limina, lumina,,. October 19 – November 23, 2024. 

Lindsey Harald-Wong, Narong Tintamusik, Catherine Menard, Daniel Schubert, October Anderson, Mayolo Figueroa, Kento Saisho. Group exhibition. 4478.

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 19, 6pm - 9pm.
_ _

Limina, plural of ‘limen,’ a crossing of a limit—a threshold of a crossing. At least doubled: a multiplied borderland, a multiple border….
	
A word from anatomy: lumina, (plural of ‘lumen’): “the central cavity of a tubular or other hollow structure in an organism or cell.” From the late-19th century: from Latin, literally ‘opening.’ Or, a word from physics, from Latin, ‘light.’ So a hollow, a light, or an opening. But not an absence—but maybe a pathway or passage. A connection between different parts or places (of a body). A medium: a movement between limits, between thresholds, between limina,
	
a word from psychology: limina, (plural of ‘limen’): “a threshold below which a stimulus is not perceived or is not distinguished from another.” From mid-17th century: from Latin, ‘threshold.’ A repeat horizon, a litmus test.

An anatomy, a psychology, a physicality(, and a test): some opposed limits of (the study of) a body and its circulations or disturbances. Interstitial, in-between forms whose lacks form the limits of the other. A non-orientable tubular twisting, whirling, whorling, spiraling of one along the lacks and limits another, until it becomes the next one. Annihilated, illuminated. Se elimina, se ilumina. A heteroglossia (spoken like a spell). 
	(“ limina, lumina,,”)
				 
A complex communication, between
	limina, 								                lumina,,

….


Already at the threshold of this exhibition is the place of an artwork (and the gallery itself) as a record, cipher, seam, or portal between op/positions of a body: between inside and outside, subject and object, self and other, surface and void, sense and nonsense, delirium and lucidity, hunger and satiation, life and death, night and day, (past,) present and future…. But these continual pairings tend to be sleepy, soporific sequences (recurring like dog bites (bad) dreams) that rest on inherited dualities, hypnotic habits, and regulated orders. On alreadies and over-and-overs.
	
This is probably at least part of the reason why, in (global) contemporary contexts of cultural (art)work, social practices, and academic research, a between often appears in the place of a disinheritance or disidentification—a break—with conventional, traditional, or already-operational positions (or professions): inter-disciplinary, inter-sectionality, cross-cultural, trans-corporeality…. (Even the “post-,” “non-,” and “multi-” versions suggest something of a betweenness since they all still function to displace a practice beyond prior positions or singular borders.) Historically, habitually, these breaks (or bridges?) have produced hopefully critical perspectives and practices organized around hybrid identities and split positions, a kind of borderlands realized through a re-focusing on relations and complex connections between bodies staked at their limits and the linguistic, social, political, and economic systems they inhabit. Though, of course, turns of phrase won’t necessarily pull us from the rift they are pointing-to. (Especially when they remain locked-into the same master dialect(ic) of binary structures.) But maybe this work is symptomatic of a between as a power forming in the place of a resistance or insurgency, of a place on the verge of transformation or transition—of somewhere that refuses to stay-still. Somewhere elsewhere and otherwise. Something different and distant (while remaining…  
							…right at the center, nearby).
	
Sometime between altæred states and changes of phase. Something at its limits, on the brink. A passing or passage. (An eclipse.) An interval between or beyond event horizons: at the edge of energy and information (or apparitions). A hole with its brim as the abyss.
	Something liminal, luminal. Some limina, lumina,,

Remaining at the limen, at the perforated threshold of these precarious, shifting states, how might we work with relations between more than one border, more than one (being-in-a-) body, multiple divisions and disorientations, more than one inside or outside (all while remaining between)….?
	
Or, what would it be to account for a betweenness without only defining its equalized limits, without reducing asymmetrical doubles and (two)folds to the symmetry of binaries and dichotomies? (After all, there’s always already a 3 in a 2: a third part that parts, partitions.) Or, better yet, what would it be to work with both at the same time, with its limits (its lines) and its lacks? What would it be to work with betweenness as this interstitial, primordial process of producing distance and difference without reducing it to a null, blinking instant of forgetting? (And without reducing it to some kind of mystical fluid—without falling with its vertigo.) To work with a betweenness as a medium and material—a substrate or substance—as well as a moment and a movement.	
	
Initially (and ultimately), the exhibition keeps asking about the status of a between as a paradoxical place that structures a variety of relations: physical, psychical, structural, social, (al)chemical, political, spatial, temporal, historical.... Basically, what does it mean for something or someone to be “between” (rather than decidedly occurring on any particular ‘side’)? Where is between? What takes-place in-between (and what’s out-between)?

Built with works that gather as they form, as they cross, the exhibition installs these questions and problems of betweenness by working-through the uniquely ranging im/materialities and bodies of each piece and their interrelations with others. While most of the artists are based here in Los Angeles, there are two artists from elsewhere: Harald-Wong is based in Malaysia, and Tintamusik is based in Texas. So, on a certain level this question of borders, crossings, customs, and distances is a practical dimension of the works’ realities and the exhibition’s position between heres and theres. And, in general, the pieces tend toward a performance of liminal, luminal—interstitial—states along every dimension of their production: materially, conceptually, technically…. 
	
Ranging between sculptural metalwork, terrestrial painting, frenetic drawing, resinous condensations (or plasticky indigestions), suspended (Thai) foods, nighttime photography, and clairvoyant durational (video and sound) work, the array of media supplies variable entryways to the paths of the exhibition (both within and beyond the scope addressed by this text—there’s always some light that escapes!). Folding onto themselves, many of the materials are reflective of their techniques and (conceptual) processes (and vice-versa): a sculptural painting with food that seems to present a suspended moment of digestion (a stuffed lumen, a full void, something in-the-middle of being processed); little balls of steel-shot hotly sutured into pointillistic contours that never really decide whether they are made of points or lines; still-sticky pieces of tape tiling themselves into a trace of its double displayed on the ground; a photograph of (the San Gabriel River at) night (that is, a light capturing the limits of what’s illuminated (and remember: a river is as in-between as the night, especially when in it (either one)); some landlike paintings hanging like a signpost at a crossroads; a yonic, cloven monolith that splits its visions between activity and an aftermath—an after/life; and works on paper that hold the imprints and traces of contact and crossings—papers that are the mediums as much as the marks made upon them, that are lifeforms as much as those who made them. Together, the works might demonstrate ways of presenting—not representing—interstitialities of limina and lumina without reducing them to any particular state, or any particular instance, of betweenness. They show limits becoming pathways, and viscera becoming husks. (And then they do it all again in the opposite direction, moving back-and-forth like a typewriter’s ribbon (like this text).)

Eventually, working-through this middled place of in-betweens may also lead toward the contours of power and the borders of regulatory systems. By the fact of being a process of transition and communication (of difference), an in-between is a place of vulnerability—and opening-up—where ‘one thing’ often leads to ‘another.’ It is a place of action and exchange between instances, between bodies, between informations. And therefore it is a place of potential violation and violence, as well as a place of necessary change (of moving from one point to another…). It is based on what happens ‘in-between’ that lines of power are drawn (written)—and along these borderlines the organizations of systems are rendered and redistributed. As an economy. Or, hopefully, as an ethics (self-constructed (with others)). Or, maybe, as an aesthetics in the place of an ethics. Or as a site of becoming—of radical embodiments. As Maria Lugones says in her essay “On Complex Communication,”

	That is, to place ourselves in the limen, in a borderland, is to conceive of “ourselves” as not exhausted by 		domination. […] Indeed, as liminal we need to engage in a poiesis, a self-construction, an arduous and 			dangerous process.

But to conceive of such “a poiesis, a self-construction” in terms of a non-dual or de-doubled betweenness would be to reconsider a borderlands as a non-binary mutilplicity or interstitiality, more than a hybridity or a mere split (of identity or position (nationality)). An undecidability that produces a series of differences and distances across or between dis/connected spaces and times. Between limits and hollows.  Between limina, lumina,,

	Limina, plural of ‘limen,’ a multiplied borderland, a multiple border. A crossing, a limit—a threshold of a crossing,
	a word from psychology: limen, a repeat horizon, a litmus test. Where something begins its presencing.
	Lumina, a word from anatomy: lumina, a hollow, a light, or an opening. But not an absence—but maybe a pathway or passage. A connection between different parts or places (of a body). A medium: a movement between limits, between thresholds, between limina,
						  lumina,,

….


An indifference between a definition and a delirium—or, some snowdrifts and scarecrows


With all this circling around what is being said, there’s still something difficult to define about an “in-between.” Despite its frequency and apparent necessity for saying and situating split or middled states, something seems to disappear in its place as soon as everything around it assumes position—like the distance between each of these letters, the difference between each of these words. But sometimes it seems like a between might be more immediately recognized. As the exposed framing of the gallery walls and ceilings: the spaces between beams, the gaps between 2 x 4s. Like the geometry of points, lines, and voids (or faces): a boundary, a line | as a writing or drawing between each side that gathers along its signing, its seaming. 
	
Or maybe the void (or the face) is an in-between. Or maybe the line was a hollow tunnel to begin with, a cut. Or maybe the points at the intersections are the in-betweens, only appearing at the crossings as punctures of perspective. Or, maybe, this indecisive turning from one place to another is a symptom of the slippery relativity of this liminal, luminal,, place. A limit or a horizon, a hollow or a pathway. A bounded burrowing. Dilating, doubling.

In any case, to repeat and reiterate: as much as a in-between seems to defy categorization or containment, it is also precisely the position that makes categorization and containment (of something, somewhere, someone, or sometime else) possible. A way of accounting for in/distinction, change, movement (between limits); or, lapses, lacks, and gaps. It is a necessary act of documentation or recording—a record. And a process: a processing materializes as an in-between: a latent, unseen, or forgotten transformation. A productive negation, a negative magnitude (maybe).
	
…But as I am already back to circling, there’s obviously some kind of vertigo creeping-in here, between a definition and the delirium it sets-off. At a first glance, or if only handed-over textually, these flashes are still stuck in narrative definitions and spatial imaginations (and metaphors) of an in-between; and an “in-between” is also a necessary structure of time and movement, a practice or process of material phases and shifts. But without an object at hand, without the act or performance of actually passing-through the exhibition, it’s likely impossible to overcome an imagination of an in-between—it’s likely not possible to work with this timing or temporality of a between as an interval. 
	
Without an object or some kind of bodily entanglement with the works, it’s all just snowdrifts and scarecrows, baby! (Dangerously gathered-up like unsown seeds by the winds, or deceitfully made to scare you away like a peckish bird.) And this work with limina, lumina,, requires an activation or activism (like keeping-track of these commas,,,), a direct working-along the object: the exhibition (and its populations). It requires the time to actually play-out: an interval of necessary distance or difference (between events) inflicted by time—but also by the gaze, or at the least an act of observation. (An act of going-to the gallery.)

Image:
Narong Tintamusik. "Digestate 6." Acrylic, aniline wood dye, Thai food ingredients, wastewater on wood panel. 2024.


limina, lumina,,.

Reisig and Taylor Contemporary

Baldwin Avenue Gallery in Sierra Madre celebrates the long, rich career of Thom Cooney Crawford with an exhibition of his paintings and sculpture from October 19 through November 23. Meet the artist at the opening night reception at 7-9 PM Saturday, October 19 at 12 North Baldwin Ave., Sierra Madre.

Cooney Crawford’s 40+ year career began in New York City with two solo shows back to back at Tibor De Nagy Gallery. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since then, including an early solo show at The Sculpture Center, NYC. Winner of an NEA Grant, his sculpture, scaled for public art, was exhibited at St Peter's, Citicorp, NYC among other venues. His Homage to Georgia O’Keefe is installed on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.
Art historian and critic Robert Mattison writes of this artist, “…it takes an act of faith to believe in universal values. There are few contemporary artists even willing to search for the common forms that connect us as members of the human race. Thom Cooney Crawford seeks such archetypal symbols.”

Worlds Within Worlds shows the artist in his maturity. In the early 2000s Cooney Crawford left the art world, college teaching, and the US to “clear the bramble” from his head to further develop his art. He lived in Bavaria then spent four years living in a remote cottage on the Ring of Beara, Ireland’s wild west coast. In that landscape shaped by wind and water, standing stones and old oaks, he found the synthesis he’d been seeking. On his return to the US in 2010, he went into his loft and worked in isolation for a decade. This new body of work includes paintings that express the nature of the cosmos, while his sculptures have a mythic presence that initially haunts the viewer, but opens to a deep connection.

In 2023, Cooney Crawford published Eclipse Illumined, a collection of poems and images. A collaboration with poet Cathie Sandstrom, the book is a dialog between two lyric poets and a series of Cooney Crawford’s paintings.
See more information on the gallery and gallery hours at www.baldwinavenuegallery.com. Learn more about this painter/sculptor/poet at www.thomcooneycrawford.com
 

Thom Cooney Crawford: Worlds within Worlds

Baldwin Avenue Gallery

SHED is an artist conceived and funded gallery space storing individual works (mostly on paper) by Fern Vargas. SHED itself is the encompassing work. sic! is the exhibition’s title. SHED falls under this title sic! and sic! falls under SHED. One follows the other. The gallery is on Clinton Street at Western Avenue here in the City of Los Angeles, State of California 90004.

Fern Vargas is an artist working in Los Angeles.

Fern Vargas: sic!

SHED

‎Duncan Hannah was a painter who loved escapism in all its forms. He was also devoted to books, music and art, but it was only with film that he was able to express his love of flesh and fantasy on canvas. Born in Minneapolis in 1952, as the golden age of Hollywood was entering its sunset years, Duncan’s parents took him to see movies of their own choice to avoid hiring a babysitter. Thus, at the age of eight he watched Psycho on the big screen, with his mother attempting to shield his eyes when Janet Leigh stepped into the shower. At fourteen, the battle of the hands continued when Jane Birken stripped off for David Hemmings in Blow Up. This, perhaps, began a pattern of cinematic voyeurism in Duncan’s art that was to continue throughout his career.

Moving to New York in 1973, Duncan’s exposure to old cinema expanded way beyond late-night television reruns. With the range of art movie houses in Manhattan his tastes grew more eclectic, and he became immersed in foreign films, particularly French ones. He adopted the fedora hat and trench coat of Alain Delon in Le Samouraï and the floppy-haired preppy look of François Truffaut’s muse, Jean-Pierre Léaud. In 1976 he starred in Unmade Beds, Amos Poe’s homage to A bout de souffle, substituting Paris with the streets and rooftops of downtown Manhattan. He went on to make several more films in New York over the decades.

Duncan loved watching moving pictures, but what he really loved were actors, and more specifically actresses. He watched the best and he watched the very worst films in pursuit of actresses who caught his eye. He was not particular about genre, format or era: a pretty girl was a pretty girl, regardless of costume, and if he found an image of her minus her costume then so much the better. But Duncan also loved the glamour and mystery of mainstream Hollywood movies: the Cold War spies of his youth were inspiration for his paintings of escape across Europe via train, steam ship or Citroën. And beneath the veneer, the seediness of Hollywood was hugely fascinating to Duncan—among his many books on the subject were at least five copies of Kenneth’s Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, all seemingly well read.


Duncan watched at least one film a day but more often two—film was the fuel that fired his art.


—Megan Wilson, September 2024

Flesh and Fantasy

The Journal Gallery

 The Artists Gallery is pleased to present new visions of contemporary art from Eran Barnea, Robert Zent Chew, Shirley Asano Guldimann and Sunhee Joo, on view November 6-29, 2024. 

On Saturday, November 9, from 6-9 pm, The Artists Gallery invites the community and media to attend the opening reception for these new exhibitions. Each solo show presents unique themes and subjects. Exhibition titles range from Miracle Mile (Barnea), Mixed Impressions (Chew), Love of Nature (Joo) & Visions (Guldimann). Artists will be in attendance to meet guests and discuss their collections. The reception is free to attend. 

Miracle Mile, a collection from artist Eran Barnea optically takes viewers on a journey through the historic Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles. Barnea was born in Israel and trained in fine art, architecture, code breaking, and digital visual effects for movies. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition at TAG. 

Robert Zent Chew is best known for his abstracted landscapes and florals. Mixed Impressions, Chew’s latest exhibition at TAG remains true to this stylistic disposition with themes ranging from the American West to Tropical to the French countryside.

Sunhee Joo’s Love of Nature exhibition visually presents the mild & gentle themes of nature. The collection combines traditional painting methods with manipulation tools like Photoshop. Sunhee Joo considers art to be “visual poetry.” The showcase aims to communicate tranquility and the artist’s love for God through creative imagery. 

Shirley Asano Guldimann’s exhibition, titled Visions, will present paintings and drawings that combine stream of consciousness line drawing, classical and modern painting, and traditional Japanese elements. This range of techniques adds an element of surprise, keeping viewers engaged and intrigued. 




Visions in Novembe

The Artists' Gallery (TAG)

Simchowitz is pleased to present When There’s Nothing Left, our second solo exhibition of the Los Angeles-based artist Shaina McCoy, at Hill House in Pasadena, California. Please join us for an opening reception on Sunday, October 20th from 11am-3pm – please RSVP for address: info@simchowitz.com

In this new body of work, McCoy (b. 1993, Minneapolis MN) delves into the root system of her family’s archival photographs. A project stewarded by an inter-generational investment in preserving and celebrating family history, of monumental moments and mundane beauty of the everyday, a heart-felt series that holds literal & metaphorical relevance of togetherness.

Inspired by her grandfather, the family photographer, McCoy expounds on the art of archiving what her family is able to capture so well—being together. This series, When There’s Nothing Left, channels a re-envisioned take on her family’s most sincere candids with a perspective mirroring her grandfather’s photography. Taking many of her own photographs now as well, McCoy distinguishes both contributor and time period by her use of color. The poignancy of the quotidian experience of life is treated with the same care and attention to detail, and McCoy’s featureless faces allude to the possibility that the figures might serve as archetypes of a more universal human experience, one where the viewer can imagine how they might place themselves within the work. 

Using familial source imagery as reference allows McCoy to explore the personal accessibly, a central characteristic of her practice. The paintings on view in When There’s Nothing Left depict a series of embraces, between adults and children alike, that could be interpreted in a number of ways–some celebratory, others consoling, each an active gesture made static, further memorializing the importance of human connectivity. Fleeting moments, particularly as they pertain to loss, reverberate in this work–the potency of contact between figures, and how they hold each other up, celebrate the relationships we have with those we love, reminding us to honor the time we have and to prioritize the important bonds we share.

Image: Shaina McCoy – Her First Love, 2021. Oil on canvas. 60h x 40w x 1.50d in / 152.40h x 101.60w x 3.81d cm

Shaina McCoy: When There’s Nothing Left

Simchowitz Hill House

Helia Pouyanfar: Breathing House

FOYER-LA

In Audrey Kawasaki’s newest exhibition “Visceral,” the artist delves into the connection between the mind, body, and soul, paying homage to our miraculous inner physiology as a mirror to our emotions and external being. This triadic connection becomes profound with a deeper understanding of our own impermanence, encouraging us to more fully embrace the precious fragility of life and its beauty. The series of paintings, created after the artist’s move to the UK, unveils the intricacy of the human experience through depictions of the feminine form, diaphanously connected to nature.
 
