Artillery Magazine

Tag: Art

  • Pick of the Week: The Lights of Los Angeles Los Angeles

    Pick of the Week: The Lights of Los Angeles
    Los Angeles

    Beauty is all around us. This thought feels simplistic, and given the past year, even wrong. Stuck in our homes, away from family and friends, a city as large and vibrant as Los Angeles becomes terribly claustrophobic. And even for those fortunate enough not to be directly affected by the pandemic (we are all affected in some way), it’s normal to become disaffected from your environment. Spend enough time anywhere, you’ll forget why you’re there in the first place.

    The best way I’ve found to re-encounter beauty is to return to that most basic of artistic principles: light. I’ve found that very little warms the soul more than good lighting. Be it blinking and bright neon, soft daylight streaming through waving branches, or twinkling pin-pricks scattered amidst inky darkness, light is beautiful across all of its forms. And there’s hardly a better city, nor time of year, to find good lighting.

    The sunsets are earlier and more brilliantly colored. Holiday lights of every hue adorn store-fronts, slanted eaves, and tree trunks. Streets are emptier and night is longer. This last Pick of the Week for 2020 can’t be found in any gallery. No, this week, I recommend getting in your car, putting on some lively music, and driving until you find that special lighting that makes everything stop.

    From the thick veneer of shimmering lights that extends all the way to the horizon, visible from up high in the hills, to the dazzling street displays on Rodeo Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard. From the tall, shifting columns of light on skyscrapers downtown, to the festive and demure lights found all over every neighborhood. There isn’t a wrong answer, and no matter which lights you like, you’ll be happy you found them.

    Three tips to finding good lighting:

    1. Trust your instincts. If you left feels good, turn left; if you want to go right, turn right. Mix it up. Drive in circles. In squares. Hell, drive in triangles. All roads lead somewhere.
    2. Just keep moving. Try not to get bogged down in traffic or stuck on highways, and unless a place really strikes you (which is what we’re looking to happen anyways). No need to get out and gawk either; the magic of light hunting is in the moment of discovery.
    3. Look at the city with fresh eyes. Act like you’ve never been here before. Hit the big name streets and tourist havens. You’ll surprise yourself with how wonderful our city can be without all the cynicism.
  • Pick of the Week: Shiyuan Liu Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Shiyuan Liu
    Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

    Art, at its most essential level, attempts to fix in space the experiences that pass like sand in an hourglass. On the whole, reality is almost always more complex than can be accurately represented, and meaning is missed in the variety of expression. But Shiyuan Liu doesn’t want to miss a thing.

    Of all the ways to describe “For Jord,” at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, detailed rises to the forefront almost immediately. In any medium, Shiyuan extracts the most meaning she can out of each material and image. “For Jord” is about the ways in which we define things, and how those definitions change through time or culture.

    In her video work, For the Photos I Didn’t Take, For the Stories I Didn’t Read, Shiyuan re-contextualizes the Hans Christian Anderson story “The Little Match Seller,” using images found on the internet to represent each word in the story, displayed over wintery, holiday imagery and gentle music. She is expansive in representing the language of the story, using girls from a wide variety of socio-economic background and culture to represent “SHE” or “HER,” for example. In this way, Shiyuan is challenging the viewers own biases and automatic associations with certain words, images, or concepts.

    Her photo series as well, entitled For Jord and Almost Like Rebar, again encourage a broadening of perspective, illustrating the complex cultural programming that everyone has when it comes to theoretically universal imagery. The tessellated photographs and video stills of animals, plants, pianos, diced onions, etc. culminate in an overwhelming sensation not only that you alone could never hold all the answers, but that even the most basic definitions and associations can vary.

    This challenge extends even further with the most abstracted of Shiyuan’s work, her Cross Away series. These grids of pigments, kaleidoscopic and variegated yet masterful in their command over color theory and balance, close the conceptual loop of the show. While life may be infinitely complex and ever changing, in each moment we have the ability to stop, to look, and – if we’re lucky – to find something beautiful in the chaos.

    Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
    1010 N. Highland Ave
    Los Angeles, CA, 90038
    Appointment Only

  • Pick of the Week: Cosmo Whyte Anat Ebgi

    Pick of the Week: Cosmo Whyte
    Anat Ebgi

    Nothing is just one thing. This is a sentiment that many of us here in the United States, particularly those of us with privilege, are coming to terms with in an entirely new way. From recognizing that many workers who previously went unseen are in fact essential, to understanding that police officers do not always serve and protect, 2020 has taught us that multiplicities abound in this life. This lesson is reinforced in Cosmo Whyte’s show “When They Aren’t Looking We Gather by the River,” on view at Anat Ebgi.

