At Amy Yao’s solo exhibition, Bay of Smokes, at Various Small Fires, the fear of a polluted and harmfully modified environment plays a central role. An industrial manufactured scent fills the gallery, lead blankets are on towel racks, and a mountain of rice reveals on closer inspection that it has bits of plastic and pearls (real and fake) mixed in.
In this time of GMO’s, toxic water in Flint, and the gas leak at Porter Ranch, it’s hard not to be paranoid about what is really happening to our natural surroundings and how poisonous our daily lives really are, especially in ways we cannot discern. Yao’s exhibition is a creative and at times playful examination of these issues- but the darkness of the theme, like the scent, remains a constant presence.
The mixed media assemblage paintings in Aaron Fowler‘s current solo exhibition, Blessings on Blessings, at Diane Rosenstein gallery, are large, highly detailed, and dense with imagery.
From the press release-
Aaron Fowler, who was born in St. Louis and currently lives and works in Harlem, creates mixed-media assemblage-paintings that depict his experiences and the lives of his family and friends in both a personal narrative and an epic journey through contemporary America. The title of this exhibition, which includes twelve portraits, tableaux, and medallions created in the past year, refers to lyrics from “Blessings”, a 2015 song by American rapper Big Sean.
In these sculptural tableaux, Fowler depicts himself as a “mirror character” called The Pilgrim. He employs oils, acrylics and collage – often pixilated ‘photo print-outs’ based on 18th C. American historical painting – alongside objects like Adidas sneakers, CDs, T-shirts, and plastic bags. The dynamic, large-scale compositions are enacted on discarded domestic materials including shutters, mirrored doors, windows, and card tables.
Mark Dutcher‘s solo exhibition, Time Machine, currently at the new Jason Vass Gallery, includes his complete Time Machine series of ten paintings as well as his Optimist Benches. The paintings, primarily in shades of white, are beautifully balanced by the brightly colored benches, which are meant to be used for contemplating the work on the walls.
From the press release-
Encouraged by the physical immediacy of painting and by its mnemonic capacity to invoke nostalgia, Dutcher began the Time Machine series in 2012 with a desire to capture and revisit enduring past impressions. The series began with an attempt to represent a pivotal moment in his development as an artist, when, in 1983, viewing an abstract painting by Susan Rothenberg at LACMA he experienced a profound shift and consolidation of purpose. Dutcher wanted to return to that specific moment in time, to capture the feeling of that day through an intuitive approach to abstraction. He went on to create nine additional paintings in the series, each in search of the conversion and representation of a fleeting memory. By revisiting these impressions, Dutcher literally recreates a personal history through emotive recall, visually incorporating fragments of text, (sometimes song lyrics or friends and lovers’ names specific to the time), painterly gestures, and physical remnants of time spent in the studio to convey sensorial memories. Dutcher’s tributes to the past are both celebratory and melancholic, as each commemoration inevitably carries its weight in loss.
Also included in the exhibition is a painting from Dutcher’s Hart Crane series and six smaller works on paper from the Time Machine series.
Currently at Gavlak Gallery are Bovey Lee‘s amazingly detailed rice paper works for her solo exhibition Divertical.
From the press release-
Taking inspiration from the overwhelming nature of a cross-country move, the works are predominated by a motif of rollercoasters winding their way throughout the pieces and often forming the perimeter of the cuttings. The title of the exhibition itself takes its name from an actual rollercoaster, the world’s tallest water roller coaster located in Italy. Embedded within each work – contrasting with the chaos of the rollercoaster and the natural and urban elements that fill the work – is evidence of a small balancing act, depicted in the form of a tightrope walker, an acrobat, or a surfer carefully balanced on his board. Speaking to the motivation for her move, the works also feature imagery associated with romantic relationships – wedding bouquets, engagement rings, cakes, and eternity symbols populate the pieces.
In the front of the gallery is Amy Bessone‘s InThe Century of Women, a combination of sculptures and prints concerned with the female image. The large bronze and ceramic sculptures contrast the female torsos on pedestals with the large pipes on the floor that perhaps suggest the male onlooker. The prints on the wall are “based on discarded images of divorcées from newspaper archives, dating from the 1930’s-1970’s.” They invite viewers to imagine narratives for these women who in certain instances stare out at you from their moment in time.
Bettina Hubby’s exhibition, THE SEXUAL BRONZE SHOW at Klowden Mann presents several pairs of common objects cast in bronze that take on sexual relationships . This is made even more clear in the back room of the gallery where there are photos of the objects interacting.
And it is definitely meant to be funny, as this quote from Hubby indicates (taken from the press release)-
“I take my humor seriously. I focused intently and took a survey, then plunged deeply and engrossed myself into the grocery aisles to find these pairings and made monuments to my match-made couples’ various proclivities. I honor their diversity and their freedom of expression. I bronzed their essence and photographed them in a white bed of light to reveal their true natures; they gleam with a confident appreciative post-coital sigh.” – Hubby
This show closes 2/27/16 and there is a closing reception from 6-8pm.
