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Byline: Liz Goldner
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SUGAR PLUM FAIRY at South Coast Repertory
If you’re all Nutcrackered out even before Christmas arrives, Sugar Plum Fairy may be the perfect tonic. Sandra Tsing Loh, as actor, writer and comedienne, mines her pre-teen years growing up in the San Fernando Valley. She relates the story of being the younger, nerdy sister of the perfect and steely 15-year-old Kaitlin (performed by Shannon Holt) who got the lead in the Beverly Rosanne School of Dance production of The Nutcracker, and later rejected the part. Meanwhile young Sandra, played by Tsing Loh, was relegated to the chorus to dance to the melody of the Waltz of the Flowers. Or as she asserts in the play—only rejected girls end up in the chorus.
Tony Abatemarco, Shannon Holt and Sandra Tsing. Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR. While the story of trying out for and performing in The Nutcracker is woven throughout the play, the author/lead actor uses the 75-minute production to bring up a panoply of pre-adolescent yearnings, frustrations, desires and observations, albeit with a variety of sight gags and hilarious costumes. In the opening scene, she wears the funniest costume of all: a stiff, crinoline Christmas-tree dress with presents attached at the bottom and a bewitching sparkly green hat. Donning this outfit, she sings about snow falling and friends calling to the tune of Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride. Then she sardonically asks, “Why do we do Christmas each year like Sisyphus? There are palm trees flocked with artificial snow. We put tinsel on our cacti and reindeers on the beach, make fruitcake that’s gluten-free.”
Shannon Holt and Sandra Tsing Loh. Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR. Tsing Loh looks back at her childhood and her eccentric friends, played Holt, and by Tony Abatemarco, who also comically and animatedly plays her imperious mother and the ageing Russian superstar ballerina, Madame Irina Lichinska, among other characters. The trio take the audience on a nonstop ride, addressing concerns of Sandra being slighted by her sister and mother, of being coached by her friends to bring out her “inner tiger” during ballet auditions, and later, of dismay about her weight, as she sits alone in her room, devouring a large bag of Fritos, spreading crumbs all over the stage.
Joined then by her two costars, who are also munching chips and dispersing crumbs, Sandra begins to bask in the camaraderie of their friendship. The friends put on ultra-frilly tutus and sway and dance to Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers melody. Sandra then expresses joy at being in the chorus, of being in the background with her friends, having fun and not needing to be the star.
Shannon Holt, Tony Abatemarco and Sandra Tsing Loh. Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR. What began as a Charlie Brown Christmas Special–inspired play, about dealing with depression during the holiday season, according to Tsing Loh in an interview, becomes uncharacteristically syrupy, as the cast and stagehands throw candy and balloons to the audience. They seem to be imparting the message that there is joy in the season—if you’re willing to look for it. But are they really? Or is the frivolity emanating from the stage yet another effort to make fun of the holiday season? Then when Sandra says at the finale, “Theater is for everyone… especially when you’re sitting in a darkened theater at Christmastime, listening to an overture, staring at a red curtain, impatiently waiting for it to lift and reveal a magical fairyland,” she describes Sugar Plum Fairy’s real message. Because in the end, the intent of theater, and of Tsing Loh’s play, is to entertain, beguile, inspire and to hopefully encourage the audience to see a deeper purpose in the angst, challenges and even triumphs of their daily lives.
Sugar Plum Fairy by Sandra Tsing Loh, directed by Bart DeLorenzo at Julianne Argyros Stage, South Coast Repertory, through December 24, 2017.
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The Monster Builder
From the moment the stage lights go up for The Monster Builder, the audience is caught in a whirlwind of over-the-top sophisticated banter, much of it addressing architecture. The first scene reveals an ultra modern glass house with inhabitants, Gregor, the starchitect, played with egomaniacal self-importance by Danny Schiele, and Annie Abrams performing as Tamsin, his sexy, bubbleheaded actress girlfriend. In fact much of the acting is in sync with the overblown tone of the play, as the six players, three men and three women, speak in the “thrilling” overacted manner, characterized by 1930s and ’40s movies. And director Art Manke creates characters who appear overly self-conscious about their presence in an, at first, seemingly perfect world.
Susannah Schulman Rogers, Annie Abrams, Aubrey Deeker and Danny Scheie in South Coast Repertory’s 2017 production of The Monster Builder by Amy Freed. Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR. Gregor Zubrowski, as this dark comedy reveals, is not only the world’s most famous architect, he creates buildings so extravagant, they would render Frank Gehry’s designs as mundane. Aware of his status, Gregor roams the stage, making statements as, “I rarely do residences. Least of all, my own. I’ve always preferred to build less vernacular structures.”
Gregor’s and Tamsin’s guests, Rita (played by Susannah Schulman Rogers) and Dieter (Aubrey Deeker), a youngish couple who are budding architects, are so enthralled by the elder architect’s accomplishments, they knock themselves out complimenting him. Rita says about his house, “one hardly knows how to describe it –clearly though, Your Masterwork! Congratulations! Gregor, you’re a genius.”
Susannah Schulman Rogers and Aubrey Deeker in South Coast Repertory’s 2017 production of The Monster Builder by Amy Freed. Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR. But Rita and Dieter have an ace in the hole, a job renovating a classic old boathouse. Gregor is intrigued and in a subsequent scene, he makes a call and gets himself hired to fix the boathouse. The action becomes even more dramatic, with Gregor offering Rita a job working for him on the boathouse, and with Dieter chagrined at this turn of events.
Susannah Schulman Rogers and Danny Scheie in South Coast Repertory’s 2017 production of The Monster Builder by Amy Freed. Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR. Soon, an ultra-rich name-dropping woman, Pam (performed with exaggerated voice and body language by Colette Kilroy) and her working class husband, Andy (the most down-to-earth character in the play) visit Rita and Dieter’s humble office as clients; Pam soon proposes outrageous decorative changes to her home, such as floating a Samoan canoe over a table.
Susannah Schulman Rogers, Colette Kilroy and Gareth Williams in South Coast Repertory’s 2017 production of The Monster Builder by Amy Freed. Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR. As the play progresses, Gregor enters his Gothic office, revealing his deeper maniacal nature, as he plays with great flourish Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” on his pipe organ. He then proceeds to seduce Rita, who has reluctantly agreed to work with him on the boathouse. But Dieter, the most levelheaded of this zany group, has researched Gregor’s demonic and supernatural background, eventually disclosing his findings to Rita and Tamsin, who is by now plotting her revenge on him (in a previous scene, he tried to drown her).
Subsequent scenes build to a crescendo, but the play finally descends to a human scale, indicating that monsters such as Gregor will ultimately not prevail. The Monster Builder was written a few years before the 2016 Presidential election. Yet its message is in tune with much of today’s political climate, making this delightfully dramatic play a kind of comeuppance for today’s news addicts.