    Cosmo Whyte’s work is primarily focused on Black experience, centered on the ongoing Black Lives Matter and related civil rights’ movements happening across the United States. As a Jamaican artist, Whyte is particularly interested in the complexities of Black identity and the Black diaspora.

    The first work you encounter hangs in the entrance to the viewing room as a beaded curtain. Entitled Wading in the Wake, a monochromatic image of men running into water and collapsing into its surf is printed upon the beads. At first glance, the image appears playful, but the reality is far from that initial impression. The image was lifted from a 1964 civil rights protest, in which Black activists swam illegally in white-only beaches and were subsequently attacked by violent segregationists.

    The works beyond the beaded curtain again contain multitudes. Mixing images of Jamaican Carnival and riotous protests, Whyte conflates celebration and struggle, indicating that despite pain and oppression, joy persists.

    The work which conflates the two most subtly is entitled Breadfruit, which shows a Black woman standing and smiling on a busy street, her face and body partially obscured by tropical branches – those of a Breadfruit tree. The breadfruit is an incredibly popular fruit in Jamaica, though it is not indigenous. Like 92% of Jamaica today, the ancestors of the contemporary breadfruit trees were brought over by European colonialists, uprooted from native soil and deposited into a foreign land. Nevertheless, these trees survived and thrived, created a rich cultural and culinary heritage, and serve as a powerful allegory in Whyte’s talented hands.

    Anat Ebgi
    2660 S La Cienegas Blvd.
    Los Angeles, CA, 90034
    Appointment Only

  • Pick of the Week: Joni Sternbach Von Lintel Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Joni Sternbach
    Von Lintel Gallery

    In 1839, the very first portrait photograph was captured of (and by) Robert Cornelius. It must have been a difficult – albeit likely humorous – process, as Cornelius set up his camera before hurriedly running to sit motionless in front of it, arms crossed and hair tousled. To go to such an effort demonstrates the essential connection between portraiture and photography. They’ve been attached to one another from the beginning. Moreover, portrait photography is more important and accessible to the public in ways Cornelius could never have imagined. But in Joni Sternbach’s new exhibition “Surfboard” at Von Lintel Gallery, we see the oldest techniques of photography implemented in the capturing of a different kind of portrait.

    As the title of the show suggests, “Surfboard” continues Sternbach’s ongoing “Surfland” series by capturing surfing culture through the use of tintype and silver-gelatin photographs. However, unlike her previous works, there are no actual surfers in the show at all. Instead, Sternbach photographs a wide array of boards, from weathered and beaten Hobies to modern fiberglass boards. The boards act as canvases themselves, showing not only the scars of their use but also elaborately painted designs like those in #2 Lightning Bolt and #5 Skeleton.

    While a surfboard in the abstract is a utilitarian item of sport and leisure, under Sternbach’s careful eye and expert photographic skills, the boards take on an entirely new quality. Sternbach refers to this quality as “totemic,” and they do inspire a certain reverence. Especially when clustered together on the beach, they become an altar to the ocean.

    And by giving these boards the dignity that such a laborious process as tin-type prints require, Sternbach glorifies the craft itself. One can take a moment to appreciate the gently sloping curves and precise symmetry of the boards, as well as the varied decorative elements. The care and talent with which these boards were created shines through in Sternbach’s work. It’s fitting that the only bit of an actual human being captured in Sternbach’s many portraits are two hands, clutching a board to hold it upright, as if to say “These crafted this.”

    Von Lintel Gallery
    1206 Maple Ave. #212
    Los Angeles, CA, 90015
    Appointment Only

  • Pick of the Week: Sculptures Kayne Griffin Corcoran

    Pick of the Week: Sculptures
    Kayne Griffin Corcoran

    Sculpture is a medium of art with infinite possibilities. Unbounded by canvas or wall, a sculpture is only defined by the space itself. Yet despite the limitless potential definitions, there is only ever one realized in the moment that the iron is cast, the glass blown, or the stone hewn. This decisive moment is what allows for a narrative to form, one which in masterful hands reflects the society that surrounds it. “Sculptures,” a group show currently running at Kayne Griffin Corcoran, illustrates this narrative by expertly linking works created over the last sixty years in beautiful conversation.

    To begin this decades-long story, “Sculptures” presents the artists who dove head-first into the literal material of their works. Nowhere in the show is this more clear than with Tatsuo Kawaguchi’s Iron of Iron and/or Tools; Plier (1975), where a pair of pliers are firmly embedded into an iron plate. Kawaguchi is highlighting the material from which tools are derived, and in doing so, questions the very conceptions of origin. In many ways, the artists collected in this show of his era – from the Arp-esque Ken Price to the minimalist Mary Corse – are all primarily concerned with the minor subversion of the expectations we place on material.

