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Tag: Arnold Kemp
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Pick of the Week: Lawrence Calver
Simchowitz GalleryLawrence Calver’s first US show at Simchowitz Gallery, “On the Off Chance,” is one of the most fascinating studies in material of any show in Los Angeles that I’ve had the chance to review. Calver is not a traditional fine artist; his background is in creative direction for fashion shows. Here in “On the Off Chance,” he relies on this training and eschews traditional mediums, creating strong, symbolic canvases out of stitched fabrics, often times found fabrics.
The canvases that Calver assembles are rooted in a color-field, Soviet aesthetic. There are strong, bold lines and geometric patterns to the fabrics. Many of the works are landscapes with pared down houses, while others illustrate roughly human figures. They tap into a rustic urbanity, creating within them a conflict between the old (traditional fabrics and dyes) and the new (abstracted forms with an emphasis on color and texture.)
But the true magic of the show, as I suggested before, is the subtleties in which Calver works. We’ll start with the figures themselves. The blocky representations of people in Calver’s works have a common element: pointed hats. While a pointed hat is a symbol used by any number of cultures and peoples, the sourcing of Calver’s materials in India points to the reference being to the Tibetan monk’s pandita hat. This certainly enforces the idol-like nature of the figures and their blank, serene depiction.
And Calver’s sourcing of materials is evident without even reading an excerpt about the show; within the works themselves, Calver maintains the original logo of the fabric companies that he’s sourced the materials. Printed in English, these logos cite manufacturers like Kohinoor Rubia and Bhoja Ram Mukand Lal. The use of fabrics made in India by a British artist echoes the long, colonialist connection between these two nations, a connection reinforced by the inclusion of patches of vintage Western fabrics.
Through his inventive use of fabrics, Lawrence Calver questions our pattern of consumption which has its roots inextricably tied to our colonialist history, and demonstrates what an artist can accomplish with material alone.
Simchowitz Gallery
8255 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90048
Thru June 26th, 2021 -
Pick of the Week: Guy Yanai
Praz-DelavalladeGuy Yanai is irreplaceable. Not simply his vibrant, structured style (though that too is unique,) each of Yanai’s paintings carries an air of individuality and transience. Seeing them for the first time is a new wave crashing on the shore of your subconscious, dousing you before receding again. At his new show at Praz-Delavallade, “The Caboose,” Yanai showcases a collection of works combining his distinctive palette of colors with dreamy, narrative scenes that inspire a deep wistfulness.
But this wistfulness isn’t grounded. Despite the strong, decisive brushstrokes, Yanai paints scenes that he hasn’t experienced, and are mostly drawn from photographs or films. Claire and her boyfriend (2021) or Pauline Reading (2021), for example, do not depict exact memories but rather ideas of memories – pleasurable moments that, in their non-existence, are as real as our memories. The pictorially flat and colorful scenes, be they a couple embracing, a figure reading alone, or a simple house-plant, are singular and unique from anything you might find in a nostalgic moment.
I’m beginning to think that nostalgia is a curse. The desire for a happiness never to return can blind you to the happiness which might exist right in front of you. And yet this desire is addictive; like any good curse, it draws you in before binding you in a wicked web. Nostalgia promises an ideal yet provides only an imitation – and a fleeting one at that.
To this effect, Yanai references the essayist Roland Barthes, quoting him thusly:
“This is to say the art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. … Other pleasures come, which replace nothing. No progress in pleasures, nothing but mutations.”
While Barthes is talking about a streetcar, the sentiment also applies to the work of Guy Yanai. Each painting, while existing in concert with each other, are still independent and unique. They bring with them their own kind of joy, longing and profound. But unlike nostalgia, that accursed and remote bliss, the paintings of Guy Yanai are not perpetually out of your reach; they will summon the same vanished pleasure each and every time.
Praz-Delavallade
6150 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90048
Thru June 26th, 2021 -
Pick of the Week: Arnold Kemp
JOANArt is a reflection of the artist. The culmination of personal experiences, years of study, and distinct perspectives that comprise their life emerge in their works. But none of us are infinitely unique – which is good, for if we were, we’d have no way to relate to one another. In this way, art too must be a reflection of the viewer. The issue is muddied further by greater questions of who is the artist and who is the viewer, both easier asked than answered. These matters of authorship, language, memory, and perspective are masterfully explored in Arnold Kemp’s show “False Hydras,” on view at JOAN until June 19th.
“False Hydras” is obviously composed of sculptures, photographs, and other works by Arnold Kemp the artist and educator, but it features many different Arnold Kemps. Even the title is a reference to a “Dungeons & Dragons” monster created and posted about online by a different Arnold Kemp. Within the game, the memories of any person the monster consumes are wiped from the minds of those who knew them – a fitting beast for a show which deals so heavily in Kemp the artist’s own life.
Another Arnold Kemp referenced in the show is the artist’s grandfather, a tailor from the Bahamas. The work Nineteen Eighty-Four (2020), is comprised of a limestone sculpture made by Kemp in 1984, draped with shorts created by his grandfather. In one of the nooks of the sculpture, there is a cellphone from a performance piece done by Kemp and his father in 2003 about communication between father and son. This work is a culmination of generational artistic efforts, a bridge between Arnold Kemp the tailor and Arnold Kemp the artist.
The most prominent work in the show is Mr. Kemp: Yellowing, Drying, Scorching (2020). A black leather chair is stacked with forty copies of Eat of Me: I am the Savior, a book from 1972 by Black nationalist author, Arnold Kemp. There is a transposition of identity, a conflation of artist and author.
Finally, lying on the floor, there is a single piece of paper which punches straight through the show. Upon the page is written three lines: “I Would Survive; I Could Survive; I Should Survive.” These declarations are affirmations of self, of personal identity untethered to the other; they avow that, even in a world of false hydras, you will always remember yourself.
JOAN
1206 Maple Avenue, Suite 715, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Thru June 19th, 2021
