Artillery Magazine

Tag: abstract art

  • GALLERY ROUNDS: Louise Nevelson Kayne Griffin

    GALLERY ROUNDS: Louise Nevelson
    Kayne Griffin

    Fragments of paper, cardboard, wire and foil have all been carefully orchestrated into a space that seems to float seamlessly and coalesce into a compelling quasi-geometric composition in “Collages 1957–1982” by Louise Nevelson. On closer inspection, it becomes clear how much the detritus that was collected from the artist’s environment was carefully smoothed, flattened, cut, torn and arranged—as though it was the most precious material in the world. The clear yet complex set of correlated relationships between the smaller forms and the larger bounding areas radiate a sense of harmony that belies the humble nature of the raw material being deployed. Predominantly monochromatic with some high contrast between white-and-black masses, there are occasional eruptions of color: a bright orange here or a light blue there, but there’s a sense throughout that these compositions are meant to be very even tempered.

    While Nevelson’s sculptural works comprise large arrays of decontextualized objects and parts of objects arranged in patterns that are then evenly coded in one color, these smaller studies demonstrate how the artist works her aesthetic prowess on a less massive scale. There is still the kind of somberness to these collages but it is scaled differently so the concern that is worked out on each individual element, be it a fragment from a cigarette pack or part of a wooden crate, is highlighted.

    Louise Nevelson, Untitled, 1957 © 2021 Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

    In Untitled (1957) flanking either side of the central corrugated cardboard panel on which wood panels are wired are smaller scraps of flat cardboard on which rough geometric shapes have been created through spray painting, leaving the forms as negative space defined by the surrounding black paint. Above the central panel the artist has positioned several semi-circular arches that appear almost crown-like. There are tears and regular cuts of these different parts throughout, but it all looks to have been shaped by pushing a determined composition.

    The pleasure evinced in viewing these works is determined by both the quiet and controlled orchestration of space and also by entering a very subtle yet decisive imaginative dimension in which the viewer is invited into a space without it ever having to add up to anything other than its exploration.

     

    Louise Nevelson: Collages 1957 – 1982

    Kayne Griffin

    Through Oct. 30

  • Pick of the Week: Ariana Papademetropoulos Jeffrey Deitch

    Pick of the Week: Ariana Papademetropoulos
    Jeffrey Deitch

    Fairytales operate in a special place of human consciousness. They offer the building blocks of moralism and societal standards, for better or worse. Though folk stories, myths and fairytales are found throughout every culture, there are many common elements: simple language, universal symbology, repeated characters and motifs – essentially, they are created to be easily accessible. This may seem at ends with fine art, for which inaccessibility has been a hallmark for the better part of the last century. But the pick of the week (and perhaps the best show in Los Angeles) works to unite the two; with original works and a curated group show, “The Emerald Tablet” from Ariana Papademetropoulos at Jeffrey Deitch is a must see.

    We’ll start with the originals. The large scale paintings offer a good introduction to the tone and rhythm of the show as a whole. They feature Papademetropoulos’ spectacular painting ability and weave a miraculous worlds of impossible proportions. Be it ghosts, unicorns, alien landscapes or wicker furniture, Papademetropoulos’ works entice the viewer into her occult dimension and prepare them for the magic which awaits them in the subsequent galleries.

    The group show is a confluence of some of the greatest contemporary artists that Los Angeles has to offer. From up-and-comers like Lucy Bull to past powerhouses like Mike Kelley, Papademetropoulos gathers works which build off her own foundation and carry the ideas of occult happenings to new heights. The most striking works in the main room are the carousel from Raúl de Nieves and the witch-faced cottage from Jordan Wolfson, but the magic really begins in the final room. With the walls painted a deep, emerald green, rock monoliths pierce into the space, creating a feeling of sanctuary and ritual. In the center, a fantastic city under glass from the aforementioned Kelley evokes the emerald city imagined by Frank L. Baum in his timeless work, “The Wizard of Oz.”

    But that quick comparison is not the base from which Papademetropoulos operates, though that is what first comes to mind. The show itself, “The Emerald Tablet,” is named for the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, an Arabic text that was foundational to the history of western occultism. This layering of meaning, hiding deeper, secret knowledge under the guise of something recognizable and mundane, is the core of occult working, and the core of Papademetropoulos efforts, both personal and curatorial.