Art Culver City, the group exhibition currently at Mark Moore Gallery, was created in response to the current state of art fairs- which have become more about celebrity and parties than the art itself. The focus here is on the art. Standouts include Zemer Peled’s sculptures created from hand-crafted shards of porcelain (pictured above), Kim Rugg’s maps recreated using only city names and regions and Christopher Russell’s photo prints that have images scratched into them with a razor. This show closes 12/19/15.
While in Culver City make sure to stop by Maloney Fine Art to see Jeff Colson’s incredibly realistic sculpture, Stacks (pictured above), created from carved wood. This show closes 12/19.
Also closing 12/19 in Culver City and worth checking out-
Rosson Crow’s multimedia exhibition at Honor Fraser Gallery Madame Psychosis Holds a Séance, “explores the fictional world of Madame Psychosis, an aging showgirl obsessed with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.” The center piece is Crow’s first film, which stars Kelly Lynch as Madame Psychosis in outfits designed by Jeremy Scott.
At Anat Egbi Gallery is Jen Denike’s show ‘If She Hollers” which consists of three films and still images from them. “The show’s three protaganists feature “The Boxer”,“The Cat” and “The Pimp” interweave elements adapted from references ranging from Joe Lewis to Alice in Wonderland and RuPaul’s Drag Race”.
Cheryl Louise Humphreys’ embossed paper images at her premier solo exhibition “I Just Have This Feeling…” explore visual communication in a digital age at Paul Loya Gallery
The works in this show are multi-dimensional, with some artists using heavy impasto, collage, or flirting with the intersection of painting and sculpture. Connecting the varied practices in The New New is an explicit use of text – song lyrics, art theory, slogans, and commercial branding – in a formally exciting interplay between word, image and painting.
The New New brings together emerging artists with distinct approaches – but all with a shared engagement with the aggregate of received imagery and personal narrative.
Putnam continues to create whimsical sculptures made out of fabrics, detritus and a plethora of disregarded items that explore memory and recollections of childhood storybook characters and imaginary friends. His animal subjects take on the moods and emotions of the human experience with specific gesturing of posture and bodily expression. Using this thoughtful process and personal reflection to execute the work, Putnam himself becomes a loiterer delving into his youth with his learned emotional maturity perhaps mimicking his own apprehension as a young boy circling the sidelines of the playground where he felt unwelcome. The work in Loiterers sparks ideas of what gives a living being or object its status and value while questioning the many notions of human empathy.
Michael Waugh’s drawings at Von Lintel Gallery are even more incredible up close when you see they are created from tiny handwritten text. (images via their website)
From the gallery website-
Waugh transcribes texts—such as government commissions and theoretical books about power and capitalism—into portraits and landscapes. To Waugh, the selection of texts and images and the relationship between the two are the conceptual heart of the work. “These are worlds made of words that draw upon a historical quest for knowledge and for political progress—a quest often at odds with social reality,” he explains. Waugh also explores these themes through mixed-media installations, performances, and videos, as in “The Wealth of Nations” project (2009-) for which he has staged (and documented) public readings from Adam Smith’s seminal economic text.
Joel Otterson’sNeedleworks at Maloney Fine Art -“explores two new bodies of work; two-dimensional beaded “paintings” and three-dimensional hand-blown glass “flesh cups” which serve as a homage to the diversity, dexterity and tradition of sewing, stitching and embroidery.”
Currently at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects gallery in Culver City are two very different artists. Yunhee Min’s large acrylic paintings use bright colors that give the gestural motion in them a striking vibrancy.
In the second half of the gallery are Dan Levenson’s monocromatic works which envision “a fictional and immersive narrative about a community of Swiss artists at the now-defunct State Art Academy, Zrich (SKZ)”, complete with an imagined studio and storage spaces filled with work.
When you first open the door of the Fabien Castanier Gallery you are confronted by a life size figure clad all in black that appears to be looking at you through binoculars from the back of the gallery. This is one of many ominous sculptures at Mark Jenkins’ current solo exhibition Still Life.
Akin to traditional notions of the “still life,” his sculptures capture moments that conjure their own realities, presenting tableaus that challenge one’s sense of what is real and what is not. Jenkins constructs his people, animals, children – entities commonly filled with life – into inanimate objects, frozen in bizarre postures and scenarios. By creating these unconventional situations, he re-contextualizes commonplace ideas or things and inserts them into a new landscape in which the viewer plays an integral part.
Jenkins’ sculptures, whether placed in the street or in the gallery, alter perceptions of the ordinary and create surreal settings that infallibly elicit an alternative experience. The placement of his artwork always creates a new form of discourse central to space and audience. For the pieces he situates in the urban environment, the artist intentionally leaves the sculptures unattended to fulfill their life cycles to whatever end, may it be natural deterioration or confiscation. The viewer’s reaction to his pieces becomes part of the sculptures, turning the street into a stage. The theatricality of Mark Jenkins’ work remains a central theme, and in this solo exhibition he uses the gallery space as the performance platform, incorporating the viewers not only as spectators but as actors themselves.
The second paragraph references Jenkins’ extensive outside work which has been placed in different areas around the world. The images below (via his site) were in Malmö, Barcelona, and Rome, respectively. More of these sculptures as well as the rest of his work can be seen here.