The Monster Builder by Amy Freed, directed by Art Manke at SEGERSTROM STAGE, at South Coast Repertory, through June 4, 2017
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SCAPE:
Lawrence Fodor
While abstract art often begins with inspiration and develops spontaneously, Lawrence Fodor approaches his canvasses in a different manner, basing his paintings on historic works. Loosely connected to abstract expressionism, Fodor works in a style in which non-specific figurative components dominate his paintings. Early in his career, he spent numerous hours among great master paintings and sculptures in European museums, copying laboriously. He has long admired Peter Paul Rubens, Jean Etienne Ramey, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo Da Vinci, Théodore Géricault, JMW Turner, the Laocöon, and ancient Greco-Roman sculptures.
Lawrence Fodor, Theseus Slaying the Minotaur II (after Etienne Jules Ramey), 2015-16, courtesy of the artist and SCAPE. In time, Fodor began exploring how works by these masters had been commissioned by clergy or wealthy benefactors with the intention of promoting their religious and philosophical agendas. To more fully understand these pieces, he again re-created them while analyzing their compositions, structures, colors and spaces. Then by using various tools, he camouflaged their figurative aspects, maintaining their basic compositions and colors. Re-contextualizing and re-interpreting these “appropriated” works, he obliterated their blatant visual aspects and even iconography.
Lawrence Fodor, St George and the Dragon III (after Rubens), 2015-16, courtesy of the artist and SCAPE. With his deeper intention subject to interpretation, Fodor refers to the “outdated” aspects of these centuries-old myths, yet his abstract paintings invite conversation with collective history and memory. Ambiguous figurative elements can be discerned within the broad swaths of gestural blues, greens and whites that sweep across the canvasses. If one looks closely, these elements are likely to suggest horses with knights, portraits and even ancient sculptures.
Lawrence Fodor, MB Study X (after Michelangelo Buonarroti), 2015-16, courtesy of the artist and SCAPE. Completed in 2015-16, the nine large textural and passionate abstract artworks at SCAPE were created using oil, wax, alkyd resin and linseed oil. They include Theseus Slaying the Minataur II, based on Jean Eitenne Ramey’s 1826 painting with the same name; St George and the Dragon III, after a Rubens 1605-07 painting; Hercules and Anaeus I, after a Greco/Roman sculpture; and MB (Michelangelo Buonarroti) Study X, based on a Michelangelo drawing.
Lawrence Fodor, “Amended Mythologies,” March 4 – April 8, 2017 at Southern California Art Projects + Exhibitions (SCAPE), 2859 East Coast Highway, Corona del Mar, CA, 92625, www.scapesite.com.
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JoAnne Artman Gallery:
John “CRASH” Matos
The graffiti artist John Crash Matos, known simply as Crash, started spray-painting buildings and trains in New York City in his early teens. Before long, he transitioned to showing in galleries. Although he may not be as renowned as colleagues Shepard Fairey or Barry McGee, his eye-popping spray-painted canvasses and smaller watercolors, which incorporate the dark outlines, bright colors and cartoonish figures intrinsic to this genre, are mash-ups of popular 20th-century art forms.
John “CRASH” Matos, Search for the Serif (2016), courtesy of the artist and JoAnne Artman Gallery. A result of his decades-long autodidactic art practice, the paintings combine realistic details with sharp outlines, serpentine lines and undulating shapes. The 55-year-old artist uses images from popular cartoons from the late 1920s and early 30s, including Popeye, Dick Tracey and others. The works also depict large eyes and feature broad arrows that appear to be inspired by the 1960s Batman TV series.
John “CRASH” Matos, Silver Streak 2 (2016), courtesy of the artist and JoAnne Artman Gallery. These artworks echo childhood memories, but even more importantly seem to draw on images from a collective unconscious. In doing so, they gleefully appropriate and excavate visual history to deliver a lushly appealing, somewhat nostalgic experience. Yet, more than simply borrowing images, they contain a tension between balance and chaos, between harmony and madness; and thereby become visual metaphors for the politically unhinged world that many of us inhabit today.
John “CRASH” Matos, Wrapped In My Own Existence (2016), courtesy of the artist and JoAnne Artman Gallery. The artist, who grew up in and resides in the Bronx, New York, exhibits paintings and murals throughout the East Coast and in Europe, yet “Breaking Ground II: Redefining the Urban Experience” is his first West Coast showing in two decades. His paintings in this show, some as large as 82 x 64 inches, include Off the Hook (all works 2016), featuring a large brown eye within a Popeye arm, and Search for the Serif, which depicts a small-scale eye surrounded by rolling graffiti images. Wrapped in My Own Existence, which combines hints of a woman’s face and hair, along with an orange arrow and bright red heart, evokes sensuality and the promise of romantic love.
John “CRASH” Matos, “Breaking Ground II: Redefining the Urban Experience,” January 2017 – February 2017 at JoAnne Artman Gallery, 326 N Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, CA, www.joanneartmangallery.com.
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Peter Blake Gallery:
Helen Pashgian
If you missed this artist’s 2014 “Light Invisible” installation at LACMA, “Golden Ratio,” a new show at Peter Blake Gallery presents the opportunity to view Helen Pashgian’s colorless elliptical columns. In this exhibition of Pashgian’s continued exploration of light and space, there are several tall columns, alongside a number of similarly constructed but shorter discs and spheres. These works, which are all untitled and created within the last few years, are carefully lit from without to show off their luminous inner beauty.
Helen Pashgian, “Golden Ratio,” installation view, courtesy of the artist and Peter Blake Gallery. The intention of these pieces, which are made of semi-translucent plastics and range in height from 12 to 90.5 inches, is to have viewers interact with them, to see into them and through them, and achieve a meditative state. They further explore the viewers’ perceptual fields, as their forms, shapes and even lighting continually changes as one moves around them. The pieces, when lit by artificial light, radiate outward. Their smooth, polished surfaces, made of heated and then carefully formed acrylic, are inspired in their shapes by geometric forms.
Helen Pashgian, “Golden Ratio,” installation view, courtesy of the artist and Peter Blake Gallery. The careful arrangement of these 14 sculptural pieces evokes a sense of visual choreography and musical playfulness.
Helen Pashgian, “Golden Ratio,” installation view, courtesy of the artist and Peter Blake Gallery. One of few women artists who embraced the Light and Space movement of the 1960s and 70s, Pashgian also incorporated aspects of Southern California’s Finish Fetish movement and its interest in high gloss industrial materials. Working with epoxies, plastics and resins, she embraced the scientific world, even studying at Caltech for a short period, experimenting with shapes, forms and finishes.
“Helen Pashgian: Golden Ratio,” November 5 – December 18, 2016 at Peter Blake Gallery, 435 Ocean Ave., Laguna Beach, CA 92651, www.peterblakegallery.com.