In Kawasaki’s paintings, mushrooms and insects flourish upon the figures, intertwining with human anatomy in a mesmerizing dance that explores the ephemeral nature of life. Sinuous forms and an earthy palette create an ethereal atmosphere as the female figures shed their skin and transform into something new. There is a rawness and vulnerability in the way they open themselves up, revealing the visceral complexities of the body that are usually kept hidden away. Every organ, every cell, works in harmony to not only keep us alive but to allow a soulful depth of existence. They form an intricate system where each affects the other—mental states impact physical health, bodily experiences influence emotions, and the soul guides a sense of purpose and ultimate transcendence.
 
In ‘Visceral’ the internal truths of our bodies are not separate from our higher selves—they are the gateway, the tangible bridge, that allows us to see the beauty of the natural world, with profound awareness.
 
“This body of work has become a deeply personal journey - a raw, vulnerable attempt to find my voice, to shed the layers that no longer serve me, and to uncover the authentic self that lies beneath, even in the face of uncertainty.
 
Delving into the shadowy recesses of the psyche, “Visceral” unveils the complex tapestry of the human experience through haunting and striking depictions of the feminine form, interwoven with the primal essence of nature with reverence for the inevitable cycle of life.” – Audrey Kawasaki--


//



In Chie Yoshi’s inaugural exhibition with KP Projects titled “Sanctuary,” the artist creates a visual refuge dedicated to sheer and unapologetic beauty as a counterpoint to the cynicism, noise, and divisiveness of the contemporary world. Through her paintings, the artist creates a place where the psyche can rest, re-imagine, and restore.
 
“When I leave reason behind and free-fall into the depth of the psyche, I encounter innate images which become my inspiration. In the same way that the human body carries a long evolutionary history within, the mind also inherits patterns of instinctive behavior. Jung called them archetypes. Freud called them archaic remains. Mythologists call them motifs. Other scholars call them primordial thoughts. I try to capture these ancient yet timely motifs as collective dreams in my paintings. It gives me a sense of selflessness, groundedness and unity to paint our collective psyche that exists beyond time and space.” – Chie Yoshii
 
Chie’s answer to chaos in the form of refuge and beauty is not passive. The subjects of Yoshi’s paintings explore a profound interplay between femininity, power, and symbolic archetypes of the feminine. Examining themes of vulnerability, strength, and the complex duality that exists within the female experience, the artist creates a visual language that celebrates both the soft and fierce aspects of her heroines, juxtaposing fragility with raw power. There is a gentleness and knowing in her work, as well as a sense that great lengths will be taken to protect and defend this inner sanctuary which holds a sense of natural balance much needed in the world right now. 


Audrey Kawasaki: Visceral | Chie Yoshii: Sanctuary

KP Projects

For all those years
L.W.D survived a life sentence
After 29 years he is free
Everyday
For all those years
– XO SADE

L.W.D (b 1958, Watts, California), is a painter and sculptor living and working in Los Angeles, California

Gallery SADE Los Angeles presents L.W.D // for all those years with an opening reception on Saturday, November 9th, 2o24 from 7-11pm

The works will be on view every Saturday and Sunday from 1-6pm until November 30th and by private viewing appointments at all other times

For inquiries and private viewing appointments, contact SADE sade-la@sade-la.Com

Gallery SADE Los Angeles is located at 2o4 S Avenue 19, Los Angeles, California

@sadelosangeles @thelonesomelemon

L.W.D: FOR ALL THESE YEARS

SADE

Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present our second solo exhibition by Upstate New York-based artist Carrie Mae Smith. The exhibition, titled Blue Roses, features a series of still life paintings depicting a particular set of flow blue china in W.H. Grindley's Rose pattern (c. 1893). This series represents a progression in Smith's artistic practice, showcasing her evolving formal techniques while continuing her exploration of the history and significance of domestic utilitarian objects, especially culinary items.

A favorite of Smith’s because of its imperfect patterns and soft painterly designs, she set up various arrangements of the flow blue china for her painting compositions. Atop tables in her light-filled studio, the arrangements appear almost as if the china pieces had just been placed out in preparation for setting the table for a special dinner. Serving vessels are nestled between stacks of plates and cups and saucers, forks and knives are cradled in dishes or placed as a pair on dinner plates. Most of the works are painted looking down upon the china, or at an angle from above, allowing Smith to capture the delicate patterns both on top of the plates and on the sides of the pitchers and cups. The rich blue patterns on cool white china are set against the beige tones of a warm linen tablecloth, the light from the window casting soft shadows between the dining and serving ware.

“With my still-life paintings, I aim to highlight the inherent beauty of these items, viewing the arrangements of stacked china as contemplative spaces,” Smith explains. “As I arranged the compositions and painted this series, I found myself reflecting on the family who once owned these pieces, the meals lovingly prepared and served on these dishes, the care taken to clean and store them, and the cabinet where they waited patiently for the next special occasion. My thoughts also wandered to the cultural weight these items carry and how changing lifestyles have diminished the significance of formal traditions over time.” 

While Smith’s artistic practice touches on various social and political concepts and ideas, the works in Blue Roses enable the viewer to relish in the beauty of both her painterly style and her ability to further extend the lifecycle of these elegant items. 

Carrie Mae Smith (b. 1974, Derby, CT) lives and works in Upstate New York. Inspired by antiques and food culture, Smith often paints her personal collections of vintage china, historic objects, and culinary delicacies. The daughter of a butcher, she supported her artistic practice early on working as a private chef on Martha’s Vineyard. Smith’s works serve as symbols of class, labor, friendship, tradition, love, and utility. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Delaware (2013). Smith has received numerous awards and grants, including the Clowes Fellowship Full Scholarship, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc. Artist Grant; and the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation, Artist Grant. She has exhibited her work internationally and nationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles, CA; the Locust Grove Estate, Poughkeepsie, NY; and The Berman Museum, Collegeville, PA, and her works are included in numerous private and public collections. Carrie Mae Smith currently lives and works in Gilbertsville, New York, where she serves on the faculty at SUNY Oneonta.

Carrie Mae Smith: Blue Roses

Lowell Ryan Projects 

LAUREN MOFFATT
FRAGMENTATION ENGINE
NOVEMBER 15-30, 2024

https://gameplayarts.org/products/lauren-moffatt-fragmentation-engine

"Fragmentation Engine" refers to breaking down larger systems into smaller, interconnected parts, allowing an overview through segmentation and reassembly. The exhibition uses video game technology as a fragmentation engine to explore world-building, image worlds, and avatar creation, dissecting complex systems into smaller facets or building smaller facets into complex systems to reveal new layers of meaning. As Moffatt explains: "My relationship with game worlds is not so much about game playing. I build into a universe that I can then share with others through game engine-based work."

Drawing from real and fictional myths of Los Angeles, the works in this exhibition are fragmentary in both literal and figurative senses. Together, they create an environment of controlled dismantling and reconfiguration—sometimes reflective, sometimes outward-facing. Through close attention to details, moods, and surfaces, Moffatt crafts intricate virtual worlds that invite careful observation, conveying an underlying sense that forms are always on the verge of shifting and transforming. She notes: "I'm obsessive about the details and the surfaces of things. They have a sensory experience.” She aims for viewers to "feel like they're going through a journey with it that's uncomfortable, even if it is fascinating. People feel pulled in and alienated by the work."

Works

Nobody Never Mind (2023): A group of figures are collected in an underground bar. The characters’ spectral presence and looping monologues evoke a world where these ghostly figures are trapped, waiting in a shadowy reflection of what once was. Their fragmented dialogues echo in perpetual loops, suggesting an artificial mental ecology where memories and emotions endlessly recycle.

Video and Augmented Reality Installation
iOS AR-enabled device, television monitor

Local Binaries (2022)
Augmented Reality Installation
iOS AR-enabled device
Dimensions variable

Image Technology Echoes (2021, Virtual Reality Installation) immerses viewers in a quiet, almost surreal gallery space, where two characters engage in a stilted, looping exchange. When stepping into their inner worlds, viewers encounter chaotic rooms filled with fragmented thoughts and AI-generated monologues, revealing the disparity between polished appearances and tangled, broken thoughts beneath. This work reflects how perception and understanding evolve within individual mental ecologies, shaped by internal and external influences.

Compost (2019 - ongoing) Video and Photogrammetry Installation) explores themes of regeneration and decay, transforming digital errors into forms that blend the sublime with the imperfect. The photogrammetry process introduces distortions, resulting in sculptures that embody a strange, decaying beauty. The series suggests a kind of ecological decay, where imperfections foster new, distorted forms, as if the digital environment itself were alive and constantly reshaping.


The Unbinding (2014, Digital Video Installation) examines self-construction as a process of continuous reinvention. The protagonist reconfigures herself through fragments of found images, embodying an illusion of control and beauty. This cyclical and fleeting act reveals how the pursuit of glamour can lead to a fractured identity. The work invites viewers to consider an ecology of fragmented consciousness, where each reinvention draws from and reshapes the surrounding environment.

Lilies (2024) Single-channel Video, Vertical HD Display (1080 x 1920)

About Lauren Moffatt

Lauren Moffatt is an Australian artist working with immersive environments and experimental narrative practices. Her works, often presented in hybrid and iterative forms, explore the paradoxical subjectivity of connected bodies and the indistinct boundaries between digital and organic life. In 2021 she was awarded the DKB VR Art Prize (DE) and in 2022 she was awarded the I Certamen Internacional de Arte Digital (ES) and the Revista MAKMA Aquisition Prize (ES). Lauren completed her studies in painting, in theory and practice of new media art and in audiovisual creation at the College of FineArts (AU), Université Paris VIII (FR), and at Le Fresnoy Studi National des Arts Contemporains (FR) respectively.

Lauren's works have been exhibited at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), Centre Pompidou (FR), La Gaïté Lyrique (FR), SXSW (US), Haus am Lützowplatz (DE), UNSW Galleries (AU), Daegu Art Museum (KOR), Le Grand Palais Ephémère (FR), SAVVY Contemporary (DE), FACT Liverpool (UK) The Sundance Film Festival (US) ZKM (DE), Q21 Freiraum (AT) and at Hartware MedienkunstVerein (DE). She lives and works in Berlin and
Valencia.

Lauren Moffatt: Fragmentation Engine

Gameplayarts

Over 50 artists fill the walls and floors of the gallery with fun and unusual works. Our curation aimed to stretch the public’s understanding of collage as something beyond busy compositions that look like conspiracy boards that are only missing red string. The artists exhibiting approach collage with the same finesse and intention all pop surrealists do.

Measure Twice Cut Once: Lowbrow Group Collage Exhibition

La Luz De Jesus Gallery

Sebastian Gladstone Gallery is pleased to present Gothic Electronica. A concurrent exhibition of work by the artist will be on view at Marc Selwyn Fine Art at 9953 S Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. Together, both exhibitions survey fifty years of the artist’s work.

Leavitt has spent his career as an artist in Southern California, drawing endless inspiration from the architecture and mass media culture of Hollywood. By the time Leavitt began his artistic practice, Pop Art and Minimalism had begun to run their course. As an important figure in the first generation of California conceptual art, Leavitt was able to use these prior movements to synthesize his personal experiences and impressions of the California landscape. A writer and filmmaker himself, Leavitt’s works have always been rooted in narrative storytelling and intrinsically linked to theater, film, and the media culture of Los Angeles.

Gothic Electornica provides a comprehensive look through Leavitt’s career, beginning with photographs from the 1970s and running up to a series of recent science fiction-inspired cyborg paintings which seem to foreshadow the rapid merging of human beings, robotics, and high-tech intelligence. Since many of his paintings and photographs were initially utilized as stage props and settings, Leavitt’s formal gallery shows have often conflated fine art and theatrical installations. Uncanny science fiction narratives, melodrama, and cinematic moments that seem familiar, yet out of place, run through Leavitt’s entire oeuvre.

Film and the intrigue and mystery of Hollywood storytelling seep through Leavitt’s early work. Utilizing photographic montage, Are You Sure She Said That? Yes, Absolutely, The Consequences Can Be Real, and Study for the “Lure of Silk,” all conjure up the theatricality of film. His installation piece, Gothic Curtain, is heavily influenced by Hammer Film’s 1958 Dracula, evoking the dark, melodramatic tone and thrilling, ominous aesthetic that characterized the romantic horror genre.

While not all of Leavitt’s works present a detailed narrative, they set up contexts within which the viewer is invited to construct personal associations with Leavitt’s references.

As the artist describes it, “Because my work tends toward narrative, I sometimes imagine a setting for paintings - the theme restaurant at LAX would look right in the boardroom of an aerospace firm, or the painting of the Manta ray might fit the wood-paneled hallway of a seafood restaurant. The photos I did in the 1970’s might act as film stills, with installations functioning as a kind of stage set. Recently I’ve done portraits of cyborgs who could operate in a more theatrical realm, perhaps as characters in a sci-fi movie. My work is about things of the world as props for narratives, sequences of objects, places, persons, their combinations evoking random choice, or a mood, a kind of blank absurdity, or the suggestion of a story.”

Since the late 1960s, Leavitt’s work has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions including an extensive survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2011, curated by Ann Goldstein and Bennett Simpson. His work has been featured in thematic exhibitions around the world and is included in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Getty, Los Angeles; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and many others.

William Leavitt: Gothic Electronica

Sebastian Gladstone

Wonzimer Gallery 341-B S Avenue 17 Los Angeles 90031/ wonzimerinfo@gmail.com
Opening: 5-10 pm, Friday, November 1st, 2024

Exhibiting Artists: David McDonald, Khang Nguyen, and Jennifer Sirey

The vision and philosophy of interconnectedness in the Flower Ornament Sutra serve as the basis for this exhibition. The central principle of this text is the fourfold Dharmadhatu (realm of reality).

Of the four aspects of the Dharmadhatu, the first two are the universal and the particular.  One can determine their meaning by referring to other terms used to describe them, such as the ultimate and phenomenal, absolute and relative, identity and difference, ontological and ontic, nondual and dual, one and many, etc.

This text does not consider the realization of the nonduality of Being to be the utmost and final objective.  This is due to the emphasis on integrating that realization into everyday activities—that is, into the particular, the second aspect of the Dharmadhatu.

That leads to the third aspect of the Dharmadhatu, the interconnection of the universal and the particular.  The nonduality of the universal can give rise to particular differences without itself becoming differentiated.  Conversely, the individual can find common ground in the universal without itself becoming common.  This suggests that these two dimensions are inseparable without being conflated.

The interconnectedness of particular beings constitutes the fourth aspect.  From this vantage point, phenomena can be understood as a field of congruous beings rather than adversarial ones.

The audience is invited to view the artwork of David McDonald, Khang Nguyen, and Jennifer Sirey through the prism of the fourfold Dharmadhatu.



The Universal and the Particular

Wonzimer

Angels Gate Cultural Center (AGCC) is pleased to present METHOD, a new group exhibition featuring twenty-five contemporary artists who experiment across interdisciplinary fields. 

METHOD opens with a public reception on Saturday, September 14th from 2pm to 4pm in the gallery during OPaf, Other Places art fair, at AGCC. OPaf is an alternative art fair dedicated to supporting unconventional and underrepresented artists, art project spaces, and art programming. OPaf takes place September 14th from 11am to 9pm in the Battery Leary-Merriam at AGCC (visit https://opaf.info to learn more). 

METHOD is about technology, ecology, and embodiment. It layers the history of analog and digital processes that shape images and imaginaries, exploring transcultural aspects of language, its role in technoscience and the coloniality embedded in cartographic forms. The artists’ explorations connect seemingly divergent ecosystems, expanding their meaning. Reflections on ecology reimagine the evolution of Earth in conjunction with technological processes, as visualized in digital art, while critically examining the settler logic of taxonomizing species and dividing land to separate lifeworlds. The artworks on technology are informed by the development of artificial intelligence and their ideological roots, such as transhumanism (the techno evolution of the human race) and singularitarianism (when machines hypothetically surpass human intelligence). Through cyberpunk aesthetics that critique technofetishism and explore machine memory, technology could be seen as both an echo of the body and a medium for collective subversion. Finally, embodiment explores through queer, Indigenous, and speculatively more-than-human knowledge systems, recognizing the value of differences in configuring a life-centric approach to design. Various methods are employed to understand strategic entanglements and their cyclical feedback loops.

METHOD includes works by Lauren Bedal, Jenna Caravello, CHẾ, Chris Combs, Ismael de Anda III & Eugene Ahn, Tielin Ding, Richelle Ellis, Ksti Hu, Kim Kei, Elizabeth Leister, Lineadeluz, Edua Mercedes, Reuben Merringer, Ashton Phillips, Koi Ren & Joey Verbeke, Dylan Ricards, Miller Robinson, Kayla Tange, Ambrose Trataris & Lucy Black, Ayzay Ukwuoma, Erika Weitz, and Devin Wilson. METHOD is guest juried and curated by Kira Xonorika, SUPERCOLLIDER SciArt Ambassador. 

The exhibition will be on view in the gallery through December 6th, 2024 with free public visiting hours Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, from 10am to 4:30pm.

Visit angelsgateart.org to learn more. 

Image: Koi Ren & Joey Verbeke, T.A.E.L., 2024.

METHOD • Technology, ecology, embodiment

Angels Gate Cultural Center

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Luke Butler: Color Pictures, the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. San Francisco-based Butler draws inspiration from pop culture and the history of film and television in luscious, evocative paintings that invite the viewer into imagined cinematic worlds. By transforming images from his lived experience – natural and urban landscapes, objects saved or remembered – into paintings heavy with narrative potential, Butler plays with the tension between reality and artifice that is inherent to film. These invented bits of pop cultural history feel as if they have always existed, as if we should know what comes next. But however potently Butler’s Color Pictures suggest action, they never reveal it, standing continually on the precipice of narrative. 

The Color Pictures series takes its form from the openings of 1960s movies and TV, which triumphantly declared their evolution from black and white into color. Butler consumed these in syndication as a child, long after color became the norm, rendering this declaration as something outside of time and therefore ripe for examination. Butler treats the text almost as a figure in the landscape, existing object-like amid the drama about to unfold. These works build upon a previous series of paintings that played with the tragicomic existential tension of end cards, endlessly proclaiming The End. The Color Picture series instead offers a beginning, or many beginnings. Set against images of the great American landscape or the architectural jumble of urban life, these works serve as an invitation to narrative, offering the viewer a feeling of infinite possibility. 

The Location paintings build upon this cinematic theme, each declaring its time and place like so many title cards or script directions. Enigmatic Los Angeles alleyways and the humbler New York City skylines serve as containers for Butler’s atmospheric scene-setting, bounded within painted borders that emphasize their cinematic quality. As with the Color Pictures, these works come from photographs taken by the artist but trade in the crispness of photography for much a looser hand. The softness of Butler’s landscapes recalls the vast painted worlds of classic Hollywood backdrops or the hazy glow of memory. 

The source images Butler is drawn to often embody a sense of drama – low sun hitting a towering cliffside, restless sea meeting a rocky coastline – that is in keeping with the cinematic overtones of the paintings. He expands his sensual scope in two symphony paintings, which introduce the idea of music into the work, conjuring movie scores and concert halls via crashing waves and floating flowers. Butler’s confident hand captures a distinct sense of arrested motion, his musical references emphasizing the feeling of catching just a single frame of a film strip speeding by or a dance frozen mid-step. 