    Jeffrey Deitch
    925 N. Orange Drive
    Los Angeles, California 90038
    Thru Oct. 23rd, 2021

  • Pick of the Week: Jason Mason Bill Brady Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Jason Mason
    Bill Brady Gallery

    I’ve written a lot about Los Angeles and how it’s mistakenly known as an “ugly city.” And while before I’ve been willing to blame that mistake on biased reporting, I’m starting to believe that the call is coming from inside the house. Truthfully, we have only ourselves to blame for our city’s image problem. And it’s more than just the labels we self-ascribe. It’s the images and impressions that have become iconic to Los Angeles. The palm trees and deserts, the waves and sunsets – we supplant the city that we built with the nature that we conquered. These natural icons act as the subjects for the incisive paintings from Jason Mason in his show, “California Rhythm,” on view at Bill Brady Gallery.

    I was first struck by Mason’s work when I immersed myself in the details. Mason possesses an immense technical ability; from the gentle gradations of color in waves of water or sand, to the hyper- realistic palm tree on a millennial pink backdrop, he shows himself to be an outstanding painter. He renders the symbols of southern California with an exacting and fine eye.

    But the power of his works is not built on technical mastery alone, nor on a sentimental awareness of our cities iconography. Rather, Mason injects into his natural images telltale signs of humanity: like trash floating in the sea or construction equipment. Mason goads the viewer into recognizing the identity of their city not only in the natural beauty but also in our human intervention. These suggestions of humanity highlight the dichotomy of a city like Los Angeles, and the difficulty of aligning a city with natural symbols.

    These ideas come to the forefront with the works which introduce textual elements. Cloak and Dagger (2021), for example, takes the classic palm tree vignettes and flips them by transforming them into cell towers. The text (“Cloak and Dagger” written across the canvas) illustrates the thin veneer of Los Angeles’ identity. We want to put forward this front of splendor and iconic nature, but at our core we are a city of wires and towers.

    The “California Rhythm” is a syncopated one; it upends our traditional understanding of our city and its iconography, but still ends up with a beautiful melody.

    Bill Brady Gallery
    603 N. La Brea Ave.
    Los Angeles, California 90036
    Thru Oct. 16th, 2021

  • GALLERY ROUNDS: Hanna Hur Kristina Kite Gallery

    GALLERY ROUNDS: Hanna Hur
    Kristina Kite Gallery

    It is hard not to wonder if Hanna Hur’s paintings were made explicitly for Kristina Kite’s gallery space or if it is pure coincidence that the black and white checkerboard floor so perfectly complements the geometric patterns within the paintings. The way the space recedes in the room parallels the sense of depth in the paintings. While at first glance the large-scale acrylic paintings appear to be bold shapes, upon closer examination the gridded structure that comprises the backgrounds becomes apparent. The installation has a formal elegance as the placement of the works is dictated by both color and spatial relationships.

    Muse, 2020

    Jupiter and Saturn (all works 2020-21) faces the door and is the first painting viewers see. Black triangular shaped shards emanate from a small green circle made with malachite pigment at the center of the work. The tan canvas background has been gridded out with thin white lines. Though static, it is easy to imagine this work coming to life as a spinning pinwheel or hallucination device. There is an implied sense of movement in many of the paintings as if Hur is using geometry to take us to another world. Each meticulously rendered work layers circles and rectangles in subtle colors as if to say I am transporting you from something predictable into the unknown. In Muse, Hur fills in a small grid with graphite squares that appear to be a floor in a vacant room topped with a black ceiling. Four small, light red ameoba-like forms are centered in the corners. The ambiguous organic shapes are a surprising interruption to Hur’s precise geometry.

    The pattern in Quad, Quad ii, Quad iii and Quad iv is essentially the same, yet rendered in different hues. Quad is flesh toned, Quad ii yellow, Quad iii green and Quad iv gray. In each work, the spaces within the 26 x 30 grid are blank or filled with a circle that slightly extends beyond the gridlines to create an oscillation or vibration within the mind’s eye. Toward the center of each painting are four circular shapes comprised of seven dots each that are situated on top of four squares from the grid that divert the gaze and cause a disjuncture in the pattern and shift our perception to a different plane.

