When collectors come in who tru-ly love Pollock, it's like they're in a candy store. They just stand there saying they can't believe it's not his work.

My work recently replaced the Hammer Museum Exhibit at FOX Studios and just as the last piece went up, Richard Belzer (an avid collector) got out of the elevator, saw my painting Wall Street and exclaimed in disbelief, "Fox did not buy a Pollock?!"Given that Rupert Murdoch has spent tens of millions on single pieces of art, I guess that was not a silly question.

Some of my well-known or esteemed collectors include Chel-sea Handler, Ted Harbert (CEO Comcast), and John Smith (CEO BBC Worldwide, who owns my You have a dribble and also com-missioned a portrait which was shipped to London). Just last week, high profile plastic surgeon Dr. Grant Stevens purchased a piece for the lobby of his practice in Marina del Rey. A lovely lady named Barbara Greenberg has no less than seven of my works for her penthouse apt, essentially her own Natalie Gray gallery! When Santa Monica Place has its grand opening recently, I was invited to design and paint a mannequin for their Mannequin Collective. I was in good company, among mannequins submit-ted by Cirque du Soleil and The Geffen Playhouse.

I opened The Happening Gallery in March 2010 as a great place for both artists and art lovers alike. Like other projects in my life, it’s been a tremendous amount of work, but it's been great.

“Surely, you are Jackson Pollock’s daughter.”

For more information about Natalie Gray and The Happening Gallery, visit thehappeninggallery.com.

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y life has been exposed to art from a very young age. I was born in

North Carolina and raised in a small, rural suburb just outside of Charlotte. Despite her children’s pleas, my mother refused to order cable TV. Instead, she encouraged her children to be enter-tained with art supplies. Plastic water-color sets, color pencils, Play Dough, and paint brushes littered every room in our house. Growing up during the 1980’s, there were limited artistic venues in the rural South compared to larger cities such as New York or Chicago. Yet, my mother would make extraordinary efforts to ex-pose her children to the arts. She’d load her three children in the family mini van to attend an art museum or travel-ing Broadway musical in Charlotte. We’d drive forty-five minutes as open fields

and creeks began to fade into concrete sidewalks and tall buildings. These out-ings not only developed my love of art and theatre, but also my fascination with the city. Basic high school art classes are my only formal training with painting. Upon graduating, I made the decision to pursue a college degree in Theatre. While I never studied visual art in college, I found the time to paint privately in my tiny campus apartment. Years passed, and it wasn’t until after I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting that I began to paint in a real way. I found the social and physical environment of California, spe-cifically San Francisco and Los Angeles, artistically stimulating. While I’ve always found satisfaction from the collaborative process of performance, I began to crave the solitary process of painting.

In 2008, the Writer’s Strike completely shut down the film and television indus-try for over fourteen weeks. The indus-try didn’t fully recover until 2010. It was during this time I finally began to reveal my paintings to the outside world. The results were numerous commissions and four solo gallery exhibitions within a twelve-month period. Within one year, I was completely supporting myself as a painter. As an artist, I am deeply motivated by raw, truthful, emotional expression. I gravitate toward the Abstract Expres-sionists of the 60’s. I’m motivated by any artist, whether a painter, actor or musi-cian, who works from a private emotional place that’s expressed in a visceral way to the viewer. I’m also greatly motivated by urban environments. The lines, frenetic energy, and movement, of a metropolis

Ashleigh Sumner

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are inspiring. The raw, gritty textures of industrial areas are oddly beautiful to me, and I try to capture this essence in my work. In part, this is why I chose the industrial area of downtown Los Angeles for my studio; I’m constantly inspired by my work environment.

In my early days as an artist, my goal was to create controlled work as close to realism as possible. Now when I paint, I have an explosive emotional experience. I express my way through the canvas. The canvas or wood panel in front of me represents a kind of in-timate confrontation that manifests itself in a flurry or “action painting” that can feel angry, joyful, or sorrowful. The process feels like a fight or exuber-ant dance; an entangled, raw back and forth. It feels extremely intimate and private. It is only after I feel the end of an emotional release, a catharsis, do I step back and look at what I’ve created.

During this evolution, I abandoned my brushes and began working with palette knives. There was something about scraping paint to canvas that felt strong, raw, and a little dangerous. This technique helped capture the rough texture and energy in the abstract ur-ban landscapes I was creating.

In my latest work, I have started in-tergrading collage with a strong Asian influence. This work has begun to re-flect my personal and spiritual journey with Eastern Philosophy. I’ve been incorporating text such as, “Balance,” “Trust” and “Patience” through a sten-ciling technique that has a rough “street art” feel.

What I’d like my work to convey to the viewer is simple: A raw, truthful, abstract representation of my emotion-al existence.

For more information, please visit sumnerartstudio.com.

Ashleigh Sumner: No Country For Gay Men, acrylic on American flag on wood panel finished in resin, 60” x 36”. The 213, acrylic on sheet metal finished in resin, 36” x 48”.

Ashleigh Sumner

american contemporary art (december 2010)

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