    But there is a far greater subversion explored in “Sculptures,” a task handled by the sculptors to come in the 21st century. With these artists, the questions brought about have far more to do with the actual conceptual definition of the objects they represent rather than the materials. Is a gate still a gate if it leads nowhere? Is a boat still a boat if you cover it in copper shingles? And when is a bench simply a bench (or a lamp simply a lamp), and not a piece of art?

    These works engender a distrustfulness not uncommon in contemporary society, an unwillingness to take anything presented earnestly at face value. The later works are pessimistic counterparts to the sincere explorations of material with which they are paired. And it is vital to keep these two seemingly disparate ideas in mind at the same moment. We must be equally dedicated in our investigation of our origins as we are concerned with subverting the expectations set by them. To forget where we came from is to forget why we must be distrustful.

    Kayne Griffin Corcoran
    1201 SOUTH LA BREA AVENUE
    Los Angeles, CA, 90019
    Appointment Only

  • Pick of the Week: Maren Karlson In Lieu

    Pick of the Week: Maren Karlson
    In Lieu

    It’s hard to pin down joyfulness. It’s a transient emotion that is readily batted away by the complexities and pains of everyday life. One can almost forget what it feels like. Luckily, one of the crucial functions of art is to remind us all that joy does exist. This is not to say that all art is joyful; in fact, most art is decidedly not. For one reason or another, we as a society have deemed it necessary for art to make a statement if it is to be taken seriously. Fine art – a term I use unwillingly – must do away with joyfulness if it is ever to do away with earnestness, which is the antithesis of contemporary art. And yet, Maren Karlson defies this golden rule in her new show, “Petal’s Path,” on view at In Lieu.

    Karlson’s works are incredibly passionate. They are ethereal landscapes and still-lifes which take the natural world and transpose it onto small canvases. Viriditas, one of the larger pieces, catches the eye with its sharp bisection of blue and white halves and its swirling, intersecting areas of earthy green. Within the small, often frame-within-frame drawings, Karlson summons magical realms of vibrant color and natural themes.

    Many of Karlson’s works abstractedly draw on the forms of moths and butterflies, such as Pupa’s Path, relying on their native symmetry to engage with the viewer. One is drawn into their flowing wings and nebulous bodies, circling around and around the abstracted portraits of the delicate creatures. They are simplistic at first glance – almost childlike – but the subtle gradations of color and careful mirroring underscore Karlson’s  capable exhibition of joy.

    Even the materials which Karlson uses emphasize this innocent, earnest aesthetic. The colored pencil lines, bumpy and tactile on the rough canvas, evoke a simpler time in one’s own life. It’s a body of work that doesn’t have ulterior motives or hidden messages, and simultaneously proves great art doesn’t need them. “Petal’s Path” shows us intimate glimpses of an uncomplicated, unironic, and unserious world of soft, verdant planes of green and swirling eddies of blue and violet.

    In Lieu
    5426 Monte Vista St.
    Los Angeles, CA, 90042
    Appointment Only

  • Pick of the Week: Peter Alexander Cirrus Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Peter Alexander
    Cirrus Gallery

    It’s not that difficult to be contemporary. Be it through art, or writing, or simply conversation, we’re almost always discussing what’s right in front of us. It’s another thing all together to create something which takes on an entirely new meaning decades after fabrication. This is the power of Peter Alexander’s exhibition “Light in Place,” on view now at the Cirrus Gallery.

    This survey of Alexander’s works – mostly lithographs and paintings, created in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s – illustrates some of the finer physical qualities of light. Alexander uses a wide variety of materials like velvet, glitter, and Kromekote paper to transform not only the light within the painting but the light of the space itself into a tactile experience. His older paintings, such as The Other One and Huh?, are especially engaged with this physicalizing work.

    From the 1980s onwards, Alexander’s work becomes almost entirely lithographic as his pursuit of understanding and capturing light becomes more direct. Alexander himself is quoted as being inspired by the nature of Los Angeles and Southern California in particular. There are a wide variety of subjects: stunning bursts of light and color, monochromatic storm clouds breaking over the ocean, and cityscapes viewed from high above.

    But what exists throughout all of Alexander’s works is a deep sense of unease. The vibrant sunsets appear as violent and chaotic explosions. The tilted cityscapes feel unbalanced and restless. The storm clouds, though breaking, are dark and threatening. Overall, Alexander’s vision of the beautiful vistas which inspired him are frightening, almost dystopic.

    I wondered in my unease whether this feeling was coming from the art or from our current era. The sunsets reminded me of the images of the wildfires that were blanketing California in smoke. The lights of a city at night reminded me of the on-going protests for human rights and justice in Los Angeles. The work was pertinent to right now, and while that pertinence disquieted me, it is a testament to Alexander’s ability as an artist to be strike that mark from thirty years in the past.