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OCMA:
Brian Bress
Brian Bress’ amalgam of drawings, paintings, masks, sculpture and videos, brought together for “Make Your Own Friends,” a survey of the last ten years of Bress’ output, elicits a range of feelings, from poignancy and surprise, to disconcertion and compassion. The exhibition as a whole is like a new iteration of surrealism. The artist’s Beadman (costume) (2012), for example, is a 76-inch sculpture, presumably based on a model of a person who is covered head to toe with a jumpsuit of multi-colored wooden beads. It is a creature that could easily come out of a fairy tale or one’s imagination. Nearby is the video Beadman (Parker) (2012), but this time the figure within the beaded costume is animated. Apparently real, it is jumping up and down, like a child’s fantasy come to life. The similar 75-inch Whitewalker (costume) (2012), made of hanging white bamboo beads on wire looks like a white, faceless Chewbacca from Star Wars. This stationary character is also illustrated by a video, with the beads blowing in the breeze.
Brian Bress
Whitewalker (2012)
Courtesy the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles
©Brian BressAnother video, Three Faces (2014), featuring three anthropomorphized potted plants combines real plants with animated flowers and abstract shapes. Here also is the video Cowboy (Brian led by Peter Kirby) (2012), an animated, puppet cowboy, seated behind a pane of glass, drawing onto the glass, so the viewer sees the drawing in reverse. Among the static sculptures are three mixed-media masks: Ridley-Tree Sleeper #1 (Nick and Brian), The Mushroom and Imposter (all 2012). By including wigs, feathers, rabbit skin, and with Ridley-Tree Sleeper, 21 smaller heads attached by pins, the artist evokes scary human forms. In another video, Imposter comes to life.
Brian Bress
Ridley-Tree Sleeper #1 (Nick and Brian), 2012
Collection of Cyndee Howard
©Brian BressOne of the oddest pieces in this exhibition is the dual-channel video, Organizing the Physical Evidence (Purple) (2014). It features two puppet-like characters, seemingly built out of foam, with bits of material, foam and perhaps clay stuck onto their faces, suggesting features, although askew ones. These two characters relate to each other in part by reaching from one video screen to the other. Bress’ source material for the works in this exhibition is 1980s children’s television, including the programs The Muppets, Pee-wee Herman and Romper Room, which the artist watched as a child. “Make Your Own Friends,” alternately sweet and strange, delves into the uncanny and delivers palpable dissonance.
Brian Bress
Organizing the Physical Evidence (Purple), 2014
Courtesy the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles
©Brian Bress“Brian Bress: Make Your Own Friends,” August 6 – December 4, 2016 at the Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach, CA 92660. www.ocma.net
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Top 10 Orange County Galleries
Artists Republic
Contemporary art with an emphasis on younger, emerging artists, with events including lights, music and independent film nights. Artists include Ben Brough, David Blake and Zio Ziegler.
1175 S. Coast Hwy., Laguna Beach 92651As Issued
Combination gallery/bookstore features innovative art and products from within and outside the area, as well as collaborative events. Visual art publications cover contemporary artists, cultural interests and designs/textiles.
305 E. 4th St. #103b, Santa Ana 92701Coastal Eddy Gallery
OC’s only gallery exhibiting ceramic art exclusively and one of few in SoCal. Artists are local and from all over the country, and include Jesse Bartels and Richie White.
1417 S. Coast Hwy., Laguna Beach 92651Jane Bauman’s work at Jamie Brooks Fine Art Jamie Brooks Fine Art
Contemporary art, combining work by local artists with those from disparate parts of the country. Emphasis on
abstraction and minimalism. Artists include Anna Bogatin, Tom Dowling, Ned Evans, Jimi Gleason and Michael Mass.
2967 Randolph Ave., Costa Mesa 92626
JoAnne Artman Gallery
Contemporary art, primarily by artists from Laguna Beach and Southern California, most of them award-winning. Artists include Jana Cruder, James Verbicky, Eric Zener and Rimi Yang. Gallery has NYC branch.
326 N. Pacific Coast Hwy., Laguna Beach, 92651Peter Blake Gallery
Modern and contemporary art with focus on monochrome, concrete, and reductive abstraction, with emphasis on California minimalism and Light and Space. Artists include Joe Goode, Larry Bell and Lita Albuquerque.
Lumberyard Plaza Shopping Center, 435 Ocean Ave., Laguna Beach 92651
Salt Fine Art
Contemporary Latin American art with an international flair, representing artists from 13 countries. Museum caliber, occasionally selling work to MOLAA. Artists include Esterio Segura and Linda Vallejo. Adjoining “rawsalt” gallery shows emerging artists.
1492 S. Coast Hwy., # 3, Laguna Beach 92651
Sarah Bain Gallery
Emerging artists who push the boundaries of figurative realism with strong conceptual themes. Gallery is 30 minutes from downtown LA. Artists include Ray Turner, Alyssa Monks, Pamela Wilson, Ray Donley and Lee Price.
Brea Gateway Center, 110 W. Birch St., #1, Brea 92821
SCAPE (Southern California Art Projects and Exhibitions)
Focus is on mid-career contemporary artists, primarily from the west coast. Exhibits work that segues with venue’s art-advising services. Artists represented include Kim Abeles, Ray Turner and Elizabeth Turk.
2859 E. Coast Hwy., Corona Del Mar 92625
Q Art Salon
One of OC’s newest galleries, offering mostly group shows of contemporary artists whose work hangs together mostly through their high quality, but not themes. Styles include figurative, surrealistic and expressionistic.
205 N. Sycamore St., Santa Ana 92701 -
Red
The South Coast Repertory Theater’s production of Red, John Logan’s Tony Award winning play about abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, which opened in Costa Mesa on January 22, is directed by SCR’s Founding Artistic Director David Emmes and stars Angeleno Mark Harelik as Rothko. Harelik, a tall, slender man with a full head of hair, shaved the top half of his head and adopted a slightly stooped stance for the part. Based on his extensive research, the composed actor also affected a dogmatic, bullying persona.
Paul David Story and Mark Harelik in John Logan’s Red at South Coast Repertory. Photo by Debora Robinson-SCR As the play begins in 1958, Rothko sits in his dreary downtown Manhattan studio, wearing paint-spattered clothing, staring at the audience, presumably contemplating his newest red painting. When his assistant, Ken (Paul David Story), enters, Harelik proclaims in a booming voice, “What do you see? Wait. Stand closer. You’ve got to get close. Let it pulsate. Let it work on you…There. Let it spread out, Let it wrap its arms around you …” This opening scene is so visceral that it seems as though the actor is channeling the artist. Harelik was still in acting mode during our phone interview. Provoked by the simplest questions, he launched into meandering, heartfelt responses: “Rothko gravitated to Nietzsche. His The Birth of Tragedy explains that we are comprised of two forces, the Dionysian, or the explosive, and the Apollonian or the rational, which keeps us from killing each other. And both are distilled in Rothko’s art.”
