FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Keystone Art Space Gallery
Patterns and Tones for A Paper Ballet
Opening Reception Saturday, June 21st 5-9pm
Closing Reception Saturday, July 5th 5-9pm
Exhibition Dates | June 18th to July 5th, 2025
Keystone Art Space Gallery
338 S. Ave 16
Los Angeles, CA 90031
Universal beauty arises from the dynamic rhythm of mutual relationships of form.
— Piet Mondrian
Los Angeles, CA, June 21st, 2025. Keystone Arts Space Gallery presents Patterns and Tones for
A Paper Ballet, an interdisciplinary exhibition by artist Julie Green, bringing together
photography, sculpture, elements of performance, and a light-based installation design into a
singular, immersive environment. This hybrid body of work invites viewers into a visual
choreography of shapes, materials, and shadow play, where movement is both suggested and
suspended in time.
At the heart of Patterns and Tones for A Paper Ballet is a four-part photographic series
referencing the structure of a four-act play. These images act as dimensional tableaux, with
figures inhabiting constructed proscenium spaces, animated by handmade paper objects and
enigmatic narrative symbols. The works are inspired in part by Oskar Schlemmer’s avant-garde
Triadic Ballet (c.1920), whose explorations of costumed geometry and the mystical potential of
modern aesthetics find new resonance here in Green’s compositions.
Presented in a dimly lit passage with a single, moving light source, the monochromatic,
abstract “pattern relief” elements of the series become dynamic participants in the
performance. As shadows slip across the surfaces, the works oscillate between stasis and
movement, presence, and absence — creating a spatial rhythm that feels both intimate and
theatrical, as though consciousness resides in geometry itself. Incorporating Constructivist
ideas in the work to convey universal laws that the elements of lines, colors and shapes possess
their own forces of expression, bound up with human emotion.
In dialogue with these pieces is Silent Symphony, a sculptural installation of “tone reliefs” that
engages the sensory imagination through implied sound. Constructed entirely from handmade
paper pulp, wood, and molds, the classical instruments in this work appear poised midperformance.
In the absence of audible music, their material presence activates a surreal,
cognitive echo — a silent score composed of gesture, tension, and expectation. Throughout
the exhibition, Green’s meticulous use of handmade processes and geometric abstraction
interrupts the traditional flatness of the photographic plane, expanding two- dimensional
imagery into tactile, sculptural form. The works traverse themes of memory, movement, and
perception, inviting audiences to experience a choreographed relationship between light,
material, and implied narrative.
“I love to make something out of nothing,” says the artist. “Within my professional career and
in the broader context of our hyper-saturated digital world, I have felt a deep desire to go back
to using my hands, and this impulse has shaped the direction of my personal studio practice in
the past five years.” In fact, sculpture and photography have a lot in common—both speak a
language of light and shadow, positive and negative space, presence and absence, perspective
and choice, truth and its interpretation. “My ultimate desire was to break out of the strict
confines of photography’s inherent two- dimensionality,” she says, “to arrive at something
more solid, tactile, animated, and even theatrical.”
Patterns and Tones for A Paper Ballet is less a static exhibition than a conversation between
mediums — a series of visual performances suspended in time, waiting for the viewer to step in
and complete the phenomenological gesture. Conceived and made before the artist nearly lost
her home battling the encroaching flames of the Eaton Fire and its damaging aftermath, it’s
hard not to imbue the works’ beguiling manner of magical thinking with an added layer of
meaning, as it speaks to life’s fragility.
— Exhibition text by Shana Nys Dambrot
About the Artist
Born in Oakland, CA in 1969, Julie Green was surrounded in her youth by contemporary artists
through extended family to Ruth Asawa by attending her children’s workshops, David Ireland
by assisting him at his Capp Street Studio, and through her teenage friendship with Barry
McGee. Having studied under Steve Harper at San Francisco Art Academy, Green earned her
BFA in Fine Art Photography under Jack Welpott, Robin Lasser and Don Worth at San
Francisco State University in 1991. Throughout the 90’s, Green worked as a rock and roll
photographer as well as creating fine art photography and painted portraiture which were
shown throughout the Bay Area.
In 1999, Green moved to Los Angeles where she had the opportunity to dive into the
established business through photo documentation in the music, theater and entertainment
industry including portraiture. The idea of the stage became part of her landscape working with
set, lighting and costume designers demonstrating the power of collaboration as a creative to
execute your vision. Having maintained a photographic studio at the Warfield Building in San
Francisco for many, her current studio is based at Keystone Art Space in LA’s Lincoln Heights.
Contact: Julie Green
Website: www.Juliegreen.net Instagram @juliegreenfineart
Email: julievox@sbcglobal.net Phone: (213) 422-8390