The exhibition also includes a suite of watercolors of Star Wars action figure packaging, painted to scale. A lover of genre film and television from childhood, the roots of Butler’s artistic consciousness lie in the graphics of pop culture. He lovingly captures not only the iconic Star Wars design, but the wear and tear that comes with enthusiastic use. Each crinkled corner and torn edge speaks to life lived. A rectangle of solid color, framed by exposed cardboard, emphasizes the absence of the figure itself. As with the paintings, these works suggest grand narratives unfolding just off-screen, so to speak, whether in a film about to begin or an action figure reenactment playing out nearby.

Luke Butler (b.1971, San Francisco, CA) has an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BFA from The Cooper Union. His work is in the permanent collections of the de Young Museum, San Francisco; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Berkeley Art Museum; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AK; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; The FLAG Art Foundation, NY; Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco; Orange County Museum of Art, CA; and Crystal Bridges Museum, among others. His next solo show, "Color Pictures," will be at Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, November 2nd- December 7th, 2024. Butler lives and works in San Francisco. He is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. 
____

“One might prudently reconsider attending Alexander Reben's latest foray into algorithmic aesthetics at the Charlie James Gallery, where the incessant cacophony of synthetic semiotics risks diluting the very essence of avant-garde ingenuity. Reben's ostensibly groundbreaking AI constructs, while pushing the boundaries of post-human expressionism, inadvertently succumb to a labyrinthine opacity that obfuscates any semblance of genuine emotional resonance. The exhibition, rather than serving as a palimpsest of innovative discourse, devolves into a simulacrum of mechanized profundity, rendering the spectator's engagement a Sisyphean endeavor. In an era where authenticity in artistic praxis is paramount, Reben's digital reveries may ultimately leave the connoisseur yearning for a more substantively corporeal dialogue.” – ChatGPT

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Write a convoluted exhibition title for Alexander Reben's show in the basement of the Charlie James Gallery, an exhibition of works by the conceptual artist and MIT-trained roboticist Alexander Reben, who utilizes artificial intelligence to create artworks that spring from the interface between human and machine. Reben’s open-hearted approach to technology allows space for both wonder and humor. His works take a wide array of forms, ranging from large, machine-made metal sculptures to an ongoing series of ChatGPT-generated self-critical texts that playfully skewer the language of stereotypical artspeak. Elsewhere, Reben incorporates viewer input into continually evolving artworks that represent a collaboration between artist, viewer, and algorithm.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the large wall-based sculpture AI and the Anvil, in which small, intricate waves ripple across a vast metal surface. With this work, Reben explores the realm of directly converting language into tangible sculpture. Using the giant metal-forming robots of Machina Labs, Reben iteratively collaborates with an AI that autonomously generates code that creates generative 3D sculptures as instructions for massive robotic systems. This enables the robots to sculpt sheet metal into artworks with remarkable precision in a way impossible with other fabrication methods. Reben describes the performative nature of the sculpture’s making as akin to a high-pressure tango, where each machine must move in precisely the opposite direction of the other to balance the immense forces required to manipulate metal. This poetic movement not only reflects the intricacies of their physical interaction but also embodies the delicate dance of creation itself.

Other works incorporate prompts in real time, transforming input from exhibition visitors into AI-generated images and text. Speak Art Into Life invites viewers to suggest ideas to a microphone, which AI converts into visual outputs that become exquisite corpse-style collaborative images. The images evolve over the course of the exhibition, growing and expanding in unpredictable ways. The use of four classic analog flap displays emphasizes the near-uncanny newness of the cutting edge tech that powers the work. By operating on the leading edge of what technology allows, Reben invites us to imagine possible futures for our relationship to machines, making room for a sense of play and even beauty in the boundaries between language and code.

Alexander Reben is an artist who has spent over a decade creating work that probes the inherently human nature of the artificial. With his start at MIT Media Lab, Reben has long studied human-robot symbiosis and art, using experimentation and prototyping to delve into our intricate relationships with algorithms, automation, and amplification. Through the lenses of absurdity, humor, and mischief, his artwork highlights our inseparable evolutionary entanglement with the technology that shapes our existence.
 
Reben has become a leading figure at the intersection of art and technology. He was OpenAI’s first Artist in Residence, and his first solo museum retrospective, “AI Am I?”, which included an exhibition of over 120 artworks,  recently concluded at the Crocker Art Museum. His work has been exhibited globally at institutions including Ars Electronica, MAK Contemporary Art Museum, Vitra Design Museum, Design Museum Ghent, and the Vienna Biennale. As an expert in his field, he has lectured at TED, SXSW, TTI Vanguard, Google, UC Berkeley, SMFA, CCA, MIT, and Harvard. Reben’s work has been covered by CNN, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Fast Company, Filmmaker Magazine, New Scientist, BBC, PBS, Discovery Channel, Cool Hunting, MIT Technology Review and WIRED, among others.

Luke Butler: Color Pictures |Alexander Reben: Write a convoluted exhibition title for Alexander Reben's show in the basement of the Charlie James Gallery

Charlie James Gallery

NOON Projects is honored to present “Made in My Bedroom” a group exhibition featuring John Bertle, David Gilbert, Jim Isermann, and Daniel Arthur Mendoza.

In 2020, John Bertle, David Gilbert, Jim Isermann, and Daniel Arthur Mendoza started a book club to read Queer Theory. Having met through the University of California - Riverside’s MFA Art program, the group was comprised of one alum, two current students, and one professor. An informal education began. They met weekly over Zoom during the first dark year of the pandemic, reading works by José Esteban Munõz, Olivia Laing, and Jack Halberstam. And, the group stuck together, flourished, yet was fluid: they read a gay detective novel, watched movies (by Pedro Almodovar, Derek Jarman, Marlon Riggs, Ang Lee). Four years later, the group still meets: sometimes to discuss books they've read, sometimes to catch up and spill the tea. 

This exhibition is composed of artworks each artist has made over the last four years. An overlapping section of a Venn diagram of their practices and interests would include textiles, queer joy, flowers, gay aesthetics, and craft. In the bigger front room of the gallery, each artist exhibits a large work whose subject is fabric or textiles, while in the smaller second gallery, the mode is of collaborative installation. In the smaller gallery, drawings and studies by each artist hang alongside and on top of larger gestures such as photo murals, vinyl cutouts, and stamps which decorate the walls.

The first book they read, Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, can be read as a guidebook for the group's ethos. It clearly and repeatedly discusses how to learn from the past while striving for a utopian (yet ultimately unattainable) future. It lays the groundwork for this in the present by rejecting norms of the day. As an intergenerational group of queers, this meant slightly different things to each member; discussing those differences expanded each person’s understanding and appreciation of the text.

While the group started as an academic pursuit, it quickly became more than that. It was a reliable once-a-week check-in that provided sustenance, especially during the isolating lockdown of 2020. It has become a way of building unexpected community and friendship that feels contemporary: they mostly meet virtually. But it has been a source of true connection, allowing each member to get to know one another well and to remain close.

“Made in My Bedroom”
Featuring: John Bertle, David Gilbert, Jim Isermann, and Daniel Arthur Mendoza

October 26 – December 7, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 26, 2024 6–9 PM

951 Chung King Road, Los Angeles CA 90012

For more information email info@noon-projects.com

Made in My Bedroom

NOON Projects

Night Gallery is pleased to present Subterrestrial, a new installation by Lily Kwong. This marks the artist’s inaugural presentation with Night Gallery and her first environmental intervention in Los Angeles since 2017. Subterrestrial will be on view through Summer 2025. In addition, Kwong will debut Solis, a new body of photographic works, on view in the Chapel Viewing Room through December 7, 2024. Kwong’s presentations at Night Gallery precede two installations at Madison Square Park, New York, NY, which open in early 2025 and unite botany with public art.

Installed in the courtyard of Night Gallery North, Subterrestrial takes inspiration from Hügelkultur, a permaculture technique that creates sustainable, self-irrigating garden beds using mounds of woody debris and other organic materials. Kwong’s hügel, or mound, will span 18 feet in diameter and rise nearly six feet high. The artist will carefully seed the work with a diverse selection of native trees, grasses, and flowers. Subterrestrial is designed to evolve with the seasons and meditate on the rich ecological potential that dwells beneath the sprawling, omnipresent concrete of industrial, downtown Los Angeles.

Night Gallery will also present Kwong’s Solis series of lumen—or solar photogram—prints, inspired by the artist’s transition into motherhood and her subsequent reflections on renewal. Kwong uses a nineteenth-century technique and expired photographic paper to capture native plants that she foraged from her own garden and the Santa Monica mountains. She uses salt, gold, and other alchemizing elements to fix the images permanently. Solis is a lyrical extension of Kwong’s ongoing commitment to sustainability, recycled materials, and reverence for the natural world. Through both Subterrestrial and Solis, Kwong demonstrates an indexical approach to Southern California’s plant life. Her process negotiates between chance and control, allowing natural elements such as light, weather, and seasonal change to influence her aesthetics. This collaborative approach imbues her work with the spirit and essence of the region’s unique ecology.

Night Gallery will celebrate Kwong’s work with a series of public programs that support the artist’s mission to reconnect her audience with their natural environs. Details on a community artmaking project as well as a Spring Solstice activation on March 20, 2025, when the hügel is in full bloom, are forthcoming.

____

Night Gallery is delighted to announce The Tee Room, a pop-up retail experiment featuring unique tee-shirts handmade by artists. The Tee Room is an unprecedented opportunity to explore divergent approaches to the most essential modern garment, the tee shirt.    
 
Night Gallery’s extended community of artists was invited to explore the aesthetic potential of the tee shirt. The result, The Tee Room, features one-of-a-kind garments by Anna Rosen, Hell is Too Blurry, Eve Fowler, Nick Aguayo, Jennifer Sullivan, Mark Verabioff, Josh Callaghan, Mira Dancy, Deondre Davis, Jeremy Jansen, Liv Anrud, Sam Greenfeld, Michael Decker, Bas Louter, Fear Safe, Michael Dopp, Tidawhitney Lek and many more. New items will be introduced throughout the course of the project.
 
Night Gallery’s downtown Los Angeles neighborhood is an epicenter of the global apparel industry with blank tee sellers abounding throughout the area. Emerging out of this cacophony, finally, The Tee Room provides something you want to wear! Uniting the worlds of art and fashion, The Tee Room celebrates the tee shirt as a canvas for unforeseen visions that can be integrated into daily life. 

The Tee Room will be located in Night Gallery North’s foyer at 2050 Imperial Street Los Angeles CA 90021. Open during gallery hours November 16 - December 21, 2024.

Lily Kwong: Solis | Josh Callaghan: The Tea Room

Night Gallery North

Tanya Leighton, Los Angeles is pleased to premier the first West Coast solo exhibition by London-based artist Matthew Krishanu.

“In Matthew Krishanu’s ‘Immerse’, we are slowly submerged in dripping, fluid memories. Images, like they were forming in a dream, or becoming visible through a haze, lead us to fleeting protagonists, and sites in a state of temporariness. Immersion then means many things – the lushness of a grove of imposing trees or a mesh of branches, the depth of a cave, the eyes of a protagonist or even the states of learning, leisure and rest. It is also darkness and light, metaphor and corporeality. As his protagonists watch us, or look away in contemplation or resolve, Krishanu’s backgrounds continue to blur, leading us to an intimacy and focus on person, place, event and time.”

– Mario D’Souza

Matthew Krishanu: Immerse

Tanya Leighton Los Angeles

No problem! Here’s the information about the Mercedes CLR GTR:

The Mercedes CLR GTR is a remarkable racing car celebrated for its outstanding performance and sleek design.
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and
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CLR GTR ensures exceptional stability
and control, particularly
during high-speed maneuvers. 

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Mercedes CLR GTR is considered one
of the most exclusive and
prestigious
racing cars ever produced.

Its limited production run of just five units adds
to its rarity, making it highly
sought after by racing enthusiasts and collectors worldwide. 

Patrick Quinn (born 1988 in Virginia; lives and works in New York) gained his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2010. From 2011 to 2018, the artist lived in Detroit, where he was a founding members of the ceramics collective Hamtramck Ceramck. Notable collaborations within popular culture include the album cover for Lil Ugly Mane’s rap album “Volcanic Bird Enemy and the Voiced Concern” (2021) as well the painted lightning backdrop for rapper Bad Bunny’s recent photoshoot for the July 2023 issue of Rolling Stone. “No Problem! Here’s the information about the Mercedes CLR GTR...” is the artist’s first West Coast solo exhibition and his debut with Cheremoya.

Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 12-6pm
Website: www.cheremoya.la
Instagram: @cheremoya_la

Image: Patrick Quinn, Poodle with AR in cat condo, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 in / 152,4 x 127 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Cheremoya, Los Angeles.

Patrick Quinn: No Problem! Here’s the information about the Mercedes CLR GTR...

Cheremoya

parrasch heijnen is pleased to present Teresa Tolliver: Sitting on the Edge of Reality, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery following her powerful and prominent inclusion in the Hammer Museum’s biennial Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living in which the artist presented a wall installation of a dozen sculptures from her ongoing “Wild Things” series, begun in the 1980s. The works in Teresa Tolliver: Sitting On The Edge Of Reality date from 1994-2024 and are an exploration of her practice in a variety of media and series.
Teresa Tolliver (b. 1945, Los Angeles, CA) has worked across a variety of mediums, from ceramics to painting to sculpture, throughout her more than four-decade-long career, exhibiting with Brockman Gallery, Los Angeles, early in her practice. Through assemblage, Tolliver draws on histories of the Black diaspora in Los Angeles, particularly South-Central L.A., where the artist was born and where she still lives.

Tolliver creates hand-built ceramics and utilizes found objects that emerge from her everyday life, as well as craft materials, mass-produced items, and elements she picks up at swap meets. She gathers these objects to construct deeply personal figurative sculptures and wall works that range in scale from hand-held and doll-like, to life-size freestanding figures evocative of the Watts Towers not far from her home, and a locus in her artistic life. As Tolliver contends with identity, place, and history both personal and cultural, she refers to the faces in her figurative work as self-portraiture where she embodies and reconceptualizes her mood, state of being, and biography at the time of creation.

“Tolliver’s object-based work and her work as an educator—she has taught for more than two decades in museums, schools, and nonprofit settings—exemplify her commitment to this ethos of world-building,” curator Essence Harden wrote in an essay about the artist’s participation in the Made in L.A. biennial. “Tolliver’s expressive mastery is exhibited in her overall works, her pedagogy, and her ability to morph the mundane into an expansive visual iconography.”

Image: Teresa Tolliver. Photographer: Ed Mumford. Courtesy of parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles, CA.

Teresa Tolliver: Sitting on the Edge of Reality

parrasch heijnen

Thomas Pathe was born in Los Angeles California in 1968. He received his BFA from the ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena in 1991. Pathe has been working as a fine artist for 25 years and has exhibited at Galerie XII, Ruth Bachofner gallery, The Long Beach Museum of Art, and others. His work has also been featured in new American paintings. 

"The pieces in this exhibition are taken from several bodies of work that are very different from one another. Normally, each of them is shown independently. With this exhibit, I am presenting all areas of my work together, showing an interplay between their obvious differences and their points of connectivity."

Thomas Pathe: Selected Works

The LMF Gallery & Darkroom

Exploring intersections of art and activism, Against Monoculture offers a creative lens through which to examine the structural causes and consequences of food inequality. Bringing together artists whose practices foreground the role of food in community, struggle, and survival, the exhibition considers the ways food is a direct link to land, culture, and identity, and how cultivating, preparing, and sharing food are fundamental creative acts.

Exhibiting artists:
Jackie Amézquita, Paola de la Calle, Beatriz Cortez, gloria galvez, Emily Marchand, Narsiso Martinez, Lina Puerta, Emma Robbins, Hana Ward, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Rosa Huerta-Williamson

-

In los pobres comen tan rico (the poor eat so richly) artist and activist Dulce Soledad Ibarra draws connections between access to affordable, culturally appropriate foods and food vending culture in Southern California. Using Mexican market bags, or bolsotes, Ibarra creates embroidered wearable aprons featuring beans, tomatoes, corn, and nopales. One bolsote features a multicolored umbrella, or sombra, signifying the enduring but threatened presence of this cultural icon within the Southern California landscape.  

A portion of this exhibition is presented in the Museum’s front vestibule, which the artist has temporarily transformed into a greenhouse for growing the plants featured in the apron paintings: beans, tomatoes, corn, and nopales. 

Against Monoculture | Dulce Soledad Ibarra: los pobres comen tan rico 

Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum

LAST Projects is proud to present EDEN, curated by Emily Lucid. opening November 15th , 7-11pm with DJ GayFelony, musical performance by MMDA. and performance by Emily Lucid.  Performance Friday Nov 22nd 7pm by bridalxxxpo (Elizabeth Quezada-Lee and Emily Lucid with music by John Bryar) , Poetry Reading  Fri Dec 6th  7pm curated by Marcel Humberto Monroy , and Closing Reception Fri Dec 13 7pm  Performances by Cade Moga, Wyatt Coday, Vaughan Larsen, Poodle (RB E Moran)
 
Islam, Judaism and Christianity all share the story of human experience beginning in a garden. Gardens are inherently queer spaces of indeterminate or intersex living things (plants) arranged by intellectual aesthetics. In the beginning, everything was queer. The fourth iteration of Emily Lucid’s curatorial series EDEN will be a meditation on beginnings. Queerness is inherently a beginning; a marginalized, indigenous and anti-colonial state of being. Everyone and every living thing and every element on earth is queer to an extent. EDEN is an investigation into where it all began and perhaps by retracing our steps we just might sink our teeth into new perspectives on and intersections of the land, the divine and the marginalized human body. EDEN will feature 46 contemporary artists working in photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, video, performance, and technology. Featured artists include: 

Alan Amaya , Alexandra Wiesenfeld, Alyza Enriquez, Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, B. Anele, Bea Vischer, Beck+Col, Cade Moga, Casey Dennison, Charles Kelman, Dorian Wood, Edgar Fabian Frias, Elizabeth Quezada-lee, F. Tibiezas Dager, Genevieve Belleveau, Graham Kolbeins, Huntrezz Janos, Jesse Clark, Jules Garder, Kloud, Kyle Patrick Roberts, Lior Shamriz, Love Bailey, Luka Fisher, Marcel Humberto Monroy, Matt Meinhardt, Matt Town, Matthew Brannon, Min Ji Son, MMDA, MTHR TRSA, Mz. Neon, Nat Decker, Peter Kalisch, Poodle(Rb E Moran), Sammie Veeler, Sandy Loam, Sterling Hedges, Troy Barrett, Van Jazmin, Vaughan Larsen WeirDo, Wyatt Coday, Ron Athey, Sam Gurry & Pau S. Pescador.


EDEN 

LAST Projects Gallery

The California Light and Space movement, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, represents a singular convergence of art, science, and perception. Visionary artists within this movement sought to push the boundaries of traditional forms and mediums. By embracing unconventional materials such as glass, resin, and industrial plastics, they redefined light, volume, and color, treating these not as mere compositional elements but as essential materials that shaped their work.

In Luminaries of Light: Pioneers of the California Light and Space Movement, The Honarkar Foundation presents an exhibition featuring iconic works by the movement’s foremost figures: Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Mary Corse, Laddie John Dill, Fred Eversley, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, De Wain Valentine, and Doug Wheeler. Collectively, these pioneers transcended conventional two-dimensionality and figuration, focusing instead on how light interacts with space and surface to evoke profound sensory experiences.

Through their innovative manipulation of light, space, and materials, each artist transforms the viewer’s perception, creating works that shift and evolve with their surroundings. Artists such as James Turrell, Robert Irwin, and Doug Wheeler used light as their medium, creating immersive environments where time and perception become fluid. Others, like Mary Corse and Helen Pashgian, crafted objects that seem to transform as viewers move, encouraging an active engagement with the work.

This exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to experience firsthand how these groundbreaking artists redefined minimalism and abstraction, not only as visual concepts but as immersive experiences. By encouraging heightened awareness of light, space, and time, Luminaries of Light pays tribute to the profound impact this movement has had on contemporary art while underscoring the enduring relevance of these works in today’s visual and experiential culture.

Curated by Genevieve Williams

Exhibition Hours: 10am - 3pm, Tues-Sat
Inquiries: hello@thehonarkarfoundation.org

Luminaries of Light: Pioneers of the California Light and Space Movement

The Honarkar Foundation

In her paintings, Eleanor Swordy untethers figuration from its historically constrictive role of subject matter and instead imaginatively repurposes it as a formal device. Round and sculptural, her bodies exist in dynamic space; uninhibited by conventional anatomy, perspective, and scale, they ground each composition and conform to each paintings’ inner architecture, cutting a path for the viewers’ eye to travel across the picture plane. Figures often move toward the outer edges of the frame as if by magnetic push, repeated reminders of her medium’s essential finitude.


Eleanor Swordy: Message Received 

Moskowitz Bayse

PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY is pleased to welcome Japanese artist Wakana Kimura in her first solo exhibition with the gallery, Journey to the West: Alien of Extraordinary Ability.

The classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, attributed to Wu Cheng’en, is a tale of pilgrimage, hardship, and loss. It tells the story of the Buddhist monk Tang Sanzang, who travels West to gather sacred texts, encountering many challenges and enduring great suffering throughout their passage. Tang Sanzang is not alone on this pilgrimage; he has guardians to protect as well as demons to obstruct. This legendary tale parallels the 7th-century Buddhist monk Xuanzang, whose travels to the Western regions (India) took 17 years, resulting in a collection of original Sanskrit texts conveyed to China on the backs of scores of mules.

The title of Wakana Kimura’s exhibition Journey to the West: Alien of Extraordinary Ability offers homage to this extraordinary tale. Kimura presents a personal story, in pictorial majesty, of her journey West, but for her story, West is Los Angeles, California. In Kimura’s chronicling, her odyssey is of a young Japanese woman who leaves her culture and home, moves to Los Angeles, goes to school, works, lives, and learns the language and culture of a country and region unfamiliar to her. She receives a visa, then a green card, identifying her as an “Alien of Extraordinary Ability.” Metaphorically retracing the rewards and hardships of the Journey to the West, she blazes her future. Her demons and guardians are front and center in this exquisite body of paintings, not as a threat or regret but as a powerful reimagining of retaining and transcending identity.

Kimura’s unique studio practice is a symbolic mash-up of East and West, graffiti, and Japanese Buddhist Mandala painting. She employs hybrid Buddhist iconography and mythological characters from many cultures, mixing them in her loose, brushy drawings and paintings of mixed metaphors. Her contemporized figures are cloaked in hot colors, genderless, and exaggerated with distorted time lines and mismatched cultures. Her work also speaks of the migration of culture, as people sought safety from India to China, to Korea, and Japan; how cultural accommodation was shaped by the impact of multiple wars, dominated by warring patriarchies. Understanding the recondite paintings of Kimura is its own journey through symbolic language.

Wakana Kimura | Sonzo | acrylic and vinyl paint, markers on Udagami paper, mounted on silk and gold brocade, backing papers, stored in a paulownia wood box, signed

On view in the exhibition will be Wakana Kimura’s Guardian portraits mounted on scrolls by the Master Hyogushi and Japanese National Treasure, Shosaku Yoshimura. Mr. Yoshimura is a third-generation hyogushi (master scroll and screen mounter), one of only a handful of hyogushi who are allowed to repair and restore Japanese national treasures. The collaboration between Mr. Yoshimura and Kimura is unique; an octogenarian, he agreed to come out of retirement to design and mount her paintings because he valued her vision and relished the challenge of melding a centuries-old tradition with a contemporary artist’s vision of Buddhist iconography. The paintings are on Udagami paper, traditionally produced in Yoshino, Nara Prefecture, a type of pure mulberry paper containing white clay derived from crushed limestone found in the region. The white clay serves multiple purposes, including preventing transparency, repelling insects, acting as an antioxidant (protection against burning), and maintaining elasticity. Uda paper is recognized as the finest Japanese paper, often used for the restoration of cultural properties.

Wakana Kimura | LA Mandala | 2023 | watercolor, sumi ink, marker, acrylic & vinyl color on paper | 314 x 102 inches (four panels, 102 x 79 inches each

Along with the stunning scrolls will be a large mural, LA Mandala, exhibited during the 2023 City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Independent Master Artist Project (COLA) exhibition. We expect the 314-inch-wide painting, comprising four panels, to span the length of the gallery’s first room.

We're also pleased to announce that Wakana Kimura's select scroll paintings will be on view in our booth at Untitled Art Fair in December 2024.

Wakana Kimura was born in 1978 in Izu, Shizuika, Japan. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Japan. She received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2011 and a BFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2002. Kimura is the recipient of the 2023 COLA Independent Artist Project, Los Angeles; the 2017-2020 Robertson Recreation Center mural from the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles; and in 2013, she received a commission from the Los Angeles Metro, Through the Eyes of the Artist. Museum exhibitions include RSVP Los Angeles: The Project Series at Pomona, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont; IMA, Hinokisoken, Museum Meiji-Mura, Aichi, Japan; and Invoke, Udatsu no Kogei Kan Museum, Fukui.

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We are pleased to announce the late, but very welcome addition to the current exhibition, Nobuhito Nishigawara. On view are thirteen extraordinary ceramic sculptures from his current series, Qualia.

Drawing from his immigrant experience, Nobuhito Nishigawara hand-builds ceramic sculpture to release sensorial and emotional aspects of experience. The current series, Qualia, explores the dual cultural forces of Japan and North America that shape his relationship to identity. From his childhood in Japan to moving to North America to attend school as a young man, he recalls “suppressing emotions to fit in.” Through the complex gestural forms of his sculpture, Nishigawara offers himself a refined elegant conduit for all that is withheld.

Nobuhito Nishigawara was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1974. He currently holds the position of Professor and Head of Ceramics, Visual Arts Department, California State University, Fullerton. Recent exhibitions include Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, and the Trophy Room, Los Angeles.

Wakana Kimura: Journey to the West: Alien of Extraordinary Ability | Nobuhito Nishigawara: Recent Ceramic Sculpture

Patricia Sweetow Gallery

Please join us this Saturday for the opening reception of ‘SOUVENIRS’ 

Refreshments will accompany the event.
Rideshare is encouraged.

la BEAST gallery is thrilled to present 'SOUVENIRS,' a solo presentation of oil paintings by celebrated muralist Abel Macias. Unlike traditional landscape painting, this body of work delves into the sensory experience of what it’s like to absorb nature through synesthetic eyes. Macias emphasize’s space not through the use of light and shadow but through the simplification of pigment and pattern. He suggests that the act of gazing upon the world is much like flattening an image into a visual quilt. The ensuing blanket is succinct yet fascinating; a true deconstruction of texture, color compatibility, and inner-reflection. “Too much information is never a good thing.”

About the Exhibition
What is particularly striking about Macias’s approach, is his philosophy on ‘seeing’. “When I am out in nature, my instinct is to scan the landscape and summarize it quickly.” Pushing through his optical bias’s, Macias entertains the notion that his paintings are not merely meant to be examined from his point of view but to be experienced from a more universal lens. He actively zooms in and out of focus, capturing both the grandeur and the minutiae of his subject matter. The result is as a complex overlay, where background and foreground disappear and the space between objects no longer exists.
 
Characterized by rough, gestural brushwork, each painting starts with the creation of a textured ground, reminiscent of the stucco walls often seen in his larger works. This preparation feels important, demonstrating a keen connection between his well known mural practice and his explorations in the realm of fine art painting. The works on canvas feel different; somehow exuding an aura. Unencumbered but also quite contained, these compositions fracture natural forms, reassemble the constituents, and present enchanting kaleidoscopic gifts.

The bridge between realism and memory is a tremulous and strange place. Oftentimes, the world behind our eyelids, though a reflection of our surroundings, only shares the compressed truth; filled-out yet beautifully distorted. Source reality, it seems, is just a starting point, a beginning, on a long road of rendered experiences. "These landscapes are my souvenirs. I make paintings of magical places—that smell of being there—the swirl of senses that encapsulate being somewhere extraordinary."

Please email info@labeastgallery.com to learn more about this artist.



Abel Macias: SOUVENIRS

la BEAST Gallery

Stroll Garden is pleased to announce "Cartes Postales," ceramicist Raina Lee’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Inspired by the artist’s recent residency in Paris, “Cartes Postales” features a new series of ceramic works inspired by the sights, tastes, and rich artistic legacies of the City of Light. The exhibition marks two new directions in Lee’s practice, representing the debut of her first paintings and her first figurative works.

Over the course of a month, Lee walked through the city as a flâneur, observing the nuances of urban Parisian life in the era of late capitalism. She recorded her observations through sketches and watercolors captured in between visits to museums and studios of Paris-based sculptors and painters, from the Giacometti Institute to Monet’s Giverny. Drawing from Jean Arp, Auguste Rodin, Vincent Van Gogh, Leonard Foujita, and Ellsworth Kelly, she noted the pivotal role that time spent in France played in many artist’s lives and trajectories. “Cartes Postales” is a continuation of her personal dialogue with the rich history of art and artists in Paris and the everyday pleasures of urban life in the storied city.

“Cartes Postales” showcases sixty delicately rendered relief-style ceramic postcards depicting Parisian landscapes, objects, and artworks—from the iconic to the mundane. Each postcard is a complete small-scale painting, with drawings first etched into the clay, then painted with the artist’s signature textured glazes.

The wall mounted series will be accompanied by sculptural objects the artist crafted based on the iconography of her paintings. These sculptural works include a large slab of butter with a removable knife, a Bernard Palissy snake platter, a Sevres Breast Cup made for Marie Antoinette, and a Giacometti figure. The largest work, Giverny, is a life-size installation based on Monet’s pond, reinterpreted with ceramic water lilies arranged on a mirrored table in the center of the gallery space. The “pond” simulation will reflect a sky scene projected on the ceiling above, the very same reflection Monet so often depicted in his most famous series.

Raina Lee is a second generation Taiwanese-American artist and writer based in Los Angeles. She received her BA in Sociology from UC Davis followed by an MA in Media and Film Studies from The New School. Working primarily in ceramic glaze and clay, her practice is in conversation with classical ceramics as well as painting. She creates painterly compositions with extreme colors, volcanic textures, crackly finishes only possible through her custom ceramic glazes. She works on a range of forms— classical Chinese and Greek vessels, extruded 3D printed ceramic reliefs, and slab glaze paintings. Her work is influenced by video games, science fiction futurism, and a Southern California immigrant upbringing. She grew up between Taiwan and her parent’s pizzeria in Torrance, California.


Raina Lee: Cartes Postales

Stroll Garden

"Now and Now and Now"

A group exhibition, "Now and Now and Now," unfolds,
Where photography, objects, poetry, and sound converge, 
Curated by Victoria Chapman and Stevie Kincheloe

Exhibition dates: November 8 - December 14, 2024
Exhibition Hours: Thursday - Saturday from 1pm - 4 pm

El Nido by VC Projects, 1028 N. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029
https://www.elnidostudio.art  Email: victoria@vcprojects.art

Featuring work by Ipshita Maitra, Francesco Tori, Linda Zambolin, Silvia Gaffurini, Stevie Kincheloe, L.Mikelle Standbridge, Tamara Reynolds, Melody Joy Overstreet, Greg Smith, and Alexandra Terlesky

"Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted."
— Sylvia Plath, an excerpt from The Diaries of Sylvia Plath, circa 11 September 1950

This exhibition takes viewers on an evocative journey through the intricate layers of human experience.

Through photography, poetry, sound, and objects, it delves into the essence of the present moment—fleeting, profound, and resonant.

Photography, with its ability to capture time in a single frame, serves as the entry point, inviting contemplation on the transient nature of existence. Reflective compositions reveal the interplay of sight and motion, provoking introspection on life's ephemeral beauty.

Poetry threads through the exhibition, amplifying the visual experience. Drawing inspiration from Sylvia Plath’s confessional style, experimental yet honest verses unravel personal narratives that echo contemporary life’s complexities. The poetry intertwines with the art, offering deeper reflections on the human condition.

Objects—ordinary and extraordinary—add depth, each one carrying silent stories of past lives and future imaginings. Tangible expressions of memory, these artifacts ground the exhibition, inviting viewers to connect the familiar with the unknown. They evoke both individual and collective histories, enriching the
exhibition with layers of memory.

The exhibition also incorporates Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with lacquer and powdered gold, silver, or platinum. This technique highlights rather than conceals cracks, honoring imperfections as part of an object's story. Rooted in the philosophy of mushin, or “no mind,” this practice
embraces change, non-attachment, and acceptance, revealing how brokenness can transform into a new beauty.

"Now and Now and Now" stands as a testament to art’s transformative power to illuminate our shared humanity. Celebrating the present moment—fragile yet resilient, fleeting yet eternal—it weaves a rich tapestry of visual, poetic, and narrative forms that echo the essence of human experience. - Victoria Chapman

Now and Now and Now

El Nido 

Across three decades, Jafa has developed a dynamic practice comprising films, artefacts
and happenings that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of Black being. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are honored to present the LA-based artist’s first solo gallery exhibition in Los Angeles, featuring recent wall works, sculptures and moving images, including Jafa’s latest film, BG, his deft remix of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, in which Jafa performs an exorcism on the film (and by extension the American unconsciousness) to foreground the Spook that Haunts the American Psyche.

One way into Arthur Jafa’s creative process is to understand he loves Michael Jackson – performer, visionary, iconoclast; jokester whose laughing sleights-of-hand have been submerged beneath tales of heartache, abuse, exploitation, untimely death… that wholly true grim narrative that’s not the whole truth. He (correctly) thinks Off the Wall is Jackson’s masterwork, that the spirit (and Spirit) captured through that album’s peerless pop are a kaleidoscope capture of Blackness that distills, redefines and catapults-intothe-stratosphere Black creativity. The Afros (surrealists, futurists, pessimists ) are all correct in seeing themselves in Jafa’s work, but what we all forget sometimes when we engage his films, photos, sculptures, and installations is there’s a wicked sense of play in play, and beneath the exhumation and presentation of Black pain struggle and genocide is a boundless love of Black people & culture that cannot disentangle the flawless spin / crotch grab / moonwalk / laughing eyes / child prodigy / adult genius / hee HEE from the strange fruit / bombed churches / stolen land / rapes & castrations / forced labor & unacknowledged creativity / geniuses driven mad by the endless repetition of it all. It’s the falling in love with Blackness that makes Jafa high; it’s the being in love that makes him cry, cry, cry…
—Ernest Hardy

Arthur Jafa (*1960, Tupelo, Mississippi) lives and works in Los Angeles. Jafa’s films have been presented at the Los Angeles, New York and Black Star Film Festivals, and recent solo exhibitions of his artwork include Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2024), LUMA Foundation, Arles (2023), Louisiana Museum, Humblebæk and Glenstone, Potomac, MD (both 2021), Fundação Serralves, Lisbon and Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal (both 2020), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver and Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin (both 2018), and Serpentine Gallery, London (2017). Selected group exhibitions include Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main (all 2024), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Baltimore Museum of Art and 14th Gwangju Biennale (all 2023), Musée national des beaux-arts, Québec, Aspen Art Museum and Bangkok Art Bienniale (all 2022), and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, New Museum, New York and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (all 2021). In 2019, he received the Golden Lion at the 58th Venice Biennale.

 Arthur Jafa: nativemanson

Sprüth Magers

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to present Shiva Ahmadi: Tangle, the artist’s debut solo exhibition in Los Angeles and with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view from October 19th through December 14th, 2024, with an opening reception on Saturday, October 19th, from 4-6pm.

Ahmadi masterfully uses her formal skills to invigorate challenging subject matter, blending free-flowing strokes with vibrant bursts of color to captivate viewers through unexpected contrasts—whether in sculpture, painting, or animation. Painting serves as her vehicle for truth-telling, where luminous colors and mystical figures intertwine with violent imagery to illuminate pressing global issues such as migration, war, and the brutal treatment of marginalized people. Tangle features her new works, which focus on female figures immersed in fantastical landscapes of land and water." Ahmadi's technical mastery of watercolor—a medium celebrated for its unpredictability—allows her to explore themes of covering and uncovering. By incorporating screenprints into her paintings, she adds temporal and physical layers, creating a dynamic dialogue between the real and the imagined. Through her inclusion of ruins or clues to a deeper story, Ahmadi encourages viewers to probe beneath the surface of the narratives we inherit, from ancient myths to childhood memories to the modern news cycle.

Born in Tehran, Iran, Ahmadi grew up in the shadow of the Iranian Revolution (1979) and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). The roles imposed on women in Iranian society, including the mandate to wear the hijab, were formative influences on her development as both a woman and an artist. Drawing from mythological figures such as Medusa and Artemis—who symbolize the enduring strength of women despite societal oppression—Ahmadi portrays women in her paintings in positions of physical struggle, contending with vicious animals, walking through fire, and being weighed down by the weight of their own hair, bodies, and surroundings. Her paintings examine the history of patriarchy's surveillance and control over women's bodies, from the mandatory hijab in her homeland to the ongoing struggle for reproductive rights in her adopted country, the United States.

In her Pressure Cooker series, Ahmadi explores the transformation of domestic objects into instruments of violence. Traditionally seen as a symbol of nourishment and care, the pressure cooker has been repurposed in terrorist attacks as a bomb, recontextualizing it as a tool of brutality. Her commentary on women's autonomy extends into this series, where intricate intaglio hand-etching celebrates the domestic role of this everyday object. By aesthetically enhancing the pressure cooker, she invites viewers to confront the unsettling juxtaposition of war and violence against the mundane comfort of its domestic function.

Ahmadi's latest animation, Marooned, delves into the destabilizing effects of politics and war on ordinary people, with a particular focus on the struggles of immigrants and refugees. Composed of 5,172 hand-painted frames, the animation tells the story of people working tirelessly to build a pathway of large rocks leading to a stranded oil tanker in the ocean. As they near completion, ominous figures emerge and seize the tanker, leaving them with nothing.

Ahmadi has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Manetti Shrem Museum in CA (2024), The Rubin Museum in New York City (2021), the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, CA (2017), the Asia Society Museum in New York City (2014), and the College of Wooster Art Museum in Wooster, OH (2012). In addition to holding regular solo exhibitions at galleries in NYC, LA, London and San Francisco, her works have been included in many curated museum group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Notable shows include the "Rising Sun" at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, (2023) "Being and Belonging" at the Ontario Museum of Arts in Toronto, Canada (2023) “Epic Iran” in  Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2023); “A Boundless Drop in A Boundless Ocean” Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida (2021), Catastrophe and the Power of Art”, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2019), “Revolution Generations”, Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar (2019) among others.