    Cirrus Gallery
    2011 S. Santa Fe Ave
    Los Angeles, CA 90021
    Show runs through Nov. 14th
    Appointment Only—No Walk-Ins

  • Pick of the Week: Wanda Koop & Michelle Rawlings Night Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Wanda Koop & Michelle Rawlings
    Night Gallery

    The two shows currently on view at the Night Gallery – Wanda Koop’s “Heartbeat Bots” and Michelle Rawlings’ “In the Garden” – represent opposite ends of the spectrum of contemporary art.

    The larger show, “Heartbeat Bots,” introduces us to a fantastically vibrant and massive vision of the future. There are sweeping neon landscapes with a verticality heightened by the her trademark drips (or tears, as she calls them.) And in her portraits, Koop interrogates a basic understanding of humanity by confronting the viewer with deeply emotional robots. There is an uncanniness in viewing a painting of a cyborg which looks surprised or smug, bored or content. But the emotional quality of Koop’s work is, in the end, undeniable. Koop shows to us a potential vision of the future, rich in abstract emotional depth and vibrant color.

    By contrast, Rawlings’ paintings do not have monumental scale, vibrant colors, or even a shred of abstraction. Rawlings uses an impressionistic style to render models lifted from photos from Virginia Viard’s Spring 2020 show in Paris as though they were hanging in the Salons of late 19th century Paris. Rawlings work is intimately small, with some of the accompanying instillation details no bigger than a postage stamp.

    And since her work is so small, it draws the viewer in close to parse through the many fine details. I found myself going over every expertly rendered thread of the high-fashion clothing and trying (without success) to place an emotion – any emotion – onto the faces of the models themselves. The more I looked, the further away I was from elucidating any concrete sensation from the works.

    But of course, that’s exactly the point of models on runways; they are paid to showcase the fashion, not emotion. They are the proverbial canvas upon which designers exhibit their work. And how are we to analyze a canvas upon a canvas? We don’t. All we can do then is just appreciate the work for what it is, and it is beautiful. It’s a pleasure to simply exist in the space that Rawlings’ works inhabit and to uncover the many treasures within.

    Night Gallery
    2276 E. 16th Street
    Los Angeles, CA 90021
    Show runs through Nov. 14th
    Appointment Only—No Walk-Ins

  • Pick of the Week: Amir H. Fallah Shulamit Nazarian

    Pick of the Week: Amir H. Fallah
    Shulamit Nazarian

    There are many stories that we have told ourselves in order to make our world make sense. These modern myths range from Columbus’ “discovery” of this continent to the very idea of the American Dream. These stories are taught to us from birth, intrinsically attached to the way we teach and learn our history—and are some of our greatest cultural exports. And it’s these lessons that are explored in Amir H. Fallah’s “Remember My Child…”.

    Fallah, who has previously worked in veiled portraiture, tosses aside the model and instead creates a series of patchwork paintings, featuring everything from figures taken straight out of Islamic miniatures to images lifted from historical records and anatomy books. There is Christopher Columbus meeting Native Americans and being crushed by a globe, diagrams of the nervous system, and maps of the solar system. We see a chaotic confluence of patterns, designs, signs and symbols; Persian rugs, Art Deco icons and comic characters all adorn the paneled paintings.

    In fact, Fallah drew much of his inspiration from his own childhood viewing America from afar while living in Iran, his formative years spent here in the U.S., as well as his son’s view of the world and interests. The hodgepodge of imagery showcases the mixing of two cultures, two identities. Fallah presents this duality in his work as it exists within himself as an individual between worlds.

    And while many of his works reside in the allegorical—and can be picked apart as metaphors for immigrant life in the western world or for the ways in which identities can be muddled and unclear—his paintings are at their core understandable. There are few unfamiliar symbols, and the paintings are readable and clear. The unifying thread between all his works is the use of textual elements to form moralistic lessons; my personal favorite is one that strikes me as a lesson for our times: “Sentiment without action, is the ruin of the soul.”

    Shulamit Nazarian
    616 N La Brea Avenue
    Los Angeles, CA 90036
    Show runs through Oct 31st
    Appointment Only—No Walk-Ins

  • Pick of the Week: Ferrari Sheppard Wilding Cran Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Ferrari Sheppard
    Wilding Cran Gallery

    I’ve always had a deep love for art that dripped with symbolism. Art that encodes stories within their frame or form, all while being aesthetically appealing, draws you into a dialogue with the artist and your fellow viewer. It’s a bit like an inside joke; if you know, you know—and it certainly feels good to know.