    Red Mirror, 2021

    Depending on where one stands in the gallery — moving between natural and artificial light — different aspects of the works are apparent. What seems to be an even grid in Red Mirror reveals a glowing starburst that shimmers when seen from a specific vantage point. Hur’s works are seductive and sly. While they relate to Neo Geo, they are softer and more subtle. She plays with spatial illusions both within the individual works as well as within the gallery. While highlighted by the specifics of Kite’s gallery, her paintings have an architectural grandeur that also extends beyond this space. She is an exceptionally accomplished painter who manipulates formal geometry to transcend expectations.

     

    Hanna Hur: Red Ecstatic

    Kristina Kite Gallery

    September 11–November 8, 2021

  • Pick of the Week: Camille Rose Garcia KP Projects

    Pick of the Week: Camille Rose Garcia
    KP Projects

    As an omnipresent symbol across the history of humanity, the ocean assumes many roles. It is a healing force, and is immensely destructive; it is divine and earthly. The ocean encompasses the myriad of natural and mystical forces which have captivated our imagination as a species ad infinitum, inspiring visions of deities and monsters alike. “Obsidian Butterfly,” the newest show from Camille Rose Garcia on view at KP Projects, encapsulates the depths of the ocean and our connection to it.

    For the past year, Garcia’s work has centered on the ocean as the Pacific became a refuge for her after being evacuated from Northern California during the wildfires. Across twelve works on panels (often adorned with driftwood) and fourteen smaller works on paper, Garcia draws on this experience to explore the shamanic and healing properties of the ocean. In her brightly colored paintings, Garcia often personifies the ocean as a healer/goddess figure, adorned with shells and sea stars.

    In the titular work, Obsidian Butterfly (2021), we see one such goddess archetype articulated in Garcia’s signature style. The macabre, black-teared woman evokes the dualistic symbolism that the ocean itself evokes. While herself appearing as a kind of witch, gesturing out a spell with a wave of her hand, the warm, almost neon, palette is inviting and enticing – a sirens call. This sunburst scene is encircled by a vignette ocean floors and jungle vines, as if peering through a portal to another world.

    One of the most striking works, Serpents of the Abyss (2021), again utilizes the sea-witch figures, this time in accompanying roles. They pick up instruments constructed of sea shells to announce your arrival to yet another realm, this one far ominous. A cave – or perhaps a maw – shrouds a spiny conch shell, which in turn has its own secrets. The entrance, however, is guarded by four identical serpent heads – the hydra. Smoke billows from their eyes and creates a psychedelic haze, one where the line between enchantment and peril is inexorably blurred.

    Above all else, “Obsidian Butterfly” – and in fact, the entire oeuvre of Garcia’s career – is as aesthetically appealing as it is deeply rooted in the collective history of the symbols of our world, both natural and supernatural.

    KP Projects
    633 N. La Brea Ave.
    Los Angeles, California 90036
    Thru Oct. 9th, 2021

  • Pick of the Week: Art on Paper Athenessa Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Art on Paper
    Athenessa Gallery

    Paper is a flexible medium. It is unconstrained frames and backings, untethered by nails or staples, and has become essential across countries and centuries. Still, in the canon of western art history, the primacy of canvas painting has pushed works on paper aside, and only recently have they been able to garner serious appreciation. However, with a wide variety of accompanying techniques ranging from ink prints to spray-paint, paper has been a wellspring of mastery for artists around the globe and throughout history. Four contemporary artists – Amadour, Artiste Ouvrier & Zeto, and Dennis Muraguri – have been brought together at Athenessa Gallery to explore paper’s extensive repertoire in an aptly titled show, “ART ON PAPER.”

    Amadour, a recent UCLA graduate, was the original driving force behind my interest in visiting this show. Their works of ink on paper are enchanting landscapes of familiar locales: Brentwood, Kenter Canyon, and others. The particular flatness of Amadour’s paintings, coupled with their inversion of the traditionally white negative space to be black, creates a mysterious and ethereal aura around the works. The dense and acute works are striking examples of ink-on-paper and are promising for a young artist.