Ahmadi’s work is part of permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Dallas Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the San Jose Museum of Arts; the Crocker Art Museum; the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Asia Society Museum in New York; the Manetti Shrem Museum in California; the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago; the Grey Art Museum in New York; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University; The Morgan Library and Museum in New York; the Farjam Collection in Dubai; the TDIC Corporate Collection in Abu Dhabi; and the private collection of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

Shiva Ahmadi: Tangle

Shoshana Wayne Gallery

Rachael Browning’s practice, sliding between photography, sculpture, and drawing, uses humor, tension, and hardware to compose and effect solutions to self-devised problems. In 'This Way Up', photographs and corresponding drawings consider the constancies and discrepancies of form across directly; each photograph, a pseudo-document of a temporary sculptural intervention that the artist makes expressly for the image, positions industrial materials in tension–principally hardware, rope, PVC piping, and plywood–in her studio. The drawings fully abstract each composition, suggesting that materials, rich with potential meaning, may simply be means to an end.

Rachael Browning: This Way Up

A group show exercise for the gallery’s program to illustrate a unique take on the idea of a landscape painting. The goal is to illuminate unique processes and the varying perception each artist has within the genre. Rather than limiting landscapes to just picturesque depictions of natural scenery, we explore a broader conceptual framework. 

Over 20 new works by: 

Logan Adair
Marcus Bernardes
Jaqueline Cedar
Sasha Court 
Ingrid Daniell
Aryo Toh Djojo
Jesse Edwards
Hely Gonzalez
Adam Hedley
Gwen Hollingsworth
Lynda Keeler
Carol Leyba
Matthew Miller
Taishi Nishi
Rick Osaka 
Future Retrieval 
Jessica Swaffer
Laura Vahlberg


Blurry Pastures

Rhett Baruch Gallery 

Night Gallery is pleased to announce the beautiful, an exhibition of new work by Elise Rasmussen, presented in conjunction with PST Art: Art & Science Collide and made possible in part by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Puffin Foundation. This is the artist’s debut solo exhibition at Night Gallery and follows the gallery’s screening of the artist’s 2020 film, The Year Without a Summer, and her participation in Blue State, a formative group exhibition in 2018.

Grief permeates Elise Rasmussen’s solo show the beautiful. Her photographs, shot on medium- format film in and around national parks of the American West, respond both to climate change and to the narrative of stolen land that cannot be uncoupled from the origin stories of our national parks. Rasmussen captures sites of creativity, preservation, climate emergency, and imperialist violence. How to reconcile the undeniable beauty of the landscapes, evidenced in Rasmussen’s photographs, with America’s fraught past—and present? In this suite, Rasmussen offers an elegy both cultural and ecological, macro and micro, as she depicts a changing western landscape.

Many of the photographs include images of fire, an apt visual metaphor for this series, with its evocations of cremation and funeral pyres. Rasmussen traveled by car throughout the West with her terrier Clementine, making regular stops to shoot at national parks and adjacent BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land. She camped just outside the parks’ limits so that she could light unrestricted campfires before bedding down; two photographs shown here capture flames dwarfed by twilit desert skies. Fire also figures in works like last breaths (Sequoias) (2024), which depicts the struggling gasps of a tree in the aftermath of the 2021 KNP Complex Fire, which decimated California’s Sequoia National Forest.

During her road trip, Rasmussen hit iconic “photo-ops” such as the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone Park and Robert Smithson’s famed land artwork Spiral Jetty on the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. These sites are so frequently photographed that they are seared into the “American” consciousness, but Rasmussen expertly presents them from new vantages, in some instances using collage to create continuous landscapes.

Although Rasmussen's work advocates for preservation, it also acknowledges another truth: We constantly lose what we once believed to be constant. We can never fully protect or restore it, only acknowledge its fleeting gorgeousness.

—Cat Kron

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Night Gallery is pleased to announce The Lemon, an exhibition of new paintings by Cynthia Daignault. This is Daignault’s second solo show with the gallery, following Elegy (2019).

Daignault is a painter of life. She depicts the natural world around her, but also the photographs, documents, and screens that permeate everyday life. On November 23, concurrently with The Lemon, she will debut a new commission of paintings in the group show Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968 at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles, organized by Anna Katz, Senior Curator, with Paula Kroll, Curatorial Assistant. For that show, Daignault presents a monumental 486-panel artwork, Twenty-Six Seconds, that reconsiders each frame of the Zapruder film, the home-movie that captured the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Both exhibitions continue and deepen Daignault’s interest in history painting, exploring how images and media shape our shared consciousness.

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The Lemon takes its name from Le Citron, a still-life of a lemon on a dark plate, painted by Édouard Manet in 1880. I’ve come to feel that the act of painting is like walking in a heavy snow. At times I am by myself. The path is so quiet, cumbersome and lonely. But at other times, I find a line of footprints in the snow and walk for a while inside the indentations of someone else’s shoes. Like this, I accidentally run into other painters when I’m working. I see traces of them in a brushstroke, a color, or an idea. Or I purposefully go after them in copies and allusions, trying to commune with them. In truth, I am rarely alone. Collective consciousness exists outside of time.

The only poster in my bedroom as a young child was Monet’s The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil (1881). I bought the print myself at The National Gallery, and I remember telling people that it was my favorite painting. I was always drawn to French painting, and why years later I took my first painting classes in Paris. As a student, teachers often told me that I shared certain innate sensibilities with Manet—in brushwork and color mixing—and I used to imagine an unbroken thread connecting us. It’s moving to remember that painting is a vocation stretching back to very start of human history. In many ways, this show is an attempt to understand the weight of influence. Of history. Of love. Where does one person ends and another begin? After all, just as ideas and works repeat over time and space, so too with people. Aren’t people all just versions and copies as well?

And what are the boundaries of an artwork—where one begins and another ends? In this age of screens and social media, we often think of a painting as its digital image alone, but the nature of any one work stretches far beyond its four sides. Viewership. Historical context. Scholarship. Provenance. A poster on a bedroom wall. Think about music. When does a song end? Does it end when the track stops, and the needle drags across the diameter of a record label? But what of the echo in your mind? Long after the last note has sounded, the melody carries on for hours, like a wave crossing the ocean toward the shore. And what if you teach it to someone else? Does a song end when the last person on earth who ever heard it dies and passes away? But isn’t it still there in the air itself? A desert wind, blowing across the tops of a few bottles could pick out the melody again, even if there was no one there to hear it. Does a song ever end? Or does it just hover unseen in the air, where it always was and always will be, just waiting to play again one more time before the universe explodes?

—Cynthia Daignault, 2024 

Image: Elise Rasmussen, Montana, 2024, archival pigment prints mounted on velvet in walnut frame, 27 1/4 x 36 3/4 in (69.2 x 93.3 cm)

Elise Rasmussen: the beautiful | Cynthia Daignault: The Lemon

Chase Hall has developed an expansive vocabulary for documenting the ever-shifting line between personal and generational narratives. His alchemical approach to his materials, which include the coffee-based pigments and cotton supports that have characterized his work of the last few years, both reflects and critiques the ways in which systemic forces of oppression have divided people, territory, and the physical substance of the planet itself. As its title suggests, each painting in Halfrican poses a series of questions about how identities are constituted, often along lines that are not as clear as they might seem. This show includes paintings in a wide variety of scales, from a twenty-four-foot painting—one of the largest and most ambitious works of the artist’s career—to more intimate portraits in the style of yearbook headshots. It finds him exploring stories of freedom and friendship, as well as archetypal cycles of human development. Group portraits of young men wearing overalls and other work gear, for instance, point to the virtues of collaboration as well as an interest in creating revisionist takes on the American mythos. In many of these paintings, Hall delicately traces the line between self-reliance and participation in supportive community. He identifies how systems throughout the human and natural worlds balance competing needs for self-determination and unity, and reflects on ways in which these themes contribute to the ever-unfolding history of the United States.

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Ruby Neri takes the full range of human interaction as her subject, producing works in which she depicts relationships as alternately mythological, mundane, ecstatic, inscrutable, hilarious, and tragic. Staircase provides a window onto the expansive nature of her project, which includes many different kinds of making that overlap and inform one another. A large-scale bronze sculpture—one of the most complex and intricate forms the artist has made to date—provides a dramatic center of gravity, setting a tone of experimentation not only in terms of physical form and material, but also in terms of drawing and expressive gesture. These qualities are mirrored in the large paintings that find Neri revisiting this important facet of her project for the first time in several years, as well as the pastels and ceramics in which the tactility of color is a primary concern.

Chase Hall: Halfrican | Ruby Neri: Staircase

David Kordansky Gallery

noé olivas: la jornada is a multimedia exhibition that explores the intersections between labor and liberation through collective spiritual work. The exhibition centers the implements and aesthetics of the toolshed, bringing together shears, clippers, buckets, and shovels in tender constructions that bridge the gap between this world and the next. 

noé olivas: la jornada

Charlie James Gallery (2nd location)

Evanescent Echoes
Yumiko Glover

Of Infinite Variety
Hiroko Yoshimoto

Opening Reception:

Saturday, November 16th, 5pm-8pm

November 16 - December 14, 2024
﻿﻿
Gallery Hours:

Thursday-Saturday: 12pm - 4pm and By Appointment


LAUNCH Gallery
170 S. La Brea Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036﻿

LAUNCH Gallery is proud to present two solo exhibitions exploring the beauty, complexity and fragility of our natural world. Hiroko Yoshimoto and Yumiko Glover use their observational tools and personal perspectives to document nature’s current challenges while celebrating its vitality.

Influenced over the past 10 years by important ecology writers Edward O. Wilson and Rachel Carson, Hiroko Yoshimoto has focused on the natural beauty and splendor around her Ventura, CA home. Through her masterful abstract visual language, Hiroko has dedicated her practice to documenting biological diversity, sketching countless examples of source material that have yielded over 130 painted canvases, many twice the size of her petite but determined Japanese frame. In her second solo exhibition at LAUNCH Gallery, she presents these recent paintings of nature through a keen and discerning eye sharing thoughtful observations intended to raise awareness of and foster hope for our current climate challenge.

"In the play Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, Cleopatra is described as a woman of “infinite variety,” a woman of such complexity and rich character who can awe, mesmerize, challenge, excite, and intrigue anyone by her infinite creative mind and being.

The phrase “infinite variety” encouraged me to look into Nature that can create endless variations and permutations of life forms. I have painted more than 130 canvases entitled “Biodiversity.” Indeed, life’s infinite variety and richness bring us a sense of wonder of its abundance and vitality to every corner of our planet. To me, that is the success of life on Earth. I hope my paintings reflect celebration and wonder of such a fecund Earth of today, but with an urgent plea for sustaining it for the future."

In her new painting series Evanescent Echoes, Yumiko Glover explores the beauty of nature through a transitory, cross-cultural lens of Japanese history and philosophy mixed with contemporary influences of her Southern California home. In this new series of paintings, she is tethered to her past by the calm and orderly aesthetics of Japanese gardens employing traditional elements of the bonsai tree, koi fish and rocks. Abstract forms, contemporary colors and technological ques now permeate these reconstructed dreams and recollections presenting an inspiring and satisfying hybrid.﻿

"Zen philosophy, particularly the ideas of impermanence and interconnectedness, plays a key role in this work. The precise shapes of bonsai, the fluidity of koi, and the structured garden landscapes evoke the subtle transformations of the natural world. These images become metaphors for change, illustrating how our relationship with nature is always evolving.

Evanescent Echoes encourages viewers to engage with the present moment, where tranquility and the vibrant energy of contemporary life intersect. Through these works, I invite you to reflect on the beauty of life’s impermanent and imperfect moments, viewing them not as loss, but as a source of energy and vitality."

Yumiko Glover: Evanescent Echoes | Hiroko Yoshimoto: Of Infinite Variety

LAUNCH LA

Tears of Venus is pleased to present our second show, Retold Desires: Works in Fiber by Tien of The World and Kay Khan. This exhibition brings together the work of two textile artists who utilize storytelling via fabrics, thread, and fibers to work and rework their narratives and transform their life stories.

“The Heaviness of Healing” is a collection of eight weavings by L.A.-based artist Tien of The World. This work was done over the span of a year and made from the artist's own intimate apparel, clothing she received as gifts from ex-relationships, other personal garments, and her artist tools like paintbrushes and knitting needles. Not simply materials these objects each hold a very personal meaning for the artist and carry the history of projections, persona, illness, attachment, sorrow, heartbreak, and fantasy. Through the process of weaving these elements are reworked into wall hangings that both transform the physical shape of the objects but also transmute their emotional meaning. The work becomes a blueprint for the artist, a map to consider the realities of the past, the effects they have taken, and the path to move forward into the future. Two polaroid portraits of the artist wearing the garments before they were deconstructed accompa- ny each piece. These photographs help to transport the viewer to the artist's past personas.

"The Resilience of Roses Project" is a body of work by New Mexico-based artist Kay Khan consisting of 3 wearable armored bodices. The artist uses the metaphor of the complex qualities of roses - sweetness, delicateness, and the strength of their thorns - to express her experience living with MS. The corsets contain, protect, and shape the artist’s mind and the wearer’s body. As wearable sculptures, these works symbolize personal strength, beauty, balance, and structure in equal measure, in the face of life's chal- lenges. A total of 5 wearable artworks by Khan are included in Retold Desires, alongside a selection of fiber sculptures from past collections.

In a time of cultural distractions, Tears of Venus is inspired by artists who spend time contemplating and focusing deeply on their process. Please join us for two opening parties celebrating the artist's work.

Tears of Venus is a creative space and gallery in Hollywood that values artful style, self-expression, recy- cling/upcycling, storytelling, and process. We have a curated selection of vintage clothing, jewelry, and historic textiles, for the discerning and inspired.

Come as you are - we enjoy all the many ways people express themselves through clothing and style.

Tien of The World is a Vietnamese multidisciplinary artist specializing in upcycled and reclaimed textile work. She is a hairstylist as well and is known for her gender-affirming haircuts and colors. Originally from the bible belt, she carved her own lane into Los Angeles. Tien is an anti-capitalist, abolitionist and an advocate for marginalized communities, specifically queer artists, sex workers, and people of color. This is the second showing of this body of work.

Kay Khan's textile sculpture explores a variety of forms including vessels, armor, jewelry, and figures. She sees her work as a “mosaic of fragments, collected experiences, information, and images." Her sculptural work is in numerous collections including those of de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Art and Design, New York City, NY; The New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM; Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ; and the Albuquerque Museum, Albuquer- que, NM.

@tearsofvenuscurated	
@kaykhanart	
@tienoftheworld
www.tearsofvenuscurated.com
www.kaykhanart.com	
www.tienoftheworld.com

Tien of The World and Kay Khan: Retold Desires

Tears of Venus

Drica Lobo's solo, PARALLEL REALITIES, debuts at Shockboxx Gallery in Hermosa Beach on Saturday, November 16 at 6pm. ShockBoxx Gallery serves as a pivotal center in the South Bay for artists, curators, collectors, and art lovers to unite and promote the arts. Established in March 2017 by Mike Collins and Laura Schuler, ShockBoxx is celebrated for its solo and group exhibitions that showcase a variety of emerging and established artists from all over the world, offering a continuous flow of fresh artistic influence.

PARALLEL REALITIES invites viewers to enter a realm where dualities coexist—light and dark, vulnerability and strength, loss and discovery. This collection emerged from a deeply personal journey created during the artist's recent residency in France. Drica channeled her grief over her father’s passing into layered, raw expressions of color and form. Through fragmented textures and clashing hues, each piece captures the chaotic beauty of grief, a portal into both sorrow and hope.

The installations echo our shared experience of duality—moments of conflict leading to harmony and contrast that allow us to feel fully alive. Interactive elements, like colored glasses and ripple effects, guide the viewer to consider how personal perception shapes reality. Just as one can choose to see the world through a specific lens, our understanding of life shifts based on the perspectives we embrace.

Ultimately, PARALLEL REALITIES explores contrast as a necessary force for experience. In accepting the darkness, we find ourselves reaching for the light; in discovering one side of ourselves, we unlock its counterpart. Each emotion and experience holds value as they guide us toward deeper connections, not only with ourselves but with the world around us.

Drica is a Brazilian-born, California-based artist who makes modern landscapes, transforming familiar vistas into an optimistic scenario, manipulating shapes through an ethereal gradient layer that directs the eye to an imaginary field of possibilities.Shifting between traveling and working in her studio, Drica creates pieces representing freedom of mind  & dreamlike state. Her fascination with art began as a small child, but it wasn't until she moved to California that her art had a new beginning. 

She currently lives and works in Hermosa Beach, and her art is in public and private collections worldwide. 

Drica Lobo: PARALLEL REALITIES

Shockboxx Gallery

Xela Institute of Art is pleased to present The Subtleties of Levitated Things, a solo exhibition of the work of chris velez. Opening on October 5, 2024, the exhibition will be on view until December 15, 2024. 

velez is, in the first place, a shapeshifter: his interdisciplinary practice spans painting, sculpture, performance art, video-work, photography, and new genres. The breadth of his material and embodied practice reflects velez’ many encyclopedic and varied interests. Many of his thematic concerns address the interface between the bodily, the technological, and the natural worlds, but the representational vehicles that most often appear in his work are avatars — stand-ins for a kind of composite awareness or chimeric body.  

What is, for most people, a clear distinction between the body and the larger natural world dissolves into a colorful jumble of cartoonish pictographs and tripped-out digital mediations through velez’ playful escapades.There is both a surreal and intensely graphic quality to some of velez’ compositional decisions: fleshy earth- and skin-toned material dialects come into uneasy contact with bright exclamations of plastic and super-saturated oil pastel markings, and high culture constantly confronts pop culture in a see-saw of competing perspectives. In his assemblage and tableau works especially, there is the sense that velez has curated a selection of ersatz specimens and put them on view so that the public may reconsider the core nature of each: an iPhone may appear as a tiny, hairy creature in one instance and in another, as a semi- viscous blob dripping off of a table — a clever nod to Dali’s famous clock painting.

For velez, creative practice is seamlessly integrated into everyday life and its amoeba strip of observations. Sometimes, the art is as simple and as incidental as documenting a bright yellow fire hydrant nestled among daisies, or as complex as re-staging an entire office cubicle with all its low-vibrational bureaucratic fixings. velez aims to hybridize and complicate binaristic distinctions between nature and technology, opting for a more rhizomatic referential approach. Pseudo- and actual digital distortions feature heavily in his sculptural and painterly gestures: a basketball hoop may bend impossibly towards the ground, as if a sad cartoon character, a disembodied hand may sprout fungal growths, or an emoticon may float above a drop shadow or within a hyperflat vacuum. TV screens operate, almost archaeologically, as rote stone objects and scenes-within-scenes. They might also reappear as flickering screen-portals displaying jumbles of text and pixelated masses, recalling glitch-art, data-moshing and early internet DIY aesthetics. A viewer is just as likely to encounter a bottled oak tree as an open desk drawer blocked off by a mysterious printed waterscape. Somehow, through it all, velez manages to create uneasy alliances between dimensional material and photographic fragments.

Much of velez’ work unfolds like a retro-futurist vision, a post-human landscape where rogue digital, spectral, and spiritual energies run rampant. The artist is technologically and technically savvy, bouncing between televisual special effects, 3D models, cropped jpegs, and painterly anamorphisms. He animates and resamples ideas by using the visual language of mashups and mixtapes, psychedelics and non-Western spirituality, uncanny valley and humor. His work feels like a new millennium TikTok philosophy, working to connect people’s aesthetic experiences with more simultaneity and immediacy than ever before — but his ultimate ambition lies in expanding collective human consciousness.

Chris Velez: The Subtleties of Levitated Things

Xela Institute of Art

Make Room is pleased to present Office Illusions, Belgium-based Italian artist Jacopo Pagin’s second solo show with the gallery.