Paul David Story and Mark Harelik in John Logan’s Red at South Coast Repertory. Photo by Debora Robinson-SCR Asked to comment on his portrayal of Rothko, he said: “The play is mentally gripping from moment to moment. You can’t disengage for even a second.” He added, “Playing Rothko has given me a deeper understanding of the meaning of his paintings. He divided the art world into high and low art. Low art contains that which is on the surface. But high art puts you in a state of suspended awe. Rothko’s works bypass your brain and speak to your soul, like music does.”
“Playing this part has changed me,” Harelik reflected. “Experiencing Rothko’s relationship with his art has deepened my own understanding of what it is to create. Some people have said that this play has revived their understanding of Rothko, and they want to spend more time with his art, to let his paintings work on them. Art, whether it is theater or painting, demands that viewers take the time to go beneath the surface.”Harelik has spent many hours at L.A’s Museum of Contemporary Art, perusing the Rothko’s paintings. “I have spent an almost uncomfortable amount of time in the Rothko room,” he said. “I have watched people come and go, and saw many spend only 30 seconds with each painting. But Rothko’s pieces are wounded when someone walks into the room and then walks out.”
Red by John Logan, directed by David Emmes at SEGERSTROM STAGE, January 22, 2016 – February 21, 2016 -
VICTOR HUGO ZAYAS
With 40 expressive oils, Victor Hugo Zayas’ exhibition “The River Paintings,” responds to the ebb and flow of the Los Angeles River in its many moods and manifestations, with each piece flowing naturally to the next. Created from 2013 to 2015, these huge paintings, some as wide as 96 inches, depict the LA riverscape burnished by the bright desert sun, moonlight and the night-time glare from nearby factories and freeways.
Working from his studio near the concrete banks of the river, he endeavors to resituate our perception of the river, which has been paved over, polluted and nearly destroyed, with this series of landscapes recalling the early 19th Century Romantics who were in awe of nature and its majestic and seemingly endless capacity. More than just a nostalgic view of the river, Zayas’ paintings question how Los Angeles understands this major artery that flows through it. His investigation is well timed in light of the city’s recent plans to revitalize the river.
Victor Hugo Zayas, LA River 14, 2015, courtesy of the artist. Zayas asks us to “see” the river by appealing to our senses; we can almost feel the river droplets and fog on our skin, its musty smell infused with a hint of the sea, and its rushing sounds, seeming to rise to musical crescendos. Zayas seems to inhabit the river, translating his personal connection to it through these expressive works painted in muted greens, blues, browns and grays. Using thickly applied paint, he portrays the river as an often-violent brew of debris-infused water soaring up into the sky; then he brings the viewer along on this nearly celestial ride.
He draws on his half-year of roaming the European continent in the early 1980s, visiting museums, studying the paintings of the Romantic Masters and the late 19th- and early 20th-Century modernists. Several paintings—including LA River 14 through 17—depicting closeup the wild swirling waters are executed in thick impasto strokes, recalling van Gogh and Soutine. LA River 2011 and LA River 13, with their broader vistas, include traces of the industrial neighborhoods surrounding the river—the warehouses, freeways, bridges, railroad tracks, telephone poles and power lines—nudging the viewer back to reality.
The “Grid Series,” also in this show comprises 14 paintings, with several paying homage to Cezanné. These aerial views of the LA river basin, painted in the artist’s characteristic subdued palette, present the river flowing through LA’s industrial districts of warehouses, factories and rail yards. In several of these paintings, Zayas’ crisscrossing slashes render these neighborhoods like deliberately laid piles of concrete and asphalt. In later “Grid” pieces, numbered 22 through 25, Zayas portrays closeups of these landscapes, and in doing so generates geometric arrangements that appear like patchwork quilts with their broad swaths of color, leaving the river behind for abstraction.
Show ends Feb. 7, 2016
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Islam Through the Eyes of Sandow Birk
Perhaps the best example of the depth and breadth of Sandow Birk’s artistic oeuvre, along with its powerful social/political implications, is his recently completed “American Qur’an,” nine years in the making. Birk conceived of this series during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, when he was devouring the news each day, often hearing demeaning stories about Islam from politicians and others.
Sandow Birk On a sweltering August day, I met Birk in his large Long Beach apartment/studio with its spare modern furnishings. Just back from his morning surf in nearby Huntington Beach dressed in shorts and T-shirt, the fit, handsome 53-year-old eagerly discussed his monumental Qur’an project. He explained that as a world traveler, he had been to many Islamic locales, had met wonderful people there, and was appalled at hearing so many negative reports about Islam, “So I decided to do my Qur’an series,” he said.
Sandow Birk. American Qur’an, Sura 31 A, 2009, Ink and gouache on paper
16 x 24 inches, Private Collection, Image courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, Koplin del Rio, and P.P.O.W., Copyright: Sandow BirkWith his characteristic devotion to research, Birk first read the Qur’an several times. He also researched the Islamic world, personally visiting mosques, libraries, art collections and scholars there. “I then transcribed the entire English version of the Qur’an onto 243 double-paged drawings,” he said. He showed me his recently published “American Qur’an” catalog, with all 243 Qur’an drawings, explaining that the book and his upcoming exhibition of this work at the Orange County Museum of Art are not likely to upset Muslins, as some have suggested. “That’s not an approach that looks at the actual artwork or sees the project in a complex way,” Birk emphasized. “The vast majority are not [angry about his work]. And I hope it becomes more evident once the whole project—including its metaphorical images of the U.S. today—is on display.”
When asked about the handwriting he employed transcribing his Islamic “bible,” he explained, “My script is based on graffiti writing, with Islamic shadows. Calligraphy is basic to Islamic artwork, and I thought, who cares more about writing in this country than graffiti artists?” Birk added, “Throughout my career, I’d get a tiny idea in my head and then I’d try to make it into an interesting work.” Yet with the Qur’an and other projects, his “tiny ideas” are nurtured by traveling, observing, dialoging, delving into the darker aspects of life, and depicting these aspects in drawings, paintings, sculptures, woodcuts and lithographs. “American Qu’ran” in fact had a spiritual/artistic predecessor in 2006—Birk’s 15-piece woodcut project, “The Depravities of War,” expressing the horrors of the Iraq War.
Sandow Birk, American Qur’an, Sura 2 H, 2014, Ink and gouache on paper
16 x 24 inches, Image courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, Koplin del Rio, and P.P.O.W., Copyright: Sandow BirkBorn in Detroit, Birk moved to Orange County’s Seal Beach at age five. From an early age, he excelled at drawing and surfing; two passions he integrated in high school by painting surfboards. The punk rocker initially planned to go to architecture school, but instead attended Otis College of Art and Design in LA, in part because “students there had Mohawks.” After a few years, he traveled to South America and spent two years in Rio de Janeiro, surfing, painting surfboards and designing a surfing magazine.