    But while Amadour’s monochrome paper works are structured and clean, the joint efforts of graffiti artists Artiste Ouvrier & Zeto are delightful jaunts across art history and their own long careers. The works begin with Artiste Ouvrier hand cut stencils, the same kind he uses in his street art but now transposed to paper. Whether incredibly detailed renditions of cathedrals or reproductions of Alphonse Mucha, Ouvrier’s stencil work is impressionistic and masterful, but the work is only half done. Zeto, a graffiti artist working since the 1980s, paints over the works, adding his signature pink elephants and aping Murakami. Zeto’s additions add a level of whimsy and make clear the hand of the artist which is absent in stencil-based works, an effect which is heightened by the artisanal paper on which the work occurs.

    Finally, we come to the large wood-block prints of Kenyan artist Dennis Muraguri. On large sheets of paper, Muraguri imprints scenes of Matatu culture: highly decorated and vibrant privately owned buses which compete for customers throughout Nairobi. The prints are intricately detailed, demonstrating Muraguri’s impressive wood-carving skills and technical prowess. The medium of printing is particularly notable, drawing connections between the commercial nature of Matatu culture and printing’s roots in mass media.

    Athenessa Gallery
    616 S. La Brea Ave.
    Los Angeles, California 90036
    Thru Aug Sep 28th, 2021

  • COMICS Concerned Creative Artists Against Climate Change

    COMICS
    Concerned Creative Artists Against Climate Change

  • Remarks on Color: Subterranean Smog September's Hue

    Remarks on Color: Subterranean Smog
    September’s Hue

    Subterranean Smog is not one color or another, but a sickening miasma of grays, browns and a lingering smoky orange. Drawn from the bowels of the earth, SS identifies with the antihero — Pig Pen in Charlie Brown, Sir Gawain, the Green Knight, Alex from a Clockwork Orange, Lestat from the Vampire Chronicles. A self-proclaimed anarchist, apocryphal, and constantly distracted, the Great SS wanders the streets of Boise Idaho in search of the meaning of life. Once, for a moment in October of 1975 he thought he discovered it in the recesses of a cherry donut, but alas it was only a sugar rush.

    In an attempt to counteract his saturnine nature, and to finally commit to being one solid hue, Subterranean Smog purchases thirteen burnt orange suits with matching socks the color of apricots. For the first time in his dingy life, SS commits to something, and the sheer fact of this gives him hope for the future.

    Despite walking down Main Street in the full spectacle of an ever-brightening morning, wearing such garishness as would put Liberace to shame, Subterranean Smog still feels strangely invisible and nondescript. So, he hires a marching band to accompany him to the grocery store, then adorns his body with all manner of orange flowers, and even dips his body in saffron to garner some much-needed attention. But the fact of his inherent and unavoidable bleakness, smoggy and ill-suited to the rarified life, soon catches up with him.

    Realizing he cannot change the truth of who he is and the permanent dinginess of his nature, SS decides instead to embrace it completely, marrying his High School sweetheart, Sky, and even going so far as to open a Smog Check Station in the center of an abysmal little town on the outskirts of nowhere.

  • Pick of the Week: Dysmorphia Maddox Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Dysmorphia
    Maddox Gallery

    It’s hard to imagine another time in my life when the word “home” will carry so much weight. The past year has redefined it for all of us. Home has become more vital than ever, yet home is more unstable than ever. Home is where we were told to stay, but home has been found in the most far-flung places. Home is safe and home is scary. It’s jamais vu: that which has always been intimately familiar is now strangely foreign. This derealization of our interior world – of our homes, of our society, of ourselves —  is the focus of the current group exhibition at Maddox Gallery, “Dysmorphia,” on through August 31st.

    The concept of the interior space is most readily explored with its most basic interpretation: the physical space which surrounds us. This interpretation is found in “Dysmorphia” through the works of Andrew Cooper and Nevena Prijic. Cooper’s paintings, such as Breakfast is Ready (2021), are pictorially-flattened, brightly colored illustrations of unpeopled spaces, reminiscent of early Matisse works like Harmony in Red, where the elements of the room themselves become decorative. Prijic, by contrast, inserts herself into the interior spaces – sprawled on a couch or sat tucked into herself. This highlights the solitude of the literal interior space, closed off both physically and emotionally.