In Office Illusions, Jacopo Pagin weaves together temporal layers and symbolic landscapes, investigating the intersections between nostalgia, power, and the illusory promises of recent history. The exhibition engages with a specific cultural moment—the post-Cold War era—when the U.S.-led West proclaimed the "end of history." Marked by globalization, unipolarity, neoliberalism, and faith in technology, this period once represented the belief in a future of endless progress and control.

The exploration of office forms and spaces—those generic, impersonal environments where the narratives of order, management, and power were constructed—lies at the heart of the exhibition. For Pagin, these mythologized spaces and their desks, computers, and sterile interiors point to fragmented utopian aspirations throughout the 1990s and 2000s when the world was believed to be controllable from behind a screen. But the spaces are also deeply ironic, their promises hollowed out by the realities of the challenges, confusions, and conflicts of the present.

Through Pagin's large-format paintings, viewers are immersed in surreal, hyper-anthropized scenes bursting with fragments of the past that oscillate between comfort and disorientation. The depicted objects—desks, chairs, computers—are drawn from aesthetics of vintage design magazines, fashion, and advertising that once embodied success, stability, and the allure of corporate life. Now, Pagin’s distorted, dreamlike compositions reimagine the objects as portals to psychic dimensions where the boundaries between time, memory, and reality dissolve. The symbolic office chair in Technophobic Office particularly takes center stage, embodying the contradictions of the era. More than just a practical object, the chair serves as a totem of administrative power and a vehicle for exploring abstracted layers of work, finance, and control.

The exhibition also features an installation of standardized black office chairs with wheels, deliberately generic and corporate in appearance. Visitors are invited to sit in the chairs and move through the space by playfully navigating the paintings. While rolling from painting to painting, visitors engage with the exhibition as both participants and observers, their movement reflecting the mobility and detachment characterized by the very systems of power that Pagin investigates.

Pagin’s works employ large acrylic washes and intricate oil details on canvas to create a duality of surrealism and abstraction. Up close, the brushstrokes become looser, emphasizing the materiality of the paintings. Yet from a distance, the compositions reveal recognizable objects that feel both familiar and strange. In paintings such as Synchronized and Emolliated, the artist’s use of transparency and collage further distorts the linear perception of time by layering moments of the past and present in surreal forms that embody the contradictions of memory and perception. The imagery exposes the fragility beneath the polished surface. Through this interplay of rigid, man-made elements and more fluid, organic forms, Pagin visually communicates the tension between the cold, calculated structures of neoliberal progress and the unpredictable, natural flow of life.

Office Illusions ultimately presents a critical reading of Western ideals—a glimpse into the seductive aesthetics of power and their enshrined contradictions while reflecting on collective perceptions of time and different cultural and historical reflections. Pagin's practice, particularly in this show, emphasizes not only individual, idiosyncratic memory but also the collective memory that shapes our understanding of history. The impersonal aesthetics—familiar and nostalgic—evoke a collective remembrance of foreseeing a bright future that we now recognize as inconsistent, rhetorical, and speculative, favoring one-sided power. By traversing the ghostly remnants of recent cultural history, Pagin urges us to confront the illusory nature of progress and the limits of our constructed narratives. 

Jacopo Pagin: Office Illusions

Make Room

Michael Kohn Gallery is pleased to announce The river returns nothing of what it takes an exhibition of new works by London-based, Chinese artist Shiwen Wang. For her first solo exhibition with the gallery and in the United States, Wang presents a series of 10 new abstract compositions that piece together the artist’s recurring explorations of natural life and its impermanence. The exhibition will be on view from October 26 through December 20, 2024.

In The river returns nothing of what it takes, Wang engages with the relationship between humanity and the natural world, or as she describes it: “the unity of cosmic life.” The river functions as a metaphor for loss, fleeting time, and collapse intertwined with creation. There is a vanitas quality to the paintings; a subtle rot of human interference lurking beneath the iridescence. In the diptych Belakang Mati, an expansive blue is continued into a narrow rectangular panel below where the belly of a fish unseams open in putrefaction– the viewer bearing witness to its decay.

Wang’s dynamic picture planes emerge from her acute understanding of the fundamental fluidity between artificial and natural light. Her earth-toned and aquatic palettes summon an intuitive command of color, while layers of impastoed oils, powder pigment, beeswax, and fragile egg tempera approximate an aged patina. Her subject matter appropriates the familiar – fish, decaying leaves, a boat wreckage – and translates it into the unfamiliar. These recognizable, repetitive relics visualize the compression of time and create complex ecosystems which toggle between the natural and synthetic.

In spatial harmony, Wang’s work fuses together the relationship between the past and the present, and organic cycles of decay and rebirth. The artist explains the exhibition title references a line found in a novel, written by French author Sylvain Tesson, titled “A Life to Sleep Outside”《츱흼트퇀》: “The river returns nothing, not even the echoes of a cry.” Wang writes, “The violence and suffocating helplessness in the face of life’s impermanence aligns perfectly with the emotional landscape I aim to evoke in my paintings. The river is not just a natural element, but a container—both a tangible material and a symbol.”

Shiwen Wang: The river returns nothing of what it takes

Kohn Gallery

In the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, the act of lighting a candle represents a challenge to the dichotomy of moral absolutes, revealing the complexities within truth and falsehood. The artistic creations of Lorenzi, Hou, and Shmuluvitz beckon viewers to engage in a profound inquiry into the established narratives that shape our understanding of reality. Their works encourage a courageous embrace of the shadows that inevitably accompany every moment of illumination, urging us to delve deeper into the complexities and contradictions that lie beneath the surface of perception. In this exploration, we are invited to confront the nuanced interplay between light and dark, reality and illusion, ultimately enriching our appreciation of the multifaceted nature of existence.

Angelica Lorenzi explores the intersection of function and form, engaging with both utilitarian and decorative objects through materials such as ceramics, papier-mâché, and fabric. By employing traditional materials like ceramics to craft unconventional forms, she actively dismantles traditional structures and conceptions of functional objects. Her sculptures, characterized by intricate adornments, undulating glazes, and tactile textures that often replicate surfaces found in nature, blur the lines between the familiar and the surreal.

Lorenzi frequently incorporates animal-like characters with human features, their innocent appearance in sharp contrast with the more suggestive or mature scenarios they inhabit. These anthropomorphic figures, detailed with human attributes, provoke questions about the dualities of purity and corruption. Through this interplay, her works embody a multifaceted exploration of identity and existence, existing as domestic objects, rituals, and surreal worlds that resist simple categorization. This aesthetics culminate in pieces that subvert everyday perceptions of domestic spaces, presenting them as environments that hover between the magical and the real. In her practice, there is a deliberate tension between innocence and desire, reality and fantasy, truth and deception.

Hou Zhuowu's ink paintings are infused with a sense of spirituality—sensitive and layered—while incorporating elements of collage and AI-generated imagery to create a visual composition that feels both unfamiliar and absurd. The fragmented, multilingual components in his work hint at the plurality and juxtaposition of postmodern civilization, while also reflecting the disorder, anxiety, and ambiguity that define contemporary life. His art is rich with historical and political metaphors, subtly addressing the complexity of modern existence.

Hou navigates the cultural shifts and individual transformations that occur within different social environments. Unlike the harmonious cultural logic of the East or the textualized political identity narratives in the West, his focus lies in the intertextuality of these two civilizations, exploring personal experiences and genuine expressions during periods of "transition" or "movement." He views ink as a highly sensitive and holographic medium, capable of recording traces that are both timeless and immediate. Through a Zen-like process of refinement and spontaneous psychological expression, Hou seeks to reach a form of simplicity and elevated abstraction. His rich cultural background and broad social experiences continuously shape his evolving thoughts and the distilled clarity that defines his artistic practice. Ultimately, Hou’s art serves as a testament to the evolving nature of cultural expression, where history and reality intertwine, provoking reflection and dialogue.

Rebecca Shmuluvitz engages in a world-building exercise through her drawings, focusing on familial female characters within a prehistoric/post-apocalyptic landscape. Drawing inspiration from her lineage of strong women, she seeks to honor ancestral culture, traditions, and struggles. 

This series to be showcased at Unveil Gallery, explores themes of female strength and solitude, as her figures inhabit barren landscapes reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, where the absence of male presence parallels the solitary female experience. The work does not depict a matriarchal society but rather highlights women coping with their own burdens and the passage of time. The figures in the series evoke the likeness of the artist’s grandmothers and great grandmothers, women who endured hardship and were forced to mature early. Often illuminated by one or multiple candlelight sources, the figures are cast in deep shadows that highlight the duality of light and darkness on their faces. This interplay of illumination and shadow creates a striking contrast, imbuing the works with an eerie, haunting atmosphere, where the tension between fragility and resilience is palpable.

Lorenzi, Hou, and Shmuluvitz collectively engage in a nuanced exploration of the complexities surrounding creation, identity, and the shadows that accompany them. Their works invite us to confront the delicate balance between light and dark, reality and illusion, prompting introspection about our own experiences and the societal structures that influence them. Through their distinct yet interwoven narratives, they encourage a deeper understanding of the intricate tapestry of existence, revealing how individual stories are shaped by collective histories and cultural contexts.

Join us for the opening reception on November 9th, and experience this compelling exhibition that illuminates the complexities of creation, memory, and identity. 

For more information, please contact info@unveilgallery.com

To light a candle

Unveil Gallery

Blue is the predominant color on our planet, universally symbolizing peace, tranquility, and inspiration. Its infinite hues, shades, and tints feel innately empathetic, and the color has a transcendent and spiritual quality, making it accessible to all. The air above us and the oceans covering this planet come to life in blue, and in some regard, our futures are linked to this staying true.  

If blue were to take the form of a dream, it would ideally spring forth as a blissful euphoria that is hopeful and open, like a celestial sky. But in the wrong state of mind or circumstances, blue dreams and feelings can easily sway across the divide, coming to life as visions of despair and sadness. In either manifestation, these dreams generally have a surreal and otherworldly edge.

The exhibition Blue Dream highlights artworks by twelve artists united by cerulean palettes that drift towards the softer, more boundless, and buoyant side of this monochromatic spectrum. Some artists featured in the show reflect on the long history of a color so deeply revered and explored by artists throughout the ages; others delve into the more psychological and emotional implications of such a vast color. A few directly highlight the political connections and connotations of blue, given the show’s intentional proximity to the 2024 United States presidential election.

Each artist leans into the beauty and promise of this color with visions and imagery that push toward a brighter future. However, despite existing in this hopeful blue realm, their works are also tinged with an awareness of the darker, less romantic potential of feeling blue and the reality that the freedoms tied to this color are no longer a given. 

Image: Caroline Absher, Blue Hour

Blue Dream

SHRINE

5-7pm: Opening reception
4pm: Umar Rashid and Mika Yoshitake in conversation
5:30pm: Gold Amidst Dust, Contemporary Dance related to Kaifan Wang

BLUM is pleased to present SZTUKĄ DIABŁA TŁUKĄ, Warsaw-based artist Agata Słowak’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. 

Alison M. Gingeras, curator and writer based in New York and Warsaw, sits down with Agata Słowak to discuss the influences and themes that have shaped her latest works.

Alison M. Gingeras: 
Last time I was in your studio, right before you sent the paintings to Los Angeles, I was simultaneously impressed by the new elements in your work and the consistent through-line of self-portraiture that you continue to practice. With each canvas, you’re pushing the genre further, which I think will be quite evident in the grouping of eight you will show in LA. One thing that I noticed was your collection of porn magazines you had spread all over the floor. These aren’t just any old porn magazines—they are super specific to Poland’s history and to the radical social changes that took place during the transition from Communism to Capitalism in the early 1990s. Why did you start collecting those? How have those images transpired upon your new works? Why are they compelling for you? So many of your new dynamic narrative compositions are perhaps coming from those magazines?

Agata Słowak: 
These are not randomly selected magazines! These Polish erotic magazines from the 1990s interest me on several levels. What fascinates me is a certain kind of nostalgia (I was a child during this transition period, so obviously, I wasn’t aware of its gravity). These magazines are aesthetically and distinctively pre-internet, so they’re noteworthy. More significantly, they were being published at a moment when people began talking about sexuality in Poland. In the times of the Communist Polish People’s Republic, Poles’ sexuality was suppressed and superficial, an important social trend that was reinforced by the dominance of the Polish Catholic Church. These porno mags are also incredibly interesting visually, due to their naturalism and the limitations of resources at the end of the last century; there is no retouching, no plastic surgery, and virtually no access to professional make-up artists. The photo editorials depict “real” people, paradoxically, somewhat escaping the patriarchal canon of beauty. They’re a wonderful time capsule, bearing imperfections at different ages, social structures, and sexual orientations. And apart from this type of inspiration, these magazines make great reference material for models! We find expressive ready-made body arrangements that are fantastic for dressing up in compositions and painting these photos are not easy to find on the internet today. The images are very niche and have a strong character of time and place, making them unique.

AG: Another striking departure in this work is the appearance of more direct symbolism. Can you talk a bit about the Polish Eagle that appears in one of your self-portrait nudes, Polka / Jaki kraj taka Prometeusza // Pole / Such a Country Such a Prometheusess (2024)? There have always been some sly elements of Polish identity in your works—very codified landscapes, Catholic references, rural settings—but the Polish Eagle is such a monumental and official signifier. I’m wondering what prompted you to insert such a loaded symbol into one of your recent tableaus.

AS: The work with the eagle was created during the holidays, when I was visiting the region where I grew up. I came across the small village of Zalipie, where I discovered wooden houses painted by a women’s guild. One of them had an eagle made of pinecones—it was all based on a strong sense of Polish identity; I felt something native about it, something unique. I also don’t like it when symbols related to patriotism are appropriated by the conservative side, nationalists, and right-wingers. I believe that representatives of minorities also have a civil right to these symbols.

AG: There are so many indelible images that stuck with me during our studio visit. The lady humping a cactus, pictured in Down in Mexico (2024), was one of the most memorable images that haunted me. Can you tell me about this picture? Who is she? I feel this is an allegory, but I would love to hear your narration around this stunning work.

AS: In a way, it’s about the strength of this woman; I wanted to visualize the increasing desire for a certain insatiability and think about the limits of the strongest orgasm. Is there a limit? This cactus can express something seemingly strong, giving strength and security, such as a man with a strong position, a prize in a competition, and such. This painting is actually not quite my style— the Mexican atmosphere is a real departure, but I just wanted to paint this strong motif.

AG: The appearance of “non-finito” is a new element in your forthcoming show. I very much liked these deliberately unfinished, rather gestural paintings. And I particularly liked seeing them hanging side by side with your more “classical” signature style of this renaissance technique, deploying layers of underpainting that you usually utilize. The tension is super interesting, and to me, the images feel a bit like the remnants of dreams...how one remembers strong dream-images without recalling the storyline or only fragments that float in the haze of your memory when you wake up. Is that something you were thinking about at all?

AS: I’ve long been drawn to the unfinished, as a conscious decision. Both in the contrast of the detail, such as a portrait and the background, as well as in a certain type of gestural painting technique. I don’t want to give up on overworked narratives that have many layers and are built slowly on the canvas—but expressive, intentionally unfinished works allow the concept to remain fleeting and have a dreamlike expression. The concept of combining this gesture with sleep is beautiful and seems extremely accurate to me. What remains from intense sleep is essence and fragmentation.

AG: Dream space is a major trope in your work, not only in these hazy, fractured images but also in the sense that certain themes and symbols reoccur frequently. One such theme that is in this new body of work, and also very present in previous works, is the question of reproduction. The possibility of procreation, your internal struggle with potential motherhood, the desire and repulsion of childbirth, the visceral depiction of the body as a potential vehicle for reproduction: the question of having a child seems to haunt you. And like with dreams, the recurrence of childbirth imagery is both consistent and shifting in your work, from painting to painting. It is as if reproductive justice and the maternal compulsion seem to be in conflict in your work—just as they are in our socio-political sphere?

AS: You’re right that painting can emerge from that part of consciousness as dream fantasies. There are people and motifs that come back to us from the subconscious, relationships and themes that seem to organize our lives, hanging over us like ghosts. The topic of reproduction is extremely vivid and topical for me, and I’m not just talking about the current political fight for abortion rights, just personal dilemmas arising from the opportunity my own body potentially gives me. How many life-shaping decisions resulted from the very fact that such a choice is a viable option? We feel the pressure of a ticking clock. Since it doesn’t happen passively, how should one make a decision? When? With whom? And how, so as not to miss out on commitments and work? On the one hand, one can be a mother of art and treat it as one’s relationship and offspring, accepting that perhaps there are other things one is called to do, opposed to most people. On the other, there’s the feeling that one is giving up such an intense experience in life. Freedom and independence have their weak points here. Painting only perpetuates this lack of answers. On the one hand, the atmosphere of the family home is a simple expectation of a physical extension of life. On the other, there’s the devastating fear that accompanies a late period—that despite being sexually driven, the person isn’t ready for parenthood, and that the creative state would be ruined.

Agata Słowak (b. 1994, Busko-Zdrój, Poland) paints audacious pictorial narratives with a disarming, Old Master-stylistic flair. Whether appearing alone or in group tableaus, Słowak’s youthful mien engages the viewer with the same defiant yet serene gaze. The artist is almost always the protagonist of her scenes that surpass conventional self-portraiture and tasteful subject matter with their allegorical density. Perfumed with a radical strain of feminism, her compositions are overloaded with Catholic iconography, Neoclassical art allusions, visceral bodily fluids, and graphic sexual acts. Her canvases manifest a relentless need to probe the intersection of her personal desires and collective political struggles. Słowak has received recognition since her recent arrival on the international art scene. Her work has been presented at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art (2022) and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2021, 2019), among other institutions and galleries.

____


Opening Day Event: Umar Rashid and Mika Yoshitake in Conversation, 4pm

As part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, BLUM is pleased to present Los Angeles-based artist Umar Rashid’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, The Kingdom of the Two Californias. La Época del Totalitarismo Part 2. This second installment of Rashid’s Epoch of Totalitarianism series rejoins the artist’s fictional Frenglish conquerors in the 1800s as they attempt to maintain a stronghold in the Americas. Bearing an undeniable resemblance to the history of the Spanish Empire in the Californias, the monstrous power of colonialism is emphasized by Rashid as he portrays the Frenglish with otherworldly militant advantages from the science fiction genre.

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Opening Day Event: Gold Amidst Dust contemporary dance performance by artists Gema Galiana and Emily Meister, 5:30pm

BLUM is pleased to present One Piece, Berlin-based artist Kaifan Wang’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

There is a nomadic underpinning to the way that Wang thinks—this mindset sentimentally unifies the artist’s practice as well as this exhibition. Born in Hohhot, China, an area with a long cultural history that has been buried by rapid urban development, and living in Berlin, Wang is a masterful and worldly storyteller with the unique ability to find overlap between the histories of the Chinese diaspora and the preexisting narratives embedded within the places where he lives or works. For Wang, migration is a means of traversing cultural references across time and space to find meaning in the now. 

The artist draws out disparate references and discursively relates them to one another in surprising ways. Wang nods, for instance, to emigrants from Inner Mongolia through the movement and gestures in his paintings—some strokes moving along the pull of gravity or the natural flow of the composition and others moving against. Bearing in mind the stark contrast between the history of Chinese and Western abstract painting, Wang’s style ruminates on fractured cultural identities and the fluidity of human migration through flowing gestures and plumes of oil, oil stick, and acrylic on canvas—offering conclusions at once intellectual and emotive on a topic that is otherwise quite slippery.