He then moved to Europe in 1984, studying at Parsons School of Design in Paris and Bath Academy of Art in England, and spending hours at the Louvre and Tate museums, copying 1800s salon-style paintings. These “Romantic” paintings, emphasizing free expression, emotion and heroism, resonated with Birk’s own aesthetic sensibilities. The crux of his art education, he explains, was primarily self-taught in Paris and England.
Sandow Birk, American Qur’an, Sura 2 B, 2014, Ink and gouache on paper
16 x 24 inches, Image courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, Koplin del Rio, and P.P.O.W., Copyright: Sandow BirkBirk returned to the U.S., completing his BFA at Otis. After graduation in 1988, he moved to an illegal storefront near LA’s Crenshaw District, working as a preparator in galleries and, at night, painting large canvases of people and events in his dicey neighborhood; “the crack deals, the police hassling people, the gang battles, and the graffiti crews. I was paintings spoofs of the romantic French painting from the 1800s, taking drug dealers and gangsters and making them the stars of these grandiose salon paintings,” Birk told me. In the early ’90s, he showed these “Urban Works” in LA’s Zero One Gallery, a freewheeling, quasi-legal storefront at Melrose and La Brea. In March 1992, he had a solo show of these paintings in Santa Monica’s Bess Cutler Gallery, which has since folded. Shortly afterward, the LA Riots broke out, and Birk at the embattled epicenter describes the four-day riot period and its build-up as transformative. “Everyone was looking at LA, and LA was rising up to fight the good fight for justice.” He also began to think about the significance of his works, which depicted and even seemed to predict the volatile word around him. “I was trying to be a real history painter of the events around me, and began documenting the beatings of Rodney King and Reginald Denny and the arrest of O.J. Simpson.”
Sandow Birk, Stonewall, June 28, 1969, 1999, oil on canvas, 84 x 126 inches. Birk, whose 1992 “Urban Works” paintings had graced the covers of GQ and Details, was soon creating a new series every few years. Throughout all these series Birk has maintained relevancy to contemporary life, attention to details, expressive rendering, awareness of art history, and respect for artists of the past. His 2000 “In Smog and Thunder, Historical Works from the Great War of the Californias,” is a fanciful series about the mutual disdain between northern and southern California, which the artist often felt while represented by galleries in both parts of the State. It includes paintings, drawings, prints, posters, maps, models and a video documentary; while its salon-type paintings are inspired by 19th-century images.
Birk has won awards including an NEA grant, Guggenheim, Fulbright and Getty fellowships, while creating series addressing the harsh realities of contemporary life, His “Divine Comedy” (2004) warrants special attention for his appropriation of Dante’s ancient tome and updating it with contemporary slang and illustrations. He rewrote the book with Marcus Sanders, and illustrated it with 60 lithographs, this time with medieval characters inhabiting fast food joints, service stations, ATMs and other postmodern settings. Chronicle Books published his Dante’s Inferno in 2006, and he completed a film on the project in 2007.
Sandow Birk, American Qur’an, Sura 2 A, 2014, Ink and gouache on paper
16 x 24 inches, Image courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, Koplin del Rio, and P.P.O.W., Copyright: Sandow BirkAfter nine years creating “American Qur’an,” exhibiting its pages in nine venues including the Andy Warhol Museum, Birk describes his process designing it in an email: “My page layouts, border designs and use of ‘palmettes’ (small floral designs in the margins and the text, marking the beginning of verses) are taken from the design of Qur’ans spanning a 1000 years. The floral blurbs in the margins, containing numbers marking each 10th verse, are also traditional. The paint is gouache, which was used in historic times, and my style has the isometric, 2D perspective of Persian paintings.”
When asked to compare his Qur’an with R. Crumb’s illustrated The Book of Genesis, Birk reminds me that he began his project five years before Crumb started his bible, explaining, “I don’t actually find his project very interesting. Crumb describes his project as a very literal ‘illustrating’ of the text. But my project is the opposite of his and is based on metaphor. Mine puts the ancient text into contemporary terms, comparing how a message from God might remain relevant in one’s life today.”
When asked if his Qur’an project has incited the ire of Muslims, Birk waxes philosophical: “My project, which does not depict Muhammad [as the original Qur’an does] is done out of a sincere effort to learn and understand. One’s amazement that Muslims are not outraged by this project presupposes that they are quick to anger and cannot be thoughtful, interesting, intelligent, art-appreciating people. But the Islamic community has been overwhelmingly positive, especially the younger generation. At first, the project raised eyebrows from a few people, but once they saw it, they supported it. The only negative criticism came in emails [to Koplin del Rio Gallery in LA] when I first showed it. Right-wing Christian groups thought that Americans shouldn’t be reading the Qur’an, and said that the show should be taken down.”
Sandow Birk’s entire “American Qu’ran” will be exhibited at Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, through February 28.
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JESSICA RATH
“A Better Nectar” is a rare exhibition merging art with nature, while focusing on the daily activities of bees—those diligent flying insects that pollinate our planet. Among this show’s surprising pieces are several larger-than-life fiberglass sculptures that replicate the various objects of the bees’ attentions. These pieces, along with a light sculpture and the interpretive, “musical” sounds of foraging bees and of pollen being released, follow a multisensory journey, starting from the bees’ nests and concluding at their nurturing nectar collection.
The centerpiece of this exhibition is Resonant Nest (all works 2014)—19 honey-colored 36-inch-high fiberglass sculptures of hatched bee eggs. These sensuous, bell-shaped objects, gathered into three clusters and theatrically lit to emphasize their incandescent qualities are complemented by haunting music emanating from speakers installed within their organic shapes. The music, composed by Robert Hoehn, who is himself a bee keeper, calls up the diurnal activities of bumblebees as they move from nest to flower. The score, performed by the CSU Long Beach chamber choir, contains seven compositions including Languid Wander and Afternoon Forage. While the music was arranged to evoke the sounds of these tireless bees going about their workday activities, it is redolent of sacred, monophonic Gregorian chants.
Jessica Rath, Resonant Nest, 2014. Photo credit: Brian Forrest. In an adjacent gallery, “Staminal Evolution” features two polyester resin sculptures that allude to “buzz pollination,” a process in which worker bees vibrate at a specific frequency to release pollen from flowers and plants. The first of these sculptures, Tomato is a distinctly un-tomato-like 10-foot long representation of this nightshade plant’s tiny yellow stamen. Nearby, the 8-foot tall Manzanita Anthers depicts a Manzanita stamen, this plant’s phallic pollen-releasing organ. This magnificent ruby red sculpture resembles an abstract flower. Anthers also emanates sound—the aural equivalent as imagined by Rath of the release of pollen.
