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Tag: oil painting
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PICK OF THE WEEK: Augustina Wang
Sow & TailorAugustina Wang’s fantastical world evokes a style of magical realism that is uniquely hers, embracing the immersive aspects of fantasy that function as a means of escapism, allowing more playful, nuanced, and expansive notions of identity to flourish. The femmes that populate Wang’s fantasyland include a cast of characters that present as alter egos, avatars, archetypes, proxies, fantasies, monsters, heroes, and anti-heroes—a visualization of the artist’s multitudes—the nuanced and numerous selves that cohabitate in one body. Beautifully rendered in oil and pastel, the protagonists that occupy Wang’s imaginative universe are full of dualities; they are emotive warriors—seductive and guarded, naked and sheathed, coy and commanding—wearing suits of armor adorned with hearts and sprigs of pink baby’s breath, delicate and muscular forces to be reckoned with.
While Wang’s fantasies and fictions operate, in part, as a form of escapism—seeking relief from the confines and pressures of the everyday—her work is also firmly planted in reality, providing a spectacular lens to communicate the elusive and abstract forces of power that loom large in the real world, helping us to untangle the power dynamics that animate and evade our daily lives and encounters, embedded in our identities, relationships, experiences, and traumas. To make sense of these gargantuan forces, the kind of imaginative thinking and playful expression of self that Wang presents feels so much more than just escapism; it feels crucial. Imaginative thinking engenders imaginative alternatives—alternatives that are critical to our mutual flourishing and evolution, both as individuals and as cohabitants on Earth.
Sow & Tailor
3027 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90007
On view through May 13, 2023 -
GALLERY ROUNDS: Gary Brewer
Wonzimer GalleryImmersive and sensual, the richly floral images of Gary Brewer’s “Voluptuous Charm of the Monumental Image” is a kaleidoscope of color and form.
These are works bursting with life, subtly O’Keefe-like—though still uniquely Brewer—evoking the mysteries of nature, the cosmos and the female body with a gentle yet powerful sensuality. In both paintings and lusciously glazed sculptural form, the artist’s use of color draws the viewer in, while his graceful use of line and shape compel deeper investigation. There is an intricacy both in his subjects and in his work, creating the sense that each image is alive, and “growing.”
In the large-scale oil work The Heart of the Heart, violet and lavender leap from the canvas, taking us to the most intimate part of this interstellar orchid. In a smaller watercolor painting, Shimmering Origins, gold, taupe and green predominate an intense interior orchid view. With a natural floral shape that evokes eroticism, each of Brewer’s extreme orchid close-ups are astonishingly personal. The oil piece Mystic Floral adds drops of water to these taken-from-life works, creating small translucent orbs floating outward from sensitive petals. In each of these and many other paintings, the viewer experiences the sense of being allowed a special privilege, seeing the heart of these floral beings.
Gary Brewer, Earth Sea Memory, 2022. Courtesy of Wonzimer Gallery. Some of the watercolor works are less intensely intimate in scale. In Andalusian Sea, Brewer creates less microscopic views of his lustrous orchids, while sea anemones float by branches of coral. The deep pink to purple background offers a florid, liquid universe, one both rooted in our world and residing in another entirely.
While Brewer’s paintings are vividly floral in form, the ceramic sculptures resemble many natural life forms at once: parts of flowers, intimate explorations of pods and seeds ready to sprout, and mysterious sea creatures. In Morphic Resonance, a lapis-lazuli blue is topped with a lush spill of white, as if snow or sea foam dusted this flora. Lyrical Geology is almost animal-like in form, recalling a sea horse, snail, or perhaps an interplanetary horse’s head. Earth Sea Memory is clearly a work taken from the sea, coral-like in its deep gem blue and soft salmon encrusted with patterned white.
Whether created in oil or watercolor or in ceramic, Brewer’s work here is hypnotically lovely.
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PICK OF THE WEEK: Victoria Gitman
François GhebalyA series of precious objects rendered in oil paint requires your intimate proximity. Tiny tactile paintings of levitating furs, beaded coin purses, costume jewelry and sequin fabrics depict trompe-l’oeil images of feminine objects commonly associated with glam, flamboyance, and the body. Gazing at these luscious surfaces, your eyes cannot help but indulge in the pleasure of looking, noticing the kink of every hair and the flicker of each bead.
Victoria Gitman’s exhibition “Everything is Surface” at François Ghebaly presents a survey of the Argentinian artist’s twenty-year career. Gitman’s paintings are fetishistic artifacts; the sensual and vibrational quality of each painting is achieved over the course of several months. Sourcing materials from flea markets and online shops, Gitman selects objects based on how they resonate with her personally–a collective trace of the artist’s own subjectivity. In her essay “Notes on Camp,” Susan Sontag describes the essence of camp as “esoteric–something of a private code, a badge of identity even.” The alluring and allusive quality of Gitman’s work inspires a playful desire.
Another series of paintings titled “A Beauty” features women rendered by male artists in art history, punctuating the walls as you enter and move into the second gallery. Here, Gitman offers critical art historical commentary on gendered gaze and feminine perspectives in painting (or the lack thereof). Gitman’s feminine “camp sensibility” undermines macho-modernist ideologies. The artist reminds us that feminine pleasure is a form of freedom and joy.
François Ghebaly
2245 E Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90021
On view through May 7, 2022