While doing research for One Piece, Wang visited Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze (1901–1902), a mural commissioned for the Secession Building in Vienna, Austria in which Klimt depicted Wagner’s literary interpretation of the swelling crescendos and opulence of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony as an expression of desire. As though with a gold thread, Wang draws unlikely parallels between the gold of Klimt’s goldleaf, the sandstorms of the artist’s childhood, and the gold rush that drew in the first generation of Chinese migrants to the United States. Here, gold becomes the intersection of desire and personal memories.

Wang’s painting Gum Shan (2024), for instance, takes its title from a Cantonese name given to San Francisco that translates to “gold mountain.” Gum Shan captures Wang’s vivid visions of the glimmer of hope that might motivate nineteenth Chinese prospectors arriving in California to mine gold—encouraged to marry and have children, sometimes just months away from their departure dates, they were meant to work hard and send their profits back home. As Wang puts it, “The inherent contradiction in the relationship between searching and desire is bondage.” The yearning for happiness can be a yoke along the path to autonomy.  

One Piece, a Japanese manga and animation, is a story of risk-taking, adventurous seafarers, each representing different civilizations and spirits. All characters in this tale are driven to find the ultimate treasure of a fabled prize known as the one piece—although its nature is shrouded in mystery, this treasure unifies the characters in a common trajectory. This idea pervades Wang’s practice, apparent in the fusion of his vast array of references as well as each individual story. Reverse Mountain (2024) is a surrealist landscape. Its water flows upward along a golden mountain range toward the important gateway to the New World. Calm Belt (2024) is the impediment posed toward those who want to enter this same world. In this peaceful vignette, there is neither wind nor currents that could propel a ship toward successful passage to the coveted destination. 

One Piece coincides with the release of Kaifan Wang’s first monograph. Eponymously titled, this in-depth exploration of the artist’s practice features essays by Xiaoyu Weng, Martin Herbert and Marta Gnyp.

Kaifan Wang (b. 1996, Hohhot, China) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He studied in Shanghai and Florence before completing his Fine Arts education at the Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany in 2022. Wang has exhibited his work in prominent group exhibitions, including Supercrowds/Super community, TANK Shanghai, China (2024); Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China (2023); Briefly Gorgeous, Songwon Art Center, Seoul, South Korea (2023); Temporary Chapter, Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin, Germany (2022); Caused BY Hair, Shanghai Himalayas Museum, Shanghai, China (2019); and FLUXUS+Studios, FLUXUS+ Museum, Potsdam, Germany (2019). Wang was featured in Influential 2023: Forbes China Contemporary Young Artists and won the Ivan Juritz Prize 2022, funded by King’s College London and Mahler & LeWitt Studios in Spoleto, Italy. He also received the HVB KunstCUBEs One-Year Artist Grant. The first monograph of his work will be released in October 2024. 

About BLUM
BLUM represents more than sixty artists and estates from seventeen countries worldwide, nurturing a diverse roster of artists at all stages of their practices with a range of global perspectives. Originally opened as Blum & Poe in Santa Monica in 1994, the gallery has been a pioneer in its early commitment to Los Angeles as an international arts capital. The gallery has been acclaimed for its groundbreaking work in championing international artists of postwar and contemporary movements, such as CoBrA, Dansaekhwa, Mono-ha, and Superflat, and for organizing museum-caliber solo presentations and historical survey exhibitions across its spaces in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and New York. Often partnering with celebrated curators and scholars such as Cecilia Alemani, Alison M. Gingeras, Sofia Gotti, Joan Kee, and Mika Yoshitake, the gallery has produced large-scale exhibitions focusing on the Japanese Mono-ha school (2012); the Korean Dansaekhwa monochrome painters (2014); the European postwar movement CoBrA (2015); Japanese art of the 1980s and 1990s (2019); a rereading of Brazilian Modernism (2019); a revisionist take on the 1959 MoMA exhibition, New Images of Man (2020); and a survey of portraiture through a democratic and humanist lens (2023); among others. BLUM’s wide-reaching program includes exhibitions, lectures, performance series, screenings, video series, and an annual art book fair at its base in Los Angeles. BLUM Books, the gallery’s publishing division, democratically circulates its program through original scholarship and accessible media ranging from academic monographs, audio series, magazines, to artists’ books. Across the three global locations, BLUM prioritizes environmental and community stewardship in all operations. In 2015, it was certified as an Arts:Earth Partnership (AEP) green art gallery in Los Angeles and consequently became one of the first green certified galleries in the United States. The gallery is also a member of the Gallery Climate Coalition, which works to facilitate a more sustainable commercial art world and reduce the industry’s collective carbon footprint. BLUM is committed to fostering inclusive and equitable communities both in its physical and online spaces and believes that everybody should have equal access to creating and engaging with contemporary art.

Press Inquiries

Nicoletta Beyer
Communications and Editorial Director, New York
nicoletta@blum-gallery.com

Christie Hayden
Communications and Social Media Editor, Los Angeles
christie@blum-gallery.com

Agata Słowak: SZTUKĄ DIABŁA TŁUKĄ | Umar Rashid: The Kingdom of the Two Californias. La Época del Totalitarismo Part 2 | Kaifan Wang: One Piece

BLUM

“Post Human was virtually a manifesto trumpeting a new art for a new breed of human,” wrote the art historian and curator Robert Rosenblum discussing the impact of the exhibition in the October 2004 issue of Artforum.

In 1992, Post Human, curated by Jeffrey Deitch, brought together the work of thirty-six young artists interested in technological advancement, social and aesthetic pluralism, and new frontiers of body and identity transformation. Through their art, these artists were exploring the same questioning of traditional notions of gender, sexuality and self-identity that was—and still is—taking place in the world at large. Capturing a developing social and scientific phenomenon, Post Human theorized a new approach to the construction of the self and interpretation of what defines being human. The exhibition set the agenda for the 1990s, and its influence on artists and philosophers led to a new field of academic study.

In her book Posthuman Feminism (2022), the philosopher and feminist theoretician Rosi Braidotti credits Deitch for capturing “the avant-garde spirit of the age by foregrounding the role of technology in blurring binary boundaries between subjects and objects, humans and non-humans.” She adds, “Post Human showed also that art assumed a much more central role as it merged with science, computerization and biotechnology in further re-shaping the human form and perfecting a flair for the artificial.”

The catalogue of the 1992 exhibition, with its visual essay and innovative design by the late Dan Friedman, also proved lasting relevance. Deitch’s influential essay predicted many of the scientific and sociological shifts that have since shaped our cultural and social environment, even the pandemic.

More than thirty years later, Post Human at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, revisits the theme of the exhibition, bringing the discourse into the present. The show includes several of the key figures who participated in the 1992 exhibition in dialogue with some of the most interesting artists continuing the exploration of these themes today. In keeping with the social and technological trends that
inspired it, the interest in figuration of the original artists and the younger generations presented in the show is conceptual rather than formal.

Much of the then-new figurative work was descriptive of the “real” world but cannot, in fact, be called “realistic” in the conventional sense. That is because so much of the “real” world the artists were reacting to had become artificial. With the concept of the real disintegrating through an acceptance of the multiplicity of reality models and the embrace of artificiality, Realism as it was once known was no longer possible. This new figurative art may have actually marked the end of Realism rather than its revival.

Fully integrated into our pop psychology, the term “posthuman” is now used in everyday conversations and has come to primarily identify with the trope of the cyborg. This exhibition, like the 1992 show, however, examines multiple declinations and aspects of the postmodern construction of personality and the engineering and transcendence of the human body. The artists in the exhibition embrace notions of plurality, metamorphosis and multi-beingness. Cyber-futuristic, surgically improved, commodified, stereotyped, and politicized, the “cultured body” lends itself to reflect on a variety of concerns that define our age.
Several works in the exhibition will embrace the biometrical aestheticization of the human body to address the decay paranoia, the social conflict over genetic engineering and the use of biotechnologies, and the conversation around the limits of “natural” life.” Artists have long engaged with the threats of biometric surveillance, the possibility of virtual reality overtaking our physical one, the accelerating real-time consumption of experience, and the automation of the workforce. As AI’s ability to fulfill our creative and specialized needs has reached mass fruition, artists are confronting the impact of what was once considered speculative science fiction, an everyday reality.

Post Human was first presented at FAE, Musée D’art Contemporain, Pully/Lausanne (June 14–September 13, 1992) and traveled to Castello di Rivoli—Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli/Turin (October 1–November 22, 1992), Deste Foundation, House of Cyprus, Athens (December 3, 1992–February 14, 1993), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (March 12–May 9, 1993), Israel Museum, Jerusalem (June 23–October 10, 1993). A number of the works shown in 1992-1993 are now in international museum collections. Matthew Barney’s REPRESSIA (decline) (1991) is now in the collection of LACMA, where it was on view in 2023. Posthumanism has since been the subject of countless books, movies and high-profile exhibitions.

Post Human will be presented as part of the Participating Gallery Program for Getty’s PST Art: Art & Science Collide, joining in a dynamic exploration of the intersection of art and science this fall. The exhibition is curated by Jeffrey Deitch with Viola Angiolini, Senior Director, Research and Curatorial Projects.

Image: Cindy Sherman, Untitled #638, 2010/2023. Gelatin silver print
Unframed: 20 x 15.25 inches (50.8 x 38.7 cm)
Framed: 29.25 x 22.38 x 2 inches (74.3 x 56.8 x 5.1 cm) Edition 1 of 6, 1 AP. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. © Cindy Sherman

Post Human

Jeffrey Deitch | Orange

NOON Projects is honored to present “Emotional Alchemy,” a solo exhibition featuring a selection of abstract landscapes by Gail Factor, drawn from her extensive career spanning over five decades.

Gail Factor (1942–2013) was a pioneering painter whose landscapes were deeply inspired by her surroundings in Carmel, California, the Big Sur Peninsula, and later, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her oeuvre reflects distinct periods shaped by personal experiences, the natural world, and significant historical events.

In the 1960s, Factor studied painting and drawing at the University of Southern California, where her signature artistic style began to emerge. An emotive and introspective artist, she channeled her observations and reflections into her abstract work, using painting and drawing as a medium to process profound personal and societal emotions. Throughout her life, Factor’s practice navigated various phases marked by relationships, wars, her physical location, and internal challenges, translating these experiences into vibrant, transcendent canvases.

“Emotional Alchemy” features a selection of small pastel drawings created in the 1960s during her time at the University of Southern California. Inspired by a burgeoning community of mid-century artists in Los Angeles, these pieces depict her developing artistic style and mark the beginning of her exploration into non-representation.

Factor's unique approach to abstraction draws from a rich tapestry of influences. In 1963, she was awarded a fellowship to study in Europe, absorbing classical painting, Impressionism, and the emerging post-war abstraction movement. Back in California, she worked alongside the artists of the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and '60s, among contemporaries Richard Diebenkorn and Henri Villierme. Upon relocating to Santa Fe, she became part of the artistic lineage of luminaries like Georgia O'Keeffe and members of the Transcendental Painting Group.

"Emotional Alchemy" highlights significant periods in Factor's 50-year career, showcasing her evolution from early pastels in the 1960s to pieces inspired by the Gulf War and her expansive work in Santa Fe. While her paintings primarily focus on landscapes, they were not created en plein air but instead emerged from her inner landscape, reflecting emotional depth and transcendence. Factor's career is defined by distinct periods and styles, yet her distinctive hand and approach to abstraction remains constant. Factor’s paintings transform the splendor and complexity of the human experience into something beautiful and sublime, inviting viewers to explore and immerse themselves in her vision of heaven and earth.

Gail Factor: Emotional Alchemy

October 26 – December 21, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 26, 2025 6–9 PM

508 Chung King Court, Los Angeles CA 90012

For more information email info@noon-projects.com


Gail Factor: Emotional Alchemy

NOON Projects (2nd Location)

Sydney Acosta, Raghvi Bhatia, Molly Bounds, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Anthony Cudahy, Lenz Geerk, Rose Haserodt, Zoe Koke, Becky Kolsrud, Molly Larkey, Audrey Leshay, Kristy Luck, Erica Mahinay, Suchitra Mattai, Chris Oh, AJ Pineda, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, mosie river, Betye Saar, Ian Stanton, Erin Wright and Brenna Youngblood.

Roberts Projects is pleased to present On Alchemy, a group exhibition that engages alchemy’s rich history and visual language to re-evaluate artistic production of the 21st century. Bringing together more than 20 individuals working in painting, sculpture and mixed-media, this exhibition positions artists as the alchemists of our era to generate new perspectives on contemporary art and meaningful insight into the creative process.

With origins dating back to ancient Egypt, the centuries-long pursuit of alchemists can be distilled into a singular objective: to perfect the human mind, body and soul by harnessing the power of forces beyond our understanding. This desire was represented in the form of the Philosopher’s Stone, an unknown, mythical substance with the ability to cure any disease, transmute base metals into gold and produce the elixir of immortality. While alchemy was demoted to a pseudo-science during the 18th century, its lasting impact on human civilization—and countless artists across generations—can still be measured in the multitude of belief systems that emerged in its wake, including astronomy, philosophy, psychology, theosophy and transcendentalism.

Like shining light on a prism, new and recent works by participating artists reveal the vast spectrum of alchemy’s contributions throughout time. The process of chrysopoeia is mirrored in works that transform everyday images, objects and materials into proverbial “gold.” Sculptures of metal and clay—created with methods that can be traced back to the Neolithic Age—convey sentiments that are wholly contemporary. Oil, water and crushed stones are manipulated into representations of (un)reality, indexes of observation and accumulations of gesture.

Together, the artists in On Alchemy embrace and uphold aesthetic innovation, material investigation and conceptual risk-taking as crucial acts of creative self-determination. By preserving the enduring spirit of this ancient tradition, we may yet find the answers that will carry us into a brighter future.

For additional information, please visit robertsprojectsla.com or contact Alexandria Ryahl, Associate Director at alexandria@robertsprojectsla.com or 323-549-0223.

Image: AJ Pineda, Raphael’s Ascent, 2024. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm).

On Alchemy

Roberts Projects

Murmurs is pleased to present Resurrectura, a solo exhibition of multimodal, kinetic sculptures by Sasha Fishman opening November 9, 2024 from 6-9pm. The works on view––composed largely of moving image, biomaterials, and running water––exemplify Fishman’s sustained engagement with an aesthetics of transcorporeality. Disgust, pleasure, identification, and desire commingle within the interstices of both Fishman’s material structures and the interspecies encounters they speak of.

Sasha Fishman is a NY based sculptor and researcher. She is particularly interested in marine biomaterials, toxicology and energy harvesting as points for critical analysis and mechanisms for sculpting. She is a recent MFA Sculpture graduate from Columbia University where she collaborated with labs on salmon, fountains, and carbon capture materials. Sasha is a 2024 Puffins Grant recipient and a current Artist in Residence at Smack Mellon.  

Fishman has exhibited her work at Below Grand (New York), Resort (Maryland), Hesse Flatow (New York), Bozomag (Los Angeles), ILY2 (Portland), The Jewish Museum (New York), and The Indian Ceramics Triennale (New Delhi, India). She has participated in residencies at Smack Mellon (New York), Art Ichol (India), Acre (Wisconsin), NAHR (Italy) and the High Desert Observatory (California). Fishman has presented her work and run workshops at Printed Matter (New York), Genspace (New York), Navel (Los Angeles), UCLA (Los Angeles), UDenver (Colorado), UColorado Boulder (Colorado), Kenyon College (Ohio), MICA (Maryland), Caltech (California), and CSULB (California). 

Sasha Fishman: Resurrectura

Murmurs

Baert Gallery is pleased to anounce Twofold Vision, an exhibition of new oil paintings by London-based artist Sophie Birch, in her first solo show with the gallery.
Built up in veils of abraded colour, Birch’s layered compositions make visible their construction. She uses an array of implements – brushes, cloths, palette knives, sandpaper – to apply paint and scrape or grind it away until what remains are unstill records of addition and removal, revelation and obscurity, delicacy and force, thought and touch. Overlaid translucencies and textures appear like membranes between interior and exterior realms; their interactions producing moments of optical anomaly and disturbance, invoking stumbling fugue states, through which constellations of images merge and overlap.

Sophie Birch: Twofold Vision

Baert Gallery

We are excited to celebrate the incredible talent within our gallery at our upcoming exhibition, Dazzling Glamor of Creative Pursuit. This exhibition is a testament to the diversity and depth of artistic expression that we have fostered.

We understand that not everyone in the art community has had the chance to attend all our previous exhibitions. This carefully curated selection presents a unique opportunity to engage with the richness of our collective art history while experiencing a fresh and vibrant display. More than just a standalone event, this exhibition celebrates the culmination of past showcases at Mash Gallery, highlighting the enduring beauty and exceptional craftsmanship of each piece. It reflects the dedication and passion of the Mash artists who have poured their hearts into their work, capturing the timeless stories and artistic journeys that have unfolded within our walls.

Art and curation collide in this visionary exhibition. By selecting remarkable pieces from our extensive pool of previously exhibited artwork, we explore how the arrangement and placement of these creations can foster fresh interpretations and ignite new appreciation. Each artwork will be juxtaposed in thoughtfully curated settings that breathe new life into their narratives.

At Mash Gallery, we are deeply passionate about showcasing art for the sake of art, prioritizing creative expression over commercial considerations. Every piece featured in this exhibition has been meticulously handpicked from our artist roster, with many created exclusively for our gallery. This commitment to authenticity is a cornerstone of our mission, allowing us to celebrate the artistry and dedication of our featured creators.

This exhibition will feature a remarkable array of conceptual mixed media pieces, figurative works, along with unique sculptural creation that embodies tactile beauty and complexity of three dimensional art. A vibrant palette will be at the heart of this exhibition, as we explore the drama and intensity of bold, vibrant hues as well as the understated elegance of more muted tones. From the eye-catching and daring to the serene and contemplative, both the seasoned art lover and the general art community will enjoy the diverse variety of styles.

We look forward to welcoming you to Dazzling Glamor of Creative Pursuit and sharing in this extraordinary celebration of creativity.

Participating artists:

Christie Hopkins
Ramona Stelzer
Jon Pannier
Andy Harwood
Didem Yagci
Carrie Fell
Nelly Zagury
Ernesto Guevara
Jose Cacho
Emmanuel Meneses
Marko Gavrilović
Morgane Clavaud
Frank Hyder
Dual
David Jester
Jenny Vinter
Layda Rodriguez
Toni Martin
Jill Daniels
Massimo Damico
Maurizio Battifora
Anthony Liggins
Cabell Melina
Johannes Wessmark
Amanza Smith
Lola Okunola
Ivan Madrigal
Trew Love
Eva Carzul
Alberto Sanchez
Haleh Mashian
Julia Hacker

Dazzling Glamor of Creative Pursuit

Mash Gallery

A simple thematic change in Bagayan's artwork transports the view into alien worlds with big-eyed cosmic children. Bagayan coins this style 'Futurealism'. This series of portraits are painted with an eerie glitch effect. 3D glasses will be provided at the opening for enhanced viewing.

Ana Bagayan: Futurealism

Augmented Reality Exhibition
AR OPEN
At the Venice Public Art Walls

AR Open invites you to immerse yourself in the world of augmented reality artworks blending into the scenic views of Venice Beach – all with your own cell phone. AR OPEN features artworks by Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Jeewi Lee, Pixelated Realities, Dennis Rudolph, Benedikt Terwiel, Jonas Wendelin, and others.