“Bee Purple” in a third gallery is named after the violet color that bees gravitate to while pollinating flowers. This immersive and color-shifting light installation evokes the light sculptures of James Turrell. As this projection screen depicts a bumblebee’s visual journey while pollinating different flowers, its colors shift from purple to yellow to aqua-green. A nearby video portrays a digital bee traveling along a cluster of flowers; and as the bee passes a particular color, this hue is flashed onto the screen. Rath complements these three primary installations with six supportive ones, the latter visually and didactically following her scientific/artistic journey to create this timely exploration.
Rath’s 2012-13 exhibition, “Take Me to the Apple Breeder,” was inspired by Cornell University’s apple-breeding program and combined photography with porcelain sculptural apples. In probing the interconnectedness of art and science and concomitantly offering a far too rare reverence for our ecological/agricultural world, “Apple Breeder” presaged Rath’s current work. Yet “A Better Nectar,” goes even further while demonstrating the artist’s creative evolution. The synergy of Rath’s sensual sculptures, lighting and devotional music forges the equivalent of sacred space in the secular.
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Stoner: Elizabeth Turk
Elizabeth Turk transforms huge blocks of marble into refined sculptures, pieces that display classical beauty and technical virtuosity. Observing the graceful artist at work in her studio in a Santa Ana marble yard—wearing ear protectors, safety glasses and padded cycling gloves, surrounded by dust and the ear-splitting sounds from the drilling of the stone—is to witness the magic of turning raw materials into delicate artworks.
Turk describes the months devoted to creating an individual piece, first carving the marble with electric grinders, then honing it with small files and dental tools. The resulting sculptures, resembling flowers, waves, lace, even wedding cakes, are held up as much by the gravity of the stone as by her sculpting, she explains. She calls her first major series of marble sculptures, “Wings,” with detailed feathered shapes. Her second series is “Collars,” resembling collars, described by one observer as “Elizabethan. Her third and most well-known series is “Ribbons & Pinwheels,” featuring sinuous filigree shapes. Her two decades creating these artworks helped win her a MacArthur genius grant in 2010 and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) in 2011.
Elizabeth Turk working on her sculpture. Photo by Eric Stoner. Turk talks about the dichotomy of her life before becoming an artist, about studying diligently and later working in an office, adding that she was always drawn to art. “When I finally decided to become an artist, my family was jumping up and down,” she says.
While growing up, Turk moved from Newport Beach to Albuquerque and finally to Boulder, Colorado. Finding herself in a new locale every few years, she spent hours alone looking at the natural and cultural surroundings; her early influences included the Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino, California and Native American culture in Albuquerque. “In New Mexico, art was a part of everyday life, of the landscape, the way people lived, and the architecture.”
Turk attended Scripps College, Claremont, California, where she studied international relations. Yet a college study program in Europe helped give her a larger view of life, what she calls, “an understanding of the worldwide importance of art, and the evolution of human values through art.” While in Paris, she took an elective art history course at the Louvre and traveled to other European capitals to look at art.
After completing her studies, she moved to Washington D.C. to pursue a career in international relations. The Capitol, with its museums and especially the Corcoran Gallery’s art courses, became the influence that drove her to follow her muse. Within a few years, Turk had saved enough money to enroll full-time in the Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art.
Elizabeth Turk. Photo by Eric Stoner. Shortly after receiving her MFA, she began exhibiting her bronze sculptures in the D.C. area. Fortuitously, an upcoming joint show with Louise Bourgeois, who was to exhibit, “a fantastic bronze spider,” compelled Turk to find a new medium. She chose marble, and found cast-off stone from the 19th century construction of the Lincoln Memorial. Her segue to marble started her journey exploring the material’s many possibilities. She began shaping the stone into works with delicate, fluid qualities.
Turk moved to New York City two decades ago where she reveled in the city’s museums and its larger visual art world. But after 9/11, she was drawn back to her roots, often visiting her parents in Newport Beach. She soon took up her own residence in Newport, while maintaining her New York apartment. Her peripatetic lifestyle, combining the best of the West and East Coasts, is her source of intellectual, philosophical and especially visual inspiration.
Elizabeth Turk, X-ray Mandela: 16 Turban, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Scape Gallery Throughout Turk’s artistic career, she has explored the complexities of nature, science and art, to understand, “the purest commonalities that link the past, present and future.” She created her most scientifically-oriented body of work, “X-Ray Mandalas,” during her SARF Fellowship. At the Smithsonian, she had access to the Natural History Museum’s large collection of shells (both marble and shells are composed of calcium). She photographed individual shells several times each, using special X-Ray equipment, discovering the specimens’ symmetricality and magnificent inner structures. She turned these images into LED-lit photographs. These 3D-like photos include Sunburst with its snail-like shape, Volute, like an eight-pointed star, and Wendletrap with delicate filigree features.
Elizabeth Turk, Cage: Box 7, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and Hirschl & Adler Modern. Turk returns to discussions of her passion for artistic creation and to the freedom it gives her, in spite of the intense physicality of drilling into marble. “Stone affords a timeless conversation. It will last longer than I will.” She adds, “I give new life to old materials. I reshape the stone, pushing its technical boundaries.”
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HOLLYWOOD IS THE SEXIEST
Since the 2012 opening of his eponymous Hollywood gallery, Perry Rubenstein has exerted considerable influence on the contemporary art world, while imbuing several exhibitions, such as his recent “The Humors,” with intellectual and symbolic perspectives that reference the human condition. At his sleek modernist structure on North Highland Avenue, this fit and debonair 59-year-old enthusiastically discusses his role in the visual arts. Rubenstein says that his move out West is, “a professional seismic shift, as Los Angeles today is the main event in the international contemporary art world; this area nurtures some of the most significant artists working today, the art schools are spectacular, and the museums are directed by the most visionary individuals… bar none.” Why Hollywood and why not Culver City? “When the world thinks about Los Angeles, they think about this area.” He adds that LA is historically connected to the Hollywood myth, while the area’s cultural influences radiate worldwide. “We looked at other SoCal locations, but decided that we could best contribute to the art world by positioning our gallery here. And Hollywood is the sexiest place in LA.”
I first met Rubenstein during the Mike Kelley exhibition, “Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites,” the premiere LA showing of this satirical, conceptual 1991 piece. “It is like John McCracken meets Darth Vader” (the deodorizers are shaped like Vader), he says about the installation of stuffed animals, surrounded by lacquered “deodorizers.” Rubenstein paid homage to the late Kelley’s legacy, while presenting this work as a gift to his newly adopted city.
Rubenstein grew up in Philadelphia and was inspired early in life by galleries there that featured conceptual and minimal work. In 1979, at age 25, with a passion for contemporary art and no specific plans, Rubenstein flew to Milan, Italy. While staying at a small pensione, the concierge recommended that he model for the then upstart Milan-based clothing designer, Gianni Versace. With no previous experience, the future art dealer showed up at the designer’s workshop. “Versace threw several sweaters at me, photographed me, and then said, ‘You’re the best model in this city,” Rubenstein tells me. “Of course, I was the only 6-foot tall male model, as it was off-season. At the end of the day, he gave me $1,000 in cash. Soon I was working with Versace, Armani, Valentino and other major designers, modeling for French and Italian Vogue, traveling all over Europe and Africa.”