    Ferrari Sheppard’s new show “Heroines of Innocence” at Wilding Cran draws you into a world steeped in reverential references. With a style that floats somewhere between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Willem de Kooning (perhaps with a bit of Cy Twombly thrown in), Sheppard creates work that are entirely his own. His pieces possess a certain freedom in their unhemmed, charcoal lines that compose the anonymized Black women and girls.

    But unlike other anonymized subjects, such as Ramiro Gomez’s essential workers, their anonymity is not to generalize them, but to guard them. The figures in Sheppard’s paintings are kept apart from this world through their anonymity. Kept apart from this world which has systematically oppressed people of color—Black women in particular. Moreover, by omitting any recognizable features, Sheppard invites us to inspect the figures simply as they exist.

    Bond (2020), an intimate portrait of a mother embracing her child, is particularly eye-catching. The mother, a rough confluence of charcoal and acrylic, is almost entirely obscured by the golden child sitting on her lap. This piece has a strong religious overtone, with the use of gold leaf to highlight the “Radiant Child” metaphor. But with its back turned to us, it’s shown that the baby is a precious gem that does not belong to us and, moreover, is unconcerned with our presence.

    Gold leaf is used in the show to fantastic ends, adding a religious iconographical effect throughout many of the pieces. Scribes (Study II) (2020), for example, used a large sheet of unbroken gold leaf to frame the two central children sharing a book, accentuating them and catching the light brilliantly.

    Heroines of Innocence is available to be revered at Wilding Cran Gallery until October 31st.

    Wilding Cran Gallery
    1700 S Santa Fe Ave #460
    Los Angeles, CA 90021
    Show runs through Oct 31st
    Appointment Only — No Walk-Ins

  • Pick of the Week: Heather Day Diane Rosenstein Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Heather Day
    Diane Rosenstein Gallery

    You never really know which exhibition is going to make you cry. I certainly didn’t expect it to happen at Heather Day’s “Ricochet” at the Diane Rosenstein Gallery. None of the work was particularly sad and I actually had low expectations based on what I saw online. I remember I had even bemoaned to my editor; would this show just be another contemporary artist pining after AbEx?

    Yet from The Persistence of Memory to Fever Dream, I could tell that Day was not pining after anything. Instead, she had cracked open the very center of her mind and laid it out on canvas for us all to see. Her works are free and expressive, with large fields of flooded pigment acting as the backdrop for floating ribbons of paint. They are chaotic and improvisational reflections of her inner world—her “mind maps,” as Day calls them.

    And like any good map, they are also well-planned. Every stroke of paint falls just so, every flood of pigment only extends so far. These discrete elements work in harmony like dancers in perfect choreography; responding to one another, forming and disintegrating, flowing around each and every line. 

    These two poles of Day’s work—deliberate planning and improvisational chaos—do not necessarily explain my strong emotional reaction to her work. I’ve had a lot of difficulty putting my reaction into words, but I can share these few connections I forged in the hope that you’ll forge them too. 

    Day’s paintings show the entire spectrum of universal experience. They are fetuses forming in the womb; stars collapsing in on themselves. They are embryonic, and they are nebulous. I cried while walking through “Ricochet” because I was looking at art which so strongly reminded me of the beautiful, mystical and sometimes terrifying knowledge that I am alive.

    I can’t promise you’ll have the same experience as me, nor can I promise that you won’t cry, but I can promise you that “Ricochet” will still be rebounding in your mind for days and days.

    Diane Rosenstein Gallery
    831 N. Highland Avenue
    Los Angeles, CA 90038
    Show runs through Oct 24th
    Appointment Only — No Walk-Ins

  • Pick of the Week: Duke Riley Charlie James Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Duke Riley
    Charlie James Gallery

    It is easier than it has ever been to feel distant, from one another and from the world at large. I was seeking to traverse that distance when I visited the Charlie James Gallery, and I found the path through Duke Riley’s new works in “Far Away.”

    In Riley’s glittering seashell mosaics and delicate inked prints, the artist constructs the artifacts of a world distantly removed from our dystopic surroundings. His tattoo-style ink drawings depict fighting cocks, carrier pigeons, and fantastical ocean scenes, complete with crashing waves, teetering towers and finely-detailed, lithographic hedonism.

    The most impactful pieces were the two mosaics, Far Away and I’ve Been Using the Same Razor Since 1947. The former, a shell mosaic depicting a bottle lost in the surf, works in tandem with the latter, a rat adrift in a tin can, to create a synchronous feeling throughout the space. Combined with the choice of mosaic as a medium, the show is more a historical review of imagined, crumbling islands than a contemporary art exhibition. This is not to say that Riley’s works lack perspective, as they are littered with the symbols of our present moment – some more obvious than others. In the large painting Everybody Knows, one can find Laika, the Soviet space dog, flying alongside a bald eagle clutching an ICBM, soaring high above McDonalds bags, nuclear waste, and skulls wearing MAGA caps floating below.