    But we also find society itself as an internalizing and unreal force on display, particularly with the expansive works of James Verbicky and Wyatt Mills. Mills’ Vague Traditions (2020) draws upon the art historical motif of the Madonna and Child, creating a wildly expressive yet recognizable representation of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. As the name implies, it asks us to consider the impact of Christianity and Christian symbols on our society, how the traditions are twisted and reformed to fit new purposes with familiar faces.

    Finally, we are confronted with the most interior space of all: the self. All of the artists in this show – and most art today – deal in some way with our conceptions of self, but Sol Summers, Jahlil Nzinga, Sean Crim, and Justin Bower are notable for their directness. Their works, in particular Summers and Nzinga’s collaborative work Did You Find What You Were Looking For? (2020), question the ways we view ourselves, harmonizing the intense complexity of the inner world and the stark simplicity of our exterior actions. A sense of home may be difficult to find again, but perhaps it’s plainer to recognize than we imagine.

    Maddox Gallery
    8811 Beverly Blvd.
    West Hollywood, California 90048
    Thru Aug 31st, 2021

  • Remarks on Color: Lachrymose Lemon August's Hue

    Remarks on Color: Lachrymose Lemon
    August’s Hue

    Lachrymose Lemon cannot stop weeping. She sobs uncontrollably at everything all the time: the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, softball games, dinosaur conventions, the day her favorite chicken finally laid an egg. From the moment the sun rises to the last feeble rays of the day, Lachrymose Lemon greets the world through her tears. She’s what’s called an “indiscriminate crier,” “a perpetual weeper,” “a permanently salty dog,” and these monikers have served her well as for decades her tears have been used to great effect, though she claims manipulation never once entered her mind.

    Crocodile tears helped her purchase her first home, a grand affair that sadly overlooked a pig farm in Wisconsin; an Audi convertible with a license plate that reads “cry me a river,” and several whirlwind trips around the world. Lachrymose Lemon discovered that most people are more than happy to lower the price on just about anything in assurance that the sobbing might finally come to an END. In fact, she cries so much that the Guinness Book of World Records once interviewed her for a special edition called The Extreme Body which included a man with hemorrhoids the size of grapefruits.

    She hasn’t watched a sad movie in over thirty years and those various YouTube videos of abandoned and abused animals send her over the edge every time. The governor of California once approached Lachrymose about the drought crisis with the idea that her excessive tears might be desalinized, which could possibly save the entire West Coast from immolation. She agreed quite eagerly at first only to cry about it for absolutely no reason later.

    On any given day you can find various buckets indiscriminately placed throughout the house in case a sudden deluge overcomes her. Her husband often complains that he has yet again “kicked the bucket” on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The fact their house is a veritable minefield of tears makes it impossible to socialize, and so Lachrymose Lemon bumbles on into her oh so solitary life, sour and forever alone.

     

  • Pick of the Week: Andy Kolar Walter Maciel Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Andy Kolar
    Walter Maciel Gallery

    Andy Kolar’s new show at Walter Maciel Gallery, “Head in the Clouds/Left Hanging,” is a play in three acts. Like any good play, and more so than most solo exhibitions, there is a vital rhythm and active plot – a cadence. And for good reason: Kolar’s exploration of abstraction is as varied as the materials and works themselves, and so it’s vital to construct some sort of order. So in that vein, Kolar’s works can be broken into three modes: pure, formed, and manifested.

    “Head in the Clouds” begins with the pure abstraction, the painting series that Kolar refers to as Slings. These smaller works, which comprise the majority of the show, are mainly thin colored strands extending from the top half of the canvas on a nearly white background. The backgrounds are cloud-like, the white spaces broken up with small patches of blue. The slings themselves, all grouped from similar color palettes per work, are reminiscent of much yet particular of little: roots of a plant, strings of balloons, a hand reaching out.