Rubenstein’s income and easy access to European art museums and galleries facilitated his immersion in contemporary art, as well as his purchase of works by Basquiat, Warhol, Schnabel, Twombly, Kiefer and others. He left modeling in 1981, moved to New York to, “establish and galvanize a position in the art word,” he explains. “The contemporary art world was in its relative infancy while barriers of entry to this world were significantly less structured than today.” Once in New York, word got around about his small but significant collection, and soon high-profile collectors were purchasing his works.
As a private dealer in Manhattan’s Chelsea area for two decades and a gallerist there from 2004, Rubenstein often returned to Europe to acquire artworks. Over time, his keen eye, passion for 20th-century art history and outgoing personality enabled him to become one of New York’s top art dealers. “I have been fortunate to have engaged influential collectors, curators and other art-world professionals who have inspired, influenced and in some cases mentored me,” he says.
In 2011, Rubenstein sold his Chelsea home and exhibition space, moved to Los Angeles, and spent a year designing and building his gallery. Since then, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, L.A. has mounted seven major exhibitions, including the recent summer show, “The Humors,” presenting work by Georg Herold, Patrick Jackson, Jim Lambie, Paul McCarthy and Martin Kippenberger. In addition to the importance of gallery showings, Rubenstein explains, “Museum exhibitions and acquisitions are crucial to create a critical dialogue around the artists and their work—and to open up opportunities for them. For instance, Zoe Crosher’s exhibition at our gallery created a precedent for her work to be included in MoMA’s ‘New Photography 2012.’ Her work was subsequently acquired by MoMA.” He is currently working on an exhibition with South African, Berlin-based Candice Breitz, a multimedia artist whose work, “is inexorably linked to Hollywood.”
Looking back to 2012, Rubenstein talks ruefully about Hurricane Sandy striking the East Coast and flooding his former Chelsea gallery space and home. “I had already left New York, but I felt like I had escaped the Blitz,” he says, referring to the 1940 London bombing. With a wink, the charming dealer adds that his journey through life has indeed been fortuitous. He draws on this experience and formidable network of relationships, taking as his mission the fostering of emerging and mid-career artists by exhibiting their works and facilitating their acquisitions by major private and public collections. He gives back to an art world that has nurtured and benefitted him and his collections for more than three decades.
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MEXICO al MAXIMO
The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach calls itself, “The only museum in the United States exclusively dedicated to modern and contemporary Latin American art.” Yet its permanent collection is comprised largely of works from Mexico, with exhibitions often featuring art from that country. Idurre Alonso, curator there since 2002, talks about the “aestheticism” of contemporary Mexican art that is on a par with that from the United States and Europe. She credits this in part to Mexico’s comprehensive support of the arts. “The country gives out so many grants that emerging artists are able to live largely on grant money.” She adds that the government supports most museums, freeing them to devote energy to exhibitions, while Mexican citizens are usually admitted for free. “On weekends, museums and galleries are filled with families of all classes,” she says, adding, “Art there is not just for the elite.” Mexico’s support for the arts goes back 100 years to when the government subsidized its murals, regarding them as tools for education about the country’s history.
Alonso grew up in the Basque country of Spain with art-loving parents and grandparents. As a child, she frequented the local Bilbao museum and later the Guggenheim Museum there. While in college, she interned at MOLAA, developing a passion for Latin American art, and began working there after graduation. Since starting there, Alonso and the staff have been working toward connecting Latin American art with that of disparate locales, creating exhibitions with a more universal approach.
Dream Addictive, Solar Sound/Sonido solar, 2010, at MOLAA Alonso curated “Descartes” in 2010, showing work by Mexican artists who emerged into the Tijuana-based international art scene in the late 1990s. The Collaborative Gallery (jointly owned by MOLAA and Long Beach) exhibition featured “readymade” objects, exploring Mexican-related issues such as immigration, exploitation, consumerism and the environment. UCLA graduate Camilo Ontiveros’ Deportables/Mattresses, constructed from discarded mattresses, bound in rope and hung on the wall, and his Restrained (both, 2008), a beat-up washing machine on its side, depict the selling of cast-off objects in Mexico at outrageous prices. Solar Garden (2010) by Dream Addictive (the art collective, Leslie García and Carmen González) employs recycled electronic and solar-powered equipment, demonstrating that even solar material is discarded in our throwaway world. Jaime Ruiz-Otis’ Untitled (2010) is a landscape made from discarded industrial stickers and labels.
At our meeting, Alonso pulls out three MOLAA exhibition catalogs, providing historical reference for contemporary Mexican art. “Mex/L.A. ‘Mexican’ Modernism(s) in Los Angeles, 1930–1985” explored the relationship between artists and supporters on both sides of the border. The show included descriptions of Los Angeles murals by José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros and graffiti art by Chaz Bojorquez. There was also Disney animation inspired by Mexican culture, including The Three Caballeros (1945) starring Donald Duck. Pieces in this show, largely from the “Mexican modernism” era, often incorporate influences from primitive and unschooled artists—a trend persisting in Mexican art today.
The museum’s 2011 “Mexico: Expected/Unexpected,” with modern and contemporary paintings, photography, installation, video art and sculpture from Latin America, Europe and the United States, included works by Mexicans Carlos Amorales and Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and by Americans Ana Mendieta (born in Cuba) and contemporary artist Ed Ruscha. Amorales’ Panorama (2007), large collage drawings with stark images of birds, apes, humans and hybrids depicts violence in humans and animals. These were hung near Mendieta’s equally dark On Giving Life (1975), a photograph of the artist lying naked in the grass atop a skeleton.
“Changing the Focus: Latin American Photography 1990–2005” (2010), curated by Alonso, demonstrated how “Latin American photography took its rightful place within the international contemporary art scene,” as the catalog explains. It explored current social, political and economic perspectives of Latin American photographic art. Death by Tupperware (2005) by Daniela Edburg from Mexico, of a woman in her kitchen being strangled by a monster arising from a plastic container surrounded by American convenience foods, is a metaphor for the perceived strangulation of Mexico by the U.S. and its processed products. Two elegant images by Mexican Daniela Rossell, from her 2002 “Rich and Famous” series, portray wealthy Mexican women in palatial estates, both homes lavishly appointed with Latin and European décor. These photos, referencing iconic Renaissance paintings, provide a window into this (nearly oligarchic) country’s embrace of styles and cultures far beyond its borders.