    Accompanying Riley’s collection is a group show of Californian artists Sadie Barnette, Shizu Saldamando, and Ramiro Gomez. Saldamando summons fascinating, finely-rendered portraits onto large wood panels, while Barnette has blown up archival prints of peaceful, domestic life for Black Americans onto monumental scale. Gomez, a highlight in the group show, showcases in acrylic on cardboard the anonymized lives of Los Angeles’ under-appreciated laborers. The work of the group show is timely and prescient, as this year continues to emphasize the importance of essential workers, representation of the Black American experience and forging meaningful, thoughtful connections.

    Charlie James Gallery
    969 Chung King Rd
    Los Angeles, CA 90012
    Show runs through Oct 17th
    Appointment Only — No Walk-Ins

  • Pick of the Week: Brian Atchley Matter Studio Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Brian Atchley
    Matter Studio Gallery

    Exiting the 110 degree heat at the end of a brutal Los Angeles summer and entering into Matter Studio Gallery to view Brian Atchley’s Being Matter, one name immediately jumped to mind: Robert Mapplethorpe. And for those who visit this show who are familiar with Mapplethorpe, I’m sure he’ll come to mind as well. The immediate comparison between Atchley and Mapplethorpe is an easy step to take, and is a comparison that Atchley welcomed – to my surprise. While I have neither the authority nor desire to attempt to unpack the complex history of Mapplethorpe’s work, it’s suffice to say that he is controversial across the board. Conservatives found him offensively explicit, and many others were quick to point out the fetishization of Black men as deeply problematic (See: Notes on the Margin of the Black Book by Glenn Ligon for a far more informed investigation.)

    But there is a critical difference between Mapplethorpe and Atchley: Atchley is a painter, and a very good one. The ultra-realistic portraits do not objectify or overly-sexualize their subjects like Mapplethorpe’s portraits; in fact, the sheer amount of care and attention paid to the tiniest detail of these paintings demonstrates an overwhelmingly empathetic eye, as opposed to Mapplethorpe’s depersonalized photography. And while the black-and-white compositions with their large range of values and emphasis on light evoke Mapplethorpe, the emphasis is more on Atchley’s technical ability than the subject matter. Atchley wants us to focus on the light itself, not whatever the light is hitting.

    Though the monochrome portraits are technically brilliant, my favorite works were his “Suspension” series, which is his most recent series of works. Here, we see a departure from the grounded, Mapplethorpe-esque portraiture. These three works – Jackson, Celena, and Diego – represent an evolution for Atchley. He is no longer singularly focused on light, but also explores color, movement, tension – all while preserving the fine detail and focus on musculature that can be found throughout his work.

    Matter Studio Gallery
    5080 W Pico Blvd
    Los Angeles, CA 90019
    Show runs through Oct 11th
    Appointment Only — No Walk-Ins

  • Curator Ceci Moss on ‘Take Care’ at Gas Gallery

    Curator Ceci Moss on ‘Take Care’ at Gas Gallery

    If a 1993 Chevrolet P30 step van found on Craigslist is not at the top of your gallery rounds list, think again. Gas Gallery, a mobile art space founded by curator Ceci Moss, has set up shop outside Night Gallery, The Pit, and most recently, BBQLA. Ceci found the van listed by someone in Austin who had also used it as a roaming gallery, and opened it to the LA art world in September 2017.

    Ceci’s impressive curatorial background comes from institutions like New Museum and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but with Gas, she has found curatorial freedom perhaps not available at conventional galleries. Gas’ first exhibition, Fuck the Patriarchy, asked artists to consider what refusal might look like under the new political regime, while the following group show, Liquid Love, included work from an unexpected mix of poets, writers, curators, and researchers.

    I talked with Ceci about Gas’ latest group exhibition, Take Care, the name of which comes from a common valediction, which is both an expression of familiarity and an instruction of caution. take care is an appropriately complex exhibition that considers an expansive array of possibilities for care and art.

    Why a truck?​ It feels quintessentially LA to me, with mobility as response to landscape.

    That’s a great question. The mission statement describes Gas as “a mobile, autonomous, experimental and networked platform for contemporary art.” The shows happen not only in the truck gallery, but also online. The notion of “mobility” extends in many directions; allowing a great degree of flexibility and versatility, lower overhead overall (so the project is more sustainable) and accessibility to more audiences, both online and off. I’m interested in using every avenue as a possible exhibition space – the gallery’s website, all corners of the physical truck from the front driver’s seat to my own to body, to an engagement with the terrain of Los Angeles.

