Los Angeles Art Shows – Page 17

Los Angeles Art Shows- Culver City

Art, Artists, Drawing, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture

Oct 312015

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Here are a few good art shows closing on 10/31/15 in Culver City worth checking out:

Robb Putnam’s impressive animal sculptures (above image) are at Walter Maciel Gallery for the exhibition Loiterers.

From the press release-

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.

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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’s Needleworks 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.”

Los Angeles Art Shows- Miriam Wosk at LAM Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters

Oct 312015

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LAM Gallery in Hollywood is currently showing the work of Miriam Wosk in an exhibition titled Touch of the Hand.

From the press release-

Comprised of mixed media paintings, collages, and sculptures from the last decade of Wosk’s life, the exhibition is an enchanted journey through a world of her own creation. In this world, human, insect, and aquatic life-forms meet insidious botanical growths; hearts share the stage with horns and claws; and beauty rules with a heavy hand.

Get up close to see all the tiny details that went in to these amazingly intricate works. This show closes 10/31/15.

Los Angeles Art Shows- Jose Alvarez at Gavlak Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Oct 242015

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Today (10/24/15) is the last day to see Jose Alvarez’s multi-colored, multi-textured wonderland– (D.O.P.A.) “We’re All Made of Star Stuff” at Gavlak Gallery.

Los Angeles Art Shows- Yuh-Shioh Wong and Alex Chaves at Night Gallery

Art, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Oct 102015

Yuh-Shioh Wong

Alex Chaves

Today (10/10/15) is the last day to see Yuh-Shioh Wong and Alex Chaves’s excellent painting exhibitions at Night Gallery downtown.

Los Angeles Art Shows- Dan Levenson and Yunhee Min at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture

Oct 102015

Dan Levenson

Yunhee Min

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.

This show closes 10/10/15.

Los Angeles Art Shows- Mark Jenkins at Fabien Castanier Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture

Oct 032015

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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.

From the press release–

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.

This show closes 10/3/15.

Los Angeles Art Shows- Noah Purifoy at LACMA

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture

Sep 262015

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Noah Purifoy’s current retrospective at LACMA offers a comprehensive look at the influential assemblage artist.

A little background on the artist from LACMA’s website–

Noah Purifoy (1917-2004) lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California. A founding director of the Watts Towers Art Center, his earliest body of sculpture, constructed out of charred debris from the 1965 Watts Rebellion, was the basis for 66 Signs of Neon, a landmark group exhibition about the riots that traveled to nine venues between 1966 and 1969. In line with the postwar period’s general fascination with the street and its objects, Purifoy’s 66 Signs of Neon constituted a Duchampian approach to the fire-molded alleys of Watts, a strategy that profoundly impacted artists such as David Hammons, John Outterbridge and Senga Nengudi.

In the late 1980’s, after eleven years of public policy work for the California Arts Council, where Purifoy initiated programs such as Artists in Social Institutions, bringing art into the state prison system, Purifoy moved his practice to the Mojave desert. He lived there for the last fifteen years of his life, creating ten acres of large-scale sculpture constructed entirely from junked materials.

For more information on Purifoy and his Joshua Tree Outdoor Museum (where some of the pieces in the exhibition are from), KCET has an interesting article.

Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada closes Sunday 9/27/15.

Los Angeles Art Shows- Mark Bradford at the Hammer Museum

Art, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Sep 202015

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Mark Bradford- Dead Hummingbird, 2015 (image via Hammer Museum)

Today (9/20/15) is the last day to see the majority of artist Mark Bradford’s exhibition Scorched Earth at the Hammer Museum.

From the museum’s site:

Comprising a suite of new paintings (on view through September 20), a multimedia installation (on view through September 27), and a major painting on the Lobby Wall (on view through November 15), this new body of work by the Los Angeles–based artist Mark Bradford refers to formative moments in his life and ruminations on the body in crisis. As an artist who has long been interested in strategies of mapping and the psychogeography of the city he calls home, Bradford uses his characteristic painting style to excavate the terrain— emotional, political and actual—that he inhabits. Examining the moment and afterlife of the 1992 uprisings in Los Angeles, which he experienced from his studio in Leimert Park, Bradford has translated the outrage and lasting wounds of the riots into these new paintings. Scorched Earth is Bradford’s first solo museum exhibition in Los Angeles.

For more on Mark Bradford, his life and work, this LA Times article is an excellent portrait of the artist.

Get out of the heat and check it out- it’s free!

Los Angeles Art Shows- “A Perfect Likeness” at the Hammer Museum

Art, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Photographers / Photography

Sep 122015

Thomas Demand

Catherine Opie

Florian Maier-Aichen

Perfect Likeness: Photography and Composition, organized by UCLA art department professor Russell Ferguson and currently at the Hammer Museum, is an engaging exploration into the concept of creating a photograph.

From the museum:

When we say of a portrait that it is a perfect likeness, we mean not just that it accurately delineates its subject. There is a further implication that the image penetrates beyond surface appearance to give us some deeper sense of the person depicted. The same logic can be applied more broadly. There was a time when it seemed a plausible goal for the artist to resolve a picture so conclusively that the result of his or her work would potentially transcend simple representation to reveal the essence of the subject. Today such a project might seem naïve. We are glutted with images. What single picture might separate itself from this flood? Any such attempt to make such a work will lead inevitably to the question of composition. This issue is perhaps most urgent for artists working in in photography, a medium that now pervades every corner of daily life. The exhibition Perfect Likeness: Photography and Composition looks at artists’ work with carefully composed photographic images.

The images chosen for the exhibition are often not exactly what they seem on first glance. Thomas Demand’s Diving Board is actually a model created in cardboard and paper. Florian Maier-Aichen’s La Brea Avenue in the Snow was inspired by a historical photo which he then created by drawing in snow on to his photo of Los Angeles houses and adding cars from different eras. Catherine Opie’s portrait of artist Lawrence Weiner appears at first like a Rembrandt painting but it’s the details within the image that draw you in for another look.

There are so many incredible images in the exhibition, it’s hard not to want to talk about them all. Check it out this weekend for free with two exhibition tours given by Russell Ferguson on Sunday (it closes 9/13/15).

(images via Hammer Museum and Art in America)