“This region’s art is as relevant today as that in Europe and North America,” Alonso explains, adding, “In the 20th century alone, Latin American artists have worked in surrealism, social realism, abstraction, conceptualism and more.” With so many artists and movements to present, her goal is to continue to create significant exhibitions and catalogs—to foster worldwide understanding of Latin American and Mexican art.
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A Women’s Place
Slender, dark-haired Lisa Aslanian speaks softly but with conviction as she shows visitors around her sparsely furnished 1,000-square-foot space, The George Gallery. The venue derives its name from George Sand, a pseudonym for the intrepid 19th-century writer Aurora Dupin.
On North Coast Highway in Laguna Beach (a city halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego), where ocean breezes waft in the door and commercial art is prevalent in nearby galleries, Aslanian exhibits women artists only—each with a provocative perspective. In this intimate gallery, providing a framework for these artworks, she explains, “The way we experience art is influenced by where it is housed, and that housing is like a place of worship.” In this “housing,” she challenges her viewers’ visual literacy with lyrical, figurative, sculptural and abstract art that examines feminist and gender issues, with some works presenting aggressive sexuality and/or parodies of domesticity.
The former art professor at The New School for Social Research in New York opened The George Gallery in January 2012. When asked about her artists, she points to the images on the walls and eagerly pulls pieces out of storage. “Her canvases are so alive, layered, complex, and full of life, colors and shapes,” she says of a Mary Jones’ abstract painting. She also represents Jill Levine’s pre-Columbian sculptural dolls which allude to a pan-cultural symbolism; Theresa Hackett’s abstract paintings, combining ordered chaos with female shapes; photos by Carla Gannis, whose contemporary “Jezebels” are saturated with intense reds reminiscent of mid-century “noir” films; and Sandra Bermudez, who shoots close-ups of deeply colored lips with pop aspects.
Aslanian seemed destined to open a gallery dedicated to gender issues, as these concerns have haunted her since childhood. Interviewed on a warm autumn afternoon, she is forthcoming, thoughtful, intelligent, telling me how she created her gallery based on her personal passions and scholarly engagement.
As a suburban New Jersey teen, she discovered the French writer Albert Camus, remarking, “His claim that the only reason to live is that there is nothing quite like this day, this moment, was one of the most beautiful ideas I ever read.” She also spent time frequenting art museums in Manhattan. Later, in college, she pursued her passion for art, culture, philosophy and French literature.
Lisa Aslanian at her gallery After extensive travel, followed by completion of an art history doctorate at The New School, she began teaching in downtown Manhattan, within walking distance of galleries and museums where she and her students were able to experience that vibrant art world directly.
Aslanian later married and had twins, while continuing to teach. But her life changed dramatically when she and her family moved to Orange County in 2008. “I expected to teach here but there were no jobs.” Relegated to staying home, she taught herself Spanish and spent hours reflecting on her life. “As a stay-at-home mom, I had a personal conflict between ambition and nurturing.” While caring for her children, her ambitious side compelled her to re-examine her lifelong interest in contemporary art.
Soon after, while going through a divorce, she sought sanctuary as a gallery assistant at Salt Fine Art in Laguna Beach. “The art there is loaded with sociopolitical commentary and observations about violence, sexuality and submission. While working there, I finally determined to open my own gallery.”
Among the dozens of female artists who inspire her—whose work she finds penetrating and revelatory—are Marina Abramovic, Marlene Dumas, Frida Kahlo and Dorothea Tanning. She explains that these women’s liminal art may bring us to the edge or open us to another plane of existence, adding that their confrontation of gender issues can threaten us on a fundamental level.
While feminist art has been around for decades, few galleries address these issues exclusively. The George Gallery is in fact an anomaly in conservative Orange County. “While interested people have come here out of the woodwork, I am not sure there are enough local buyers to sustain us,” she says. Yet the gallery’s innovative perspective, exemplified by its recent “Pop Noir” exhibition that explored the intersection of popular culture with desire and perversion, created a buzz way beyond OC’s borders.
Aslanian plans to keep her current venue while also expanding to Los Angeles, where the art, she says, “will be gutsier and more conceptual, with fewer traditional media.” And perhaps where it will live up to the fearlessness of its namesake, George Sand.
Info@Thegeorgegallery.com
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Tom Dowling
Two dozen drawings, paintings, constructions and hybrid pieces from 2011-2012 express Tom Dowling’s keen knowledge of architecture and art history. These pieces allude specifically to theories of modernism as expressed in early 20th-century architecture and in mid-century visual art, the latter including German Bauhaus, Minimalist and Hard-Edge movements, and artists Mondrian, Rothko and Diebenkorn. Within Dowling’s deliberately non-painterly works, circles and squares are elevated to visual harmony, grace, and even to meditative and iconic states. Further, the configurations of these are pared down to their basic elements, resulting in impeccable design that bridges reductive aspects of modern art with the simplification and “form follows function” aspects of modern architecture. Indeed, many of his paintings suggest architectural depth, while his constructions employ paintings within three dimensions. As a collection, they provide “Insider Information” (the exhibition title) about the nature and beauty of architecture reduced to its essence.
Four drawings on paper in the series “Sacred Geometry” each contain a small abstract, colored design made of circular and square shapes interacting. These organic drawings reveal myriad ways to reconfigure simple shapes. A second series of double panels, with titles like Equinox and Solstice, features circles and squares and other basic shapes intersecting at odd angles. Several pieces—Chiesa, for example—have conceptual elements, revealing just a segment of the circle, leaving the empty space to our imaginations. Aventino is dramatic with a deep magenta rectangle dominating the left panel, contrasting a textured gold panel on the right. Isoloa Tiberna and a few other pieces are playful exceptions with flowing strokes on solid backgrounds.
The hybrid constructions in this exhibition are miniature architectural masterpieces and attain coherence for the show. Several, 30 inches wide or less, are created from wood, metal and cardboard, with acrylic paint and graphite; each is a reductive version of a building that the artist has visited. Dowling’s interest in architecture, particularly Italian, compelled him to spend a year in Rome, perusing Baroque churches, paring the buildings down to their essential, classical shapes, using his imagination to remove the flourishes. Along with his understanding of modernist art movements, the artist has distilled the nature, beauty and harmony of classical European buildings in these sculptures.
Apparently serving as models for larger constructions to hopefully be created in the future, each maquette features a wooden platform and frame, while several have slender linear “zips,” the term used by Barnett Newman referring to lines that traverse his canvases. But “zips” in this exhibition are free-standing, painted wooden sticks that the viewer is invited to pick up and move. In Frieze, Tower Gateway, Golden Path and Passamezzo the artist again employs circles and squares in his designs, several echoing the configurations of the smaller two-panel paintings. Yet with warm wood for the framework and platform, and inclusion of the zip—to engage the viewer, to be moved in any desired direction—the hybrid work is its own world, a minimal version of Joseph Cornell’s assemblage boxes, welcoming the viewer inside.