    Gas Gallery

    Gas seems like an independent curator’s dream. Do you see it as some kind of public critique of how — and where — we institutionally view art?

    I feel quite lucky to have worked for incredibly forward thinking and progressive institutions such as Rhizome, the New Museum and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. From this training, I was able to glean inspiration for Gas in terms of what arts organizations can and should be. I’ve also spent most of my lifetime in DIY and artist run spaces, and I revere the vibrant, urgent experiences that can happen within those contexts. As a curator, I think it’s essential to consider, on a very basic level, what kind of ideal space I want to help usher into the world. For me, the ideal space is the dance floor, the basement show, the performance in someone’s backyard. I want to realize these non-hierarchical shared experiences of belonging and human connection that can sometimes only occur through art. I want more of these moments to exist, which I see as a feminist ambition. I’m hoping, even in the smallest of ways, that I’m moving towards that with this project. 

    Hayley Barker, Oh heal me pls!, 2018 (Detail)

    Gas has done three thematic group shows at this point, Fuck the Patriarchy, Liquid Love, and now Take Care. I imagine that curating a group show can be a kind of system of care, managing the nuances of each body of work and how they interact with one another. Did you experience it this way? 

    You’re right in that there’s certainly quite a bit of thought that goes into these exhibitions. That’s one of the reasons why I only organize three exhibitions a year – Spring, Summer, Fall – because I want the work to be about the shows, and not some sort of marathon where we’re turning over exhibitions left and right, like many spaces do, commercial or non-commercial. The point is to center the artists, the ideas, and the art. That takes time. Also, Gas as an exhibition space is open and expansive, so there’s room and opportunity for artists to really play and experiment. I find that so rewarding. For instance, in Liquid Love, Los Angeles artist Olivia Mole produced a new piece Dud Ankress that existed as a performance at the opening, an installation in the front driving cabin open over the exhibition run, a dedicated instagram account, and a script printed in the zine publication that we produce for each show.

    I’m also struck by how these shows seem to function as questions: In Fuck the Patriarchy, it’ was ‘what does refusal look like?’ In Take Care, it’s what self care looks like, which is a potent space to explore since it’s been co-opted by consumer culture and used flippantly.

    I hope that the pedagogical threads within the exhibitions, which you picked up on, encourage multi-layered and open conversations about these important issues, whether it’s sustaining unresolved hope under Trump as a form of refusal in Fuck the Patriarchy or a consideration of the continued radical possibility of “self-care” in take care, when it’s been so widely co-opted as you describe. In its best form, I hope there’s a lateral, crisscross of exchange with each show. Meaning, lots of one on one conversations with the visitors (a welcome result of the truck’s small space), the use of the tumblr as a reading list (which often includes articles shared by exhibiting artists from their research), the zines published with every exhibition (which feature interviews with prominent scholars and artists projects), etc. It’s about sparking a conversation, and giving it room to develop in all these different directions.

    I thought of this tweet I saw recently from Ayesha Siddiqui:

    It hit the nail on the head for me, and I thought about how with this show, the idea of self-care seems socially expansive, rather than limited to this narrow, self-congratulatory, consumeristic sense.

    For take care, specifically, like many others I saw the hashtag #selfcare proliferate in recent years, particularly after the 2016 election. Like the quote you mention, it seems there was a lack of awareness regarding the history of this terminology within social justice movements, while it was swiftly swept up to brand and sell products. At the same time, we inhabit a biopolitical reality where, due to technological advancement, our habits and behavior are thoroughly quantified by tracking and surveillance. The show reflects on this current reality for “self care” given the many tensions that surround the topic, while pointing towards its activist history and imagining speculative futures.

    How does take care offer conceptions of care that go against this proliferation?

    In terms of present practices of self-care, artist Amanda Vincelli explores normalizing conceptions of health in her work REGIMEN (2015-2017). For the project, Vincelli surveyed the medicinal regimens of one hundred women ages 21-35 in New York, London, Amsterdam, Montreal and Los Angeles. She took portraits of the participants, their medications (if applicable), and recorded their written and oral testimonies. Visitors to the exhibition can listen to these stories while seated on a custom cushion in the truck, or go to the website regimen.online (featured on gas.gallery) that collects all the documentation related to the project.

    Other works pull from feminist and anticapitalist alternative healing and spiritual practices that have historical roots in social justice movements. For example, the exhibit features a new large scale drawing Oh heal me pls! by Hayley Barker, whose work is informed by her years of participation in feminist neo-pagan circles. A few works are oriented towards the near future, such as a suite of new commissions by Ian James. Taking the form of a car sunshade, a photo-sculpture and a car air freshener (which is available for purchase), the project serves as a mini-campaign obliquely advertising imaginary, futuristic products. 