    These paintings offer the base – the inciting incident – of the entire exhibition. From them spring forth a wealth of action, beginning with a trio of paintings which begin to unite the disparate elements of each of the Sling series. The slings attain weight and interact with one another. They intersect, overlap, and begin to create entire scenes. The slings are no longer just aesthetic and conceptual; they grasp ahold of purpose and life. With them, the exhibition generates a growing momentum, and Kolar’s vision for his slings begins to take on a greater structure.

    This structure is fully realized when the slings leave the canvas itself and enter into the physical space. When Kolar transforms his abstraction into sculpture, the sense of purpose vested in each becomes exponentially greater. Some of the sculptures illustrate the slings themselves, such as Loose Connection (2021), while others demonstrate means of production and practicality, likening the craft of abstract painting to construction. In one piece, Kolar affirms this connection with a simple wooden tool-box, each compartment filled to the brim with paint. Kolar lifts his works out of the abstract, summoning them into reality and practicality by wielding his symbols like blowtorches and claw hammers.

    Walter Maciel Gallery
    2642 S. La Cienega Blvd.
    Los Angeles, California 90034
    Thru Aug 20th, 2021

  • Pick of the Week: Bridget Mullen Shulamit Nazarian

    Pick of the Week: Bridget Mullen
    Shulamit Nazarian

    This month, Shulamit Nazarian is putting on two shows. The larger group show, “Intersecting Selves,” is an exploration of the overlap and tension between body, identity, and art. Many of the works are notable, particularly Life (2021) by Amir H. Fallah, …for souls…for soles…between the cuts, beneath the leaves, below the soil… (2021) from Ebony G. Patterson, and Julie Henson’s Between Reality and Theater (2021). But “Intersecting Selves” is not the Pick of the Week. Rather, the Pick of the Week is “Birthday,” an iterative collection of thirty-two paintings from Bridget Mullen.

    At first, “Birthday” is unassuming; the twelve by nine inch paintings are hung simply in a continuous row about a small gallery space. But as you approach them, there is a curious flash of recognition, like what one might feel when you encounter a familiar stranger or an unexpected mirror. Through the abstracted fields of color, figures and symbols begin to manifest in the symmetrical patterns. This thematic use of symmetry redoubles this effect, triggering that basic human instinct to seek out such patterns.

    Where there was once a miasma of color spread across the head-sized canvases, now there are disembodied eyes, faces peering through canals, and lovers melting into a shared embrace. Taking in each of them, one at a time, all in a row, is a hypnotic experience. They create their own cadence, and as one begins to recognize the repetition you fall into it without even realizing. That’s not to say that they are all similar; far from it, each painting is as distant from the next as the works in the group show are from each other.

    And that’s the core of what makes “Birthday” a fascinating exhibition. Ordinarily, works which are presented in a series build off each other, uniting to create some greater narrative. But for Mullen, each work has its independent story. They are stories that are in the process of being told, but have been written long ago. Though they offer no resolution, yet they each weave a fantastic tale. These stories – these paintings – exist on the precipice of completion, in a dichotomic space between acuity and abstraction, love and loss, existence and extinction.

    Shulamit Nazarian
    616 N. La Brea Ave
    Los Angeles, California 90036
    Thru Aug 28th, 2021

  • Pick of the Week: Frank Gehry & Nancy Rubins Gagosian

    Pick of the Week: Frank Gehry & Nancy Rubins
    Gagosian

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    The pair of shows on view at Gagosian, Frank Gehry’s “Spinning Tales” and Nancy Rubins’ “Fluid Space,” are as dissimilar as they are masterful. Two artists, whose works are to be found in the halls of major museums and on city skylines, find in their works pinnacles of creative excellence and experience. They approach sculpture from vastly different directions and arrive at dramatically opposed conclusions. From medium to visual experience, “Spinning Tales” and “Fluid Space” are worth visiting if for nothing else than to see the breadth of an entire genre of art from two of the best to have ever done it.

    Frank Gehry, primarily known for his architectural achievements, has been producing sculptures for just as long. In “Spinning Tales,” he returns to a long-time favorite subject: fish. Gehry has been producing smaller scale versions of the creatures for years, but in this show he dramatically increases the scope of his vision. The fish are massive, some four meters long and nearly three meters high, and carry with them a strong sense of motion which is familiar across Gehry’s work. They dominate the space, seeming to create a tide which pulls you through and around them.

