Los Angeles Art Shows- Aaron Fowler at Diane Rosenstein Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture
Mar 122016
 
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Mom Knows

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Black Flag

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Detail from Black Flag

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.

This show closes 3/12/16.

 

Los Angeles Art Shows- Mark Dutcher at Jason Vass Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture
Mar 122016
 

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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.

This show closes on 3/12/16.

 

Los Angeles Art Shows- Chris Ballantyne at Zevitas Marcus

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Mar 052016
 

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There is an incredible quiet beauty to Chris Ballantyne‘s exhibition Transcendental Divide/Transitory Space at Zevitas Marcus in Culver City.  The paintings, all on wood panels, contrast the tininess of the man made structures with the vastness of the natural landscapes.

From the press release-

Transcendental Divide/Transitory Space continues Chris Ballantyne’s exploration of the tensions that exist between nature and man’s ever-expanding imprint on the planet. Employing a dry sense of humor and architecturally precise draftsmanship, Ballantyne delicately renders familiar images of everyday life – a neglected swimming pool, an empty parking lot, a vacant home – and juxtaposes them with often vast expanses of nature. The overall effect is such that signs of civilization start to seem both absurd and obsolete. In this exhibition, a highway interchange becomes an infinity loop; a suburban ranch house is inexplicably perched on the edge of a massive canyon; and a ship, dwarfed in scale to the canvas on which it is rendered, floats into a serene white void.

Ballantyne says of his work, “I want to suggest that empty space or nothingness has real meaning, as do the everyday and overlooked.”

This show closes 3/5/16.

(images courtesy of Zevitas Marcus)

Los Angeles Art Shows- Dana Weiser and Greg Mocilnakar at Walter Maciel Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters
Feb 272016
 
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Dana Weiser

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Greg Mocilnikar

Los Angeles based artist Dana Weiser’s exhibition at Walter Maciel Gallery, Without you, I couldn’t be me…, focuses on her experiences as a member of an interracial family. Weiser was adopted from Korea as an infant by a Jewish-American family and raised in the Midwest . She has a sister who was also adopted from Korea.

From the press release-

…Weiser’s work explores lost identity, multiple identities, and racial identity with her emphasis of being an outsider in a predominantly white community where she never felt a strong affiliation to any group or faith.  The inevitable questions like “Have you met your real parents?” and “Is she your real sister?” are often the opening liners upon introduction and these phrases become the subject matter as literal text interpretations spelling out the racist remarks.  In one series using large sheets of vintage lace as the surface, pearl beads are stitched into the fabric to spell comments like “I’m not racist or anything but…” or “I don’t mean to sound racist but…” The delicate and intimate technique of traditional beading challenges Weiser’s skills much in the same way as her ability to pacify her true emotions and refrain from bleak replies.

In addition to the beaded work, she also addresses some of her relationship with Korean culture in three self portraits- Enacting my Koreanness, (self-portrait performance). There are also two neon sculptures- one that reads “adopt” with an “a” over the “o” to create “adapt” and the other the title of the show in a circle. The different mediums make the exhibition feel a bit chaotic but perhaps that also keeps with the theme of having an identity that is hard to pin down.

In the other gallery are Greg Mocilnikar’s colorful abstract paintings and works on paper have a lively energy.

Both of these shows close 2/27/16.

Los Angeles Art Shows- James Hyde at Luis de Jesus Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography
Dec 192015
 

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James Hyde’s exhibition Ground at Luis de Jesus Los Angeles combines photography and painting to form strong graphic images.

From the press release–

The title “Ground” resonates with the descriptive photography of western landscapes. In the painting context, the ground is the active place on which painting occurs. Hyde uses a home brewed paint for these works, consisting of pigment dispersed in acrylic mediums, and in most cases that pigment is a form of ground earth. In turn, Hyde’s photographs follow a “light-room” process developed in the computer, distorting and adjusting it and challenging the notion of any factual naturalism.

Resisting genres and traversing mediums, Hyde investigates the abstract gesture in relationship to photography. His opposition to the “realism” of digital photography, placed against the colors of abstracted shapes, snaps photography into place, making it a site, a location, and naturalizing it as a pictorial fact while reframing the question of the truthfulness of photography.

This exhibition closes 12/19/15.

(images via Luis de Jesus Los Angeles)

Los Angeles Art Shows- Leon Benn at Roberts & Tilton

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Dec 122015
 

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If you are headed to Culver City, make sure to check out Leon Benn’s painting exhibition Spare Time at Roberts & Tilton gallery. His process for creating these paintings is especially interesting.

From the press release–

The surfaces are slowly built up through varying layers, dimensions, demands. Benn starts his paintings by selecting canvas, which he then treats and hand dyes prior to starting batik applied through a water-based resist. Drawings utilizing oil pastels breaches the structure left from the underlying batik motif. The results are phantasmagoric paint-scapes that explore imagistic transference of natural imagery to a static commercial medium.

This show closes 12/12/15.

Los Angeles Art Shows- “The New New” at Diane Rosenstein Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture
Nov 272015
 
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Aaron Fowler

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Work by Genevieve Gaignard

The New New, at Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Hollywood, is an exhibition of painting, drawing, mixed-media, and collage by six emerging artists from New York and Los Angeles- Ray Anthony Barrett, Aaron Fowler (pictured above), Genevieve Gaignard (pictured above), Tschabalala Self, Michael Shultis, and Jason Stopa.

From the press release–

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.

This exhibition closes tomorrow, 11/28/15.

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.

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