    As you said “take care” is an expression that implies a familiarity, but it’s a warning of caution. It reminds me of Sophie Calle’s ‘Take Care of Yourself,’ named after the last line of a breakup email. Calle uses it as both an ironic command and a sincerely encouraging one.

    Wonderful reference! I’m a fan of Sophie Calle. Yes, I hope the title signals and balances these two sides of self-care, where we continue the community and survival oriented aspects of “self-care” present in its activist history, while also remaining cautiously aware of our present environment, which is so thoroughly informed by capitalism. 

    What’s next for Gas?

    I’m developing a number of shows simultaneously right now. The next exhibition, for Fall 2018, is a group exhibition exploring the infrastructures for oil production around Los Angeles. I view the truck itself, which is a converted delivery truck, as a product of oil dependent infrastructures. For the exhibition, we would park at active and former oil extraction sites, which are ubiquitous throughout the landscape of Los Angeles. I’m hoping to use the show to raise awareness about the continuing hold of the oil industry, and to make its infrastructures – which defines so much of Los Angeles’s history and development – more visible through sculpture, sound, painting, and a series of site specific performances.

    take care runs through July 20 at Gas Gallery, parked at BBQLA from noon-6 p.m. on Saturdays. Other times and locations will be announced on Gas’ Twitter page.

  • SF Art Show

    SF Art Show

    Last weekend we found ourselves in San Francisco, trading in the ungodly heat of an LA summer for Carl (the fog) and 50 degrees. On Saturday night we were tipped off by friends about a must see art opening at the soon to close Flax Art Store – the likes of which was promoted through a few nondescript Instagram posts from The Curator’s Project and the Last Cat Gallery so we were unsure of what we were showing up for exactly. The large exhibition named SF Art Show (very creative) ended up bringing together a group of bay area artists to commemorate everyone who has pretty much ever supported Flax…ever. The list is long. So long I’m going to leave it for you at the end

    We arrived at Flax around 6pm to a small crowd of SF “scenesters” smoking out front.  We entered through the half empty store front where sad, heavily discounted notebooks and display cases were still for sale. After a brief moment of getting distracted by 110% off markers we made our way back to the actual show. The space opened up into a grand warehouse with nothing but paintings, murals, graffiti, site-specific installations, fun looking people and free PBR (score). Basically, our college art school wet dream.

    The vibe was extremely laid back and approachable, so much so that it was fair to say there was enough weed, skateboards, and dogs present to go around twice. We struck up conversation with a couple who had stopped by to bid Flax farewell. The SF Giants hat wearing man reminisced about how he used to come to Flax as a teen in the 80s to buy Plexi for his car’s subwoofers.  A different couple who had helped install some of the work talked to us about how the show came together on a whim, very last minute, and how cool it was to see artists rally in respect for such an iconic business. Not that SF is ever really bad at getting people to rally together for support or say a naked bike ride or two. Still, it was clear that this creative community really shows up when it matters.

    Soon our conversations faded as skateboarding legend Tommy Guerrero took the stage with his band surrounded by Michael Jang’s larger than life portraits of a news anchor open call. We ended the night sipping our beers as we watched a woman who was seemingly tripping on acid to the sounds of Tommy’s band, give absolutely zero fucks.  We commiserated with friends one last time about the tragedy in seeing this space turned into more six figure condos and joined them in taking pride in the best going away party an art store could hope for.  

    And now for your list of featured galleries, curators and artists in the SF Art Show:

    Curators Project
    Anthony Torrano 
    Becca Levine 
    Carmen McNall 
    Chad Hasegawa 
    Erlin Geffrard 
    Jan Wayne Swayze 
    MKUE 
    Michael Jang 
    PEZ 
    River St. James 

    The Growlery
    Anna Landa 
    Bud Snow 
    Joe Brook 
    Marcos Ramirez 
    Michael Kershnar 
    Michael Koehle 
    Piper 
    Sofie Ramos

    The Last Cat
    Aaron Jupin 
    Albert Reyes 
    Bags43 
    Bigfoot 
    Derek James Marshall 
    Jenny Sharaf 
    Matthew Bajda 
    Mildred 
    Naoki Onodera 
    Pablo De Pinho 
    Pacolli 
    Ryan De La Hoz 
    Tim Diet 
    Yuka Ezoe 
    Zachary Sweet  

    Satellite of Love
    Andy Vogt 
    Brian Perrin 
    Randy Colosky 
    Sarah Smith 
    Windy Chien   

    Flax art & design
    Crystal Gonzalez 
    Joni Marie Theodorsen 
    Kayli Harig 
    Keith D Stanley 
    Stan Chan 
    Willie Sarate