    While most are his traditional poly-vinyl with internal lighting, there are also a few constructed of copper, which seem to hold an opposite effect. Instead of producing light, they capture it. The copper scales of the fish glow with an other-worldly aura, at the same time inviting and entrancing. The works in “Spinning Tales” come alive when the viewer is present, else they are frozen in their cosmic dance.

    Nancy Rubins’ works, on the other hand, are far from alive regardless of viewer. In “Fluid Space,” Rubins continues her career-long exploration of the reconstitution and transformation of found objects. For this series, the objects are her own casts from a previous series, “Diversifolia,” which showcased natural forms such as plants and animals. The old casts are spliced open to show seams and folds, open welds and scarred brass. The discrete elements are stitched together with steel wires, appearing like sutured shipwreck salvage.

    Whereas Gehry’s fish dominate and demand, Rubins’ sculptures exist without intervention. They coalesce and support themselves, pulling and pushing their extremities and stretching against themselves. They are phenomenal – as in literally phenomena – much in the same way as an exploding star or earthquake. From moose horn to lion mane, “Fluid Space” will occur with or without us – so we may as well witness it.

    Gagosian
    456 N. Camden Dr.
    Beverly Hills, California 90210
    Thru Aug 6th, 2021

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  • GALLERY ROUNDS: Ontario Museum Biennial Ontario Museum of History and Art

    GALLERY ROUNDS: Ontario Museum Biennial
    Ontario Museum of History and Art

    The act of self-disclosure is an intentional revelation of one’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings to another individual; it is part confession and part declaration. The 11th Biennial Ontario Open Art Exhibition at the Ontario Museum of History and Art was an aesthetic self-revelation by established and emerging contemporary artists. The widely varied works were both two and three-dimensional and employed a variety of media and subject matter, from textile to photography to clay and metal. Contemporary portraiture kept company with cat paintings and wide-angle photography was side-by-side with optical abstraction. With Kathy Ervin, Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Cal State San Bernardino as the juror, this show is truly an example of a collective community voice.

    Patricia Jessup-Woodlin, Ancestral Reclamation, 2020

    Of particular interest is Ancestral Reclamation (2020), a photomontage/assemblage by Dr. Patricia Jessup-Woodlin, a retired art education professor. On a narrow wooden panel, a portrait of a woman of color is elegantly rendered in fragments of torn collage. She is crowned with a pyramid of ascending cowrie shells and her mahogany eyes are proudly confrontational and penetrating. This work is suggestive of the recent Black Panther film and the woman portrayed—a fragmented portrait of all African women—appears to be reimagining a Black future. It is no coincidence that using cowrie shells extends the meaning of this work’s title. In Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania dating back to the 14th century, cowrie shells served as currency for goods and services. Ultimately, these shells constituted power and were used by Africans for protection. The significance of this work is twofold. First, it resists erasure the glorious past before African enslavement. Second, it illustrates the message of Haile Gerima’s 1993 film, Sankofa; the lessons learned from past function as a roadmap for actualizing a powerful future.

    Lady Day’s Lyrics (2019) by Annie Toliver, an exhibition prizewinner, puts a fresh spin on the idea that relationships range from the toxic to transformative. In this portrait of Billie Holiday, rendered with fabric and ink embellishments, complementary hues jigsaw a profile. Holiday’s face is centered in the composition, floating above a background of sheet music that makes reading the titles of her greatest hits an irresistible pleasure.

    Rick Cummings, Aluminum Dreams, 2021

    Rick Cummings captures a hurried desperation in his mixed media Aluminum Dreams (2021) where a woman is depicted pushing a shopping cart filled with aluminum cans. Additionally, her yellow star (five pointed, not six) designed shirt alludes to an exploitative, capitalist America limping along economically amid a push to reopen the country immediately after a global pandemic has ravaged the planet.

    This exhibition offers a glance into a talented community of artists. Professionally trained or self-taught their willingness to reveal themselves creatively encourages a reciprocal viewer response—actions that foreshadow a change in one’s thinking, not only about art but about ourselves. In Parable of the Sower (1993) Octavia Butler expressed it best by writing “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”

     

    11th Annual Biennial Open Art Exhibition

    Ontario Museum of History and Art

    225 S. Euclid Ave. Ontario, CA 91762

    May 6-August 15, 2021

  • Pick of the Week: Ernest Withers Fahey/Klein Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Ernest Withers
    Fahey/Klein Gallery

    The gap between memory and history has never been more obvious than since the proliferation of photography. History presents a narrow view of our past: the highest achievements and the lowest atrocities – which can even be the same depending on the historian. What is lost in the extremes of history is the subtlety of everyday life; we do not find the small victories and micro-aggressions which populate the real memory of our lives. The vast majority of us will neither be fortunate nor unfortunate enough to be documented by historians, but we are still important, aren’t we? In a sweeping testament to the power of photography, Ernest Wither’s “I’ll Take You There,” on view at Fahey/Klein Gallery, reveals moments both major and minor.

    Withers, one of the most prominent Black photojournalists throughout the Civil Rights movement, turned his photographic eye to more than just iconic figures like MLK, and worked to capture the intricacy of Black life throughout the period. The first room of photographs in the exhibition show places like dance halls and record stores. A portrait of the king and queen of Cotton Makers Jubilee (1959) is of particular note. The regal robes, the spotlight, and the satisfied smiles are testaments to a moment of brilliance in a tragic era of American history. It shows that joy and ease are as important to document as tragedy and pain.

    That said, there are plenty of examples of the latter in the other half of the exhibition. Withers took photographs of pro-segregation protestors and heinous police violence that are tragically not far from the public imagination. The images of Black protestors wearing sandwich boards with the phrase “I AM A MAN” across from police officers wearing gas masks are especially familiar.

    But there is another familiar sight in these images: the importance of voting. Withers documented dozens of these scenes. A student volunteer registering fellow Black Americans; dozens of Black men and women lining up following the Tent City Drive; a woman proudly holding up her voter ID. These small moments of the Civil Rights movement may not occupy the same space in history books as the March on Washington, but perhaps they should. They are more important to learn from, as they show what we all can do with our own small moments.

    Fahey/Klein Gallery
    148 N. La Brea
    Los Angeles, California 90036
    Thru July 31st, 2021

  • Pick of the Week: Off the Charts Royale Projects

    Pick of the Week: Off the Charts
    Royale Projects

    I feel like most people would have a tough time imagining something more ideologically opposed to art than data analytics. Even the phrase sounds unartistic, more at home in investment banking than gallery houses. Art just feels too subjective to be encapsulated by the rigid world of sums and figures. But perhaps that’s the wrong perspective. In the Royale Project’s new group show, “Off the Charts,” we see a collection of artists engaging with how data can be encapsulated by art.

    While numbers are objective, the visualization and illustration of them is far from it, and can take surprising and beautiful turns. Take, for example, the computer generated, two-toned painting from Ken Lum, The Path from Sanity to Madness (2012). A labyrinth, like all puzzles, forces your brain to act in a programmatic way. When you view Lum’s work, you become a computer working your way methodically through a maze from entrance to exit. Just like in life, you must find your way through it – though this maze in particular is much more easy than the maze of life.

    Other works in the show draw not upon computer generation but upon the natural world, attempting to physicalize things we only know through the lens of data. Sway to the Sun: Motion No. 1  (2021) from Luftwerk is one such sculpture. The neon light, twisting and spiraling until shooting upwards like an out of control firework, is a visualization of the growth of a peppermint plant. All plants twist and turn to chase the sun and respond to wind and rain, but their slow development makes it impossible to perceive except through careful measurement. This sculpture freezes in place what is an otherwise invisible dance.

    But others in the show are not so abstractedly related to our experience as dancing plants and computer mazes. The two works from Josh Callaghan, Apocalypto Ticket Sales by Week (2018) and Work Place Injury by Type (2008), are fascinating because of the divide between the minimalist beauty of the work and absurd nature of the subject. Particularly Apocalypto, which juts proudly into the space as steeply inclined graph made of red steel. Their titles being the only insight into their design, they call into question the pure aesthetic qualities of data visualization and the power of artistic context.

    Royale Projects
    432 S. Alameda St.
    Los Angeles, California 90013
    Thru Sep 30th, 2021