At the heart of the exhibition stands the piece DIDDLE MY SKITTLE (LA), commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles. This AR sculpture delves into themes of gender, power, and alternative world orders, transporting the world-famous Hollywood sign to Venice Beach. It serves as the backdrop for this unique, interactive, site-specific art experience. Jordan's work confronts traditional male dominance, featuring a flying manta ray-like creature that symbolizes female empowerment and resistance against patriarchal structures. Initially inspired by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the piece has evolved to address broader issues of gender inequity and the male gaze in cities such as Moscow, Berlin, Hollywood, and beyond.

PLEASE NOTE: 
The site-specific installation is only accessible on location at the Venice Public Art Walls. This is a web-based project viewed via an AR-enabled smartphone or tablet (2017 or newer) using mobile data.
Attendees must bring their own smartphone or tablet.
No apps are needed to access the installation.
Upon arrival at the Venice Public Art Walls, open www.ar-open.com on your compatible smartphone or tablet.

The map and the works and further instructions on how to view all installations can only be found on the mobile version of the project: www.ar-open.com
All artworks are part of Augmented Studies, an AR program exploring the potential of augmented reality for contemporary art. Based in Berlin and operating internationally, Augmented Studies has produced numerous public art projects and has been running the exhibition series AR OPEN in Al-Zawraa Park in Baghdad since 2021 and in Berlin's Tiergarten since 2022. 

Tag us if you take screenshots of the Installations: IG @goetheinstitut_losangeles
THANKS!


AR OPEN Augmented Reality Exhibition

AR Open @ Venice Public Art Walls

Robert Longo: Shadows & Silhouettes launches Eikon, an ongoing series at Hamilton-Selway that celebrates the works of iconic artists who have left a lasting impact on the art world.

For decades, Robert Longo has explored the realms of hyperrealism and surrealism, crafting powerful visuals that blur the boundaries between shadow and light. Known for his mastery of charcoal—once describing his technique as “making images of paintings out of dust”—Longo’s work captivates viewers with its striking contrasts and profound depth. His dynamic compositions invite us to look beyond the surface and engage with the subtleties of silhouette, shadow, and motion he so vividly brings to life.

This show, Shadows & Silhouettes, centers on Longo’s drawings and lithographs, encouraging viewers to explore what lies beyond the visible. In his Men in the Cities series, isolated figures are captured mid-motion, suspended in expressive, almost sculptural poses that defy gravity. In his wave series, Longo draws us into the crashing power of water, its force amplified by stark contrasts of light and shadow. His animal works, like the striking image of a tiger, reveal a raw, almost mythic quality, rendering creatures with dynamic detail that conveys both grace and strength. Through these artworks, Longo continues to engage us with his mastery of movement, shadows, and silhouettes.

Join us at Hamilton-Selway Fine Art for the debut of Eikon: Robert Longo on November 14th, 2024, from 5-8 pm. RSVP today at gallery@hamiltonselway.com to be among the first to experience Shadows & Silhouettes—and to acquire an iconic artwork for your collection.



Robert Longo: Shadows and Silhouettes 

Hamilton Selway

Aaron Johnson
Andrew Schoultz
Ben Sanders
Hiejin Yoo
Ross Simonini
Jude Pauli
Sarah Alice Moran
Caris Reid

How The Trees See The Stars

Gana Art Los Angeles

Diane Rosenstein Gallery announces Apparitions a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Marty Schnapf. Since 2019, Schnapf has developed a unique visual language with deconstructed compositions anchored in the figure and the natural world. Created in his Chinatown studio, these mostly large-scale paintings foreground figures in elaborately articulated pastoral landscapes and vibrant architectural interiors. This is Marty Schnapf's third solo exhibition with our gallery.

Schnapf’s paintings evoke sensual and psychological space: figures overlap, or a single figure assumes various irreconcilable positions. Apparitions continues an ongoing body of work of emotionally complex tableaus which explore the fluid interplay between the physical and psychological dimensions of human connection, isolation, and independence.

This artist describes his painting practice as a way to communicate with people closely and enter into empathic relationships. “I think of apparitions as an externalization of the innumerable selves we carry within. In much of my work over the last few years I have considered the aspect of these selves that represent our past and future potential. Here, I'm more focused on the arrival of a being that is at once of us and at the same time wholly apart from anything we understand about ourselves.”

Marty Schnapf works in a variety of visual and time-based disciplines, but in recent years has focused on his “foundation” in painting and drawing. Having spent several years developing performance-based installations and events, his investigations in these mediums, particularly dance, continue to inform his work today. Cognizant of the audience’s role in the activation of meaning, he builds multi-layered works that unfold slowly, rewarding prolonged viewing with ever-changing revelations. Schnapf regards his paintings as time-based works. He believes, “there is no better avenue by which to approach the inconstant emotional and psychological space experienced in dream, desire, memory, and premonition.”

Born in Indiana, Marty Schnapf (USA, b. 1977) earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Wittenburg University in 1999, specializing in Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture. He has received solo exhibitions with Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles; PERROTIN, Shanghai; Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles; UNIT LONDON and Alice Black Gallery, both in London, UK. He was a recent artist-in-residence at XENIA Creative Retreat, Hampshire, UK (2023). Schnapf’s paintings have been included in group exhibitions with Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles (2024); GAVLAK Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); PLATFORM (in partnership with David Zwirner Gallery, 2022); and A.MORE, Milan, IT, among others. In Taiwan, he installed a public sculpture at the Soulangh Cultural Park in Tainan City (2018); and he received the 2016 Rema Hort Mann Foundation ACE Grant for “Night Fever,” a sculptural installation in downtown Los Angeles. The artist lives in Highland Park, CA, with his partner, the sculptor Cammie Staros.

____

Diane Rosenstein Gallery announces Assembly — a solo exhibition by Connecticut-based artist Carl D'Alvia (USA, b. 1965). A selective overview of figurative sculpture, installed here in two gallery spaces, Assembly reunites a body of work created over the past decade. This is D’Alvia’s inaugural exhibition with our gallery and his solo debut in Los Angeles.

Carl D’Alvia is a deep lover of art history, and he works in a sculptural idiom that is decidedly hyper-visual, meticulously handmade, and labor intensive. His naturalistic forms -- marble and bronze birds, dogs, magical characters, and even aged timber -- possess an energetic essence that we recognize and relate to real world analogs. ‘There is a fascination with surfaces and the leveling and transformation of totems old and new…into D’Alvia’s unique Minimalist-inflected Baroque-Surrealist language,’ observed curator and writer Dan Nadel (2016).

We are tempted to stroke Barboncino, 2019, a white marble tabletop work shrouded in elaborately carved fur that obscures any dog features like a nose or tail. ‘Every sculpture lives…carpeted in a dizzying surface,’ writes gallerist Lauren Wittels in her 2022 catalogue essay. Especially Rocket, 2022, a bronze birdlike sculpture that appears to be fully enveloped or clad in leaves rather than feathers. Each vein is detailed adding a graphic, Neo-Baroque energy to the surface. Like Barboncino, we do not see explicitly avian features, talons or a beak, but sense the enfolded wings, and imagine that Rocket is destined to take flight. The manifest energy under the veiled exterior is palpable and at times painful.

D’Alvia explains that he is ‘very compelled by this idea of veiling, and this sort of paradox of giving a surfeit of rich visual information on the exterior, but then in the end obscuring the interior of the piece [and] this led to a major theme in my work, that of contradiction or opposition.’ More than a harmonious object the ideal for Carl D’Alvia is an appropriately contradictory one, energized dialectically by its opposites. Drawing on sources that include megalithic monuments, toy design and the Baroque, the work encapsulates seemingly antithetical motifs such as minimal/ornate, industrial/handmade, comic/tragic, progress/destruction and attraction/repulsion.

Carl D’Alvia (USA, b. 1965) was awarded the Rome Prize for Visual Arts (2012-2013) from the American Academy in Rome, IT; and he received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design (1987). Recent solo shows include Hesse Flatow, Nathalie Karg, and Regina Rex, in NY; and in Paris at Galerie Hussenot and Galerie Papillon. D’Alvia’s sculpture was included in exhibitions at Anton Kern Gallery, The Journal Gallery, The RISD Museum, Yerba Buena Art Center, and Feature Inc. The artist lives and works in West Cornwall, CT.

Marty Schnapf: Apparitions | Carl D’Alvia: Assembly

Diane Rosenstein Gallery

Compton Art and History Museum Unveils Compelling New Exhibition: "Corridos from the ‘Hood" The Compton Art and History Museum is thrilled to announce its newest exhibition, "Corridos from the ‘Hood," running from September 14, 2024, to January 4, 2025. This vibrant and dynamic showcase promises to be a must-see event, bringing the pulse of the corridos tradition into the heart of the museum.

"Corridos from the ‘Hood" features a rousing collection of multimedia works that
capture the essence of traditional corridos through the lens of contemporary artists. Visitors will be immersed in powerful narratives told through a mix of archival images, visual art, music, and storytelling, each piece reflecting the rich cultural heritage and raw energy of the community.

Corridos are a traditional form of Mexican ballad that narrates historical events, stories of heroism, tales of romance, and the lives of famous individuals. Over time, various types of corridos have developed, each with its unique themes and characteristics. These ballads serve as a reflection of societal and cultural issues, capturing the essence of the experiences and values of the people they represent.

Compton has become an intriguing focal point for the fusion of traditional Mexican corridos with modern urban influences. This phenomenon is part of a broader trend where regional Mexican music intersects with American hip-hop and other contemporary genres, creating a unique cultural blend. Compton's influence on the evolution of contemporary corridos highlights the genre's adaptability and relevance, preserving its cultural heritage while ensuring its continued resonance with younger generations.

There is also a fascinating and evolving connection between corridos and the legacy of Black and Brown cowboys, reflecting shared cultural histories and narratives of marginalized groups of Black and Brown people in the United States. While the historical connection between corridos and Black cowboys may not be extensively documented, the shared themes of resilience, storytelling, and cultural fusion provide rich ground for exploration, not only into the music, but into Black and Brown cowboy culture in Los Angeles. This relationship reflects broader trends in music and culture, where diverse traditions are honored and blended, celebrating the interconnectedness of different communities.

Modern music movements have further explored these connections. Artists like Lil Nas X, with his hit "Old Town Road," have brought attention to the intersection of Black culture and cowboy imagery, opening the door to exploring similar connections with Mexican corridos. Beyoncé’s engagement with cowboy culture, as part of her broader project to elevate Black history and identity, also contributes to reshaping and broadening the popular understanding of cowboy culture. This resurgence in cowboy culture among Black and Brown communities in the United States is a multifaceted phenomenon rooted in history, cultural reclamation, and contemporary trends, allowing these communities to honor their heritage and find empowerment in a resilient icon.

Exhibition highlights include:
● Immersive Installations that allow visitors to step into the stories and sounds
of corridos and Black and Brown cowboy culture in Los Angeles.
● Archives and Oral Histories from local community members who are actively
a part of cowboy culture in Los Angeles.
● Interactive Workshops and Programming where attendees can create their
own artistic expressions inspired by the exhibition.

Organized by Museum Curator Meredith Lancaster and Compton Art and History
Museum Co-Founder Abigail Lopez-Byrd, "Corridos from the ‘Hood' promises to be an unforgettable experience," said Lancaster. "This exhibition beautifully merges tradition with modern creativity. It’s a tribute to the cultural crossroads that shape Mexican American culture, African American culture, and Compton, where history and innovation come together to create something truly remarkable."

Abigail Lopez-Byrd added, "Corridos are the heartbeat of a community's history—they carry the stories of our ancestors, our struggles, and our triumphs. They remind us of where we come from and give voice to the experiences that shape who we are. In their melodies and lyrics, we find a deep connection to our cultural roots and a powerful way to preserve and celebrate our heritage."

The public is warmly invited to attend the opening reception on September 14, 2024, from 4:30 to 7:30 PM at the Compton Art and History Museum. The event will feature live music and a special photography activation brought to you by C.A.S. Photography. C.A.S. Photography, will offer a hands-on experience with wet plate collodion photography, a technique from 1851. Attendees can sign up for a session and leave with a stunning tintype portrait, creating a timeless heirloom for future generations.

The exhibition opening will also feature a live performance by local musician El Compa Negro, known for his powerful blend of traditional corridos with urban influences. A passionate advocate for Black and Brown cowboys and cowgirls in Compton, El Compa Negro’s music celebrates the resilience and culture of these communities. His performance will be a highlight of the event, connecting the spirit of the exhibition to the vibrant sounds of the neighborhood. Admission is by donation, and tickets can be reserved by visiting: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/corridos-from-the-hood-opening-reception-tickets-978388033947.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to experience the richness of our histories through art, music, and storytelling. Mark your calendars and join us for an unforgettable journey.

Corridos from the ‘Hood'

Compton Art and History Museum

The City of Glendale’s Library, Arts & Culture Department, in collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), an operating division of Caltech and a Federally Funded Research and Development Center for NASA, is pleased to present a new exhibition titled Blended Worlds: Experiments In Interplanetary Imagination, at the Brand Library & Art Center. 
 
Through a series of art and science collaborations, Blended Worlds explores the landscape of human relationships with our ever-expanding environment. The exhibition includes artists collaborating with a team of JPL scientists and engineers to present a vision of the future that invites the viewer to consider the impact of greater connectedness with nature and its ability to foster a renewed sense of wonder and curiosity with our planet and the cosmos. Spanning a range of multimedia and cross-disciplinary works from 11 artists, Blended Worlds features contributions from David Bowen, Darel Carey, Ekene Ijeoma, Annette Lee, Ada Limón, Bruce Mau, Viktoria Modesta, Shane Myrbeck, Moon Ribas, Raffi Joe Wartanian and Saskia Wilson-Brown.

The exhibition will be on view September 21, 2024 – January 4, 2025. For more information, visit: BrandLibrary.org/Gallery
 
Blended Worlds is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art.

JPL acknowledges the generous support of the Glendale Arts & Culture Commission and the Glendale Library, Arts & Culture Trust.

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Image: Bruce Mau, Mosaic Manifesto (detail), from A Letter to the XO Planets series, 2024. Courtesy of Factum Arte and Bruce Mau Studio.
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Free, limited parking is available in Brand Park. An accessible entrance and accessible parking for cars with a disabled parking placard or license plate is located on the East side of Brand Library.

For additional information about this event, please contact Brand Library & Art Center at (818) 548-2051 or send us an email at Info@BrandLibrary.org.


Blended Worlds: Experiments In Interplanetary Imagination

Brand Library & Art Center

‘L.A. Story’ is a group exhibition inspired by the 1991 romantic comedy in which Steve Martin's character searches for meaning in a city famously clichéd as a cultural vacuum. Referencing specific scenes from the film and enduring tropes of Los Angeles, the exhibition will feature artworks by iconic and contemporary Los Angeles artists. ‘L.A. Story’ is realized in dialogue with Steve Martin. 

Join us for the opening reception on Thursday, 12 September, 6 – 8 pm.

L.A. Story

Hauser & Wirth | WEHO

A Prologue for Chicago
November 16, 2024 – January 4, 2025

de boer (Los Angeles) is delighted to present "A Prologue for Chicago," which serves as an introduction to the diverse and dynamic artists living and working in Chicago, Illinois. This exhibition features the works of eight Chicago-based artists—Rachael Bos, Salvador Dominguez, Tali Halpern, Noelia Towers, Cameron Spratley, Marina Ross, Liza Jo Eilers, Maeve Coughlin, and Jeffly Gabriela Molina—setting a critical tone and establishing an intellectual context that invites viewers to engage with the complex narratives that characterize the contemporary art scene in the city.

Salvador Dominguez, Noelia Towers, and Jeffly Gabriela Molina have embraced Chicago as their adopted creative sanctuary. Towers, who hails from Barcelona, Dominguez, originally from Zacatecas, Mexico, and Molina, from Venezuela, draw profound inspiration from their lived experiences, weaving intricate connections between their personal histories while evoking memories, daydreams, and reflections on the past. Tali Halpern, with her generational ties to Chicago, further enriches this exhibition by providing valuable insights into the city's evolving identity. 

Cameron Spratley’s dense paintings critically engage the violence of American life through combined languages sourced from media and graffiti. Similarly, Liza Jo Eiliers' “Wet T-Shirt” paintings use a lens of nostalgia - American culture from the 80s and 90s - ultimately contemplating and re-positioning the surrounding cultural impact of celebrity, sex, and media. Rachael Bos’ oil paintings tap into the fascination of organized sports, reflecting her interest in how systems and culture shape our identities and understanding of the world. 

Maeve Coughlin and Marina Ross both dissect the idea of identity. Coughlin’s sublimation prints on chiffon are built into hand-made monoliths. The materials of wood, nails, and stains are reminiscent of folk art, while the contrasting imagery illustrates ephemeral queries constituting self. Ross’ oil paintings co-opt imagery from the American fairytale The Wizard of Oz (1939) as a foil to earnestly explore the connection between loss, home, and belonging. 

"A Prologue for Chicago" invites visitors to immerse themselves in the narratives presented by these artists, fostering reflection on their diverse backgrounds and artistic trajectories. This exhibition transcends the mere display of individual works; it serves as an invitation to engage with the broader narrative of contemporary art in Chicago.

__________________________________________________________

Screening at de boer, Los Angeles
Marc Horowitz: Extremely Limited
November 16 - January 4, 2025

de boer (Los Angeles) is excited to present a screening of Extremely Limited. The video documents a site-specific public performance by Los Angeles-based artist Marc Horowitz. Screened in de boer gallery’s west gallery the video will be on view along with a single oil painting from November 16, 2024 through January 4, 2025.

“Extremely Limited” interrogates the pressures of time and productivity in contemporary society, exploring themes of chaos, control, loss, and recuperation. Inspired by Byung-Chul Han’s critique of burnout culture, the performance examines the struggle to maintain positivity and maximize achievement amid hustle culture. Through humor and improvisation, Horowitz challenges conventional notions of art and audience engagement, creating an immersive experience that reflects the relentless demands of modern life and encourages reflection on time, productivity, and human experience.

Marc Horowitz’s site-specific public performance, “Extremely Limited,” was part of LUMINEX 3.0 in downtown Los Angeles. The performance occurred in a confined 10’x 10’ room in a parking lot, featuring a large fan on one side and a serving window on the other. Horowitz’s task was to complete a small sculpture within three minutes, package it, and serve it through the window to a ‘customer.’ Failure to do so triggers the fan, causing chaos until the artwork is delivered. This process repeats throughout the performance.

*Image: Tali Halpern, blood runs throu, 2024, handwoven fabrics on a TC2, wool, beads and rhinestones, 30 x 27 in. / 76.20 x 68.58 cm.

A Prologue For Chicago | Screening of Marc Horowitz: Extremely Limited

De Boer Gallery

Gallery Luisotti is thrilled announce its fall Pacific Standard Time exhibition, Mark Ruwedel: Los Angeles, Landscapes of Four Ecologies. September 20 – November 23, 2024. This exhibition will celebrate Ruwedel’s decade long project, which has never before been shown in all four parts.

Mark Ruwedel’s Los Angeles, Landscapes of Four Ecologies includes photographs and handdrawn maps, capturing the Los Angeles Basin’s distinct natural environments. Ruwedel’s photographs find evidence of fires, floods, landslides, and coastal erosion, all entangled within the city’s urban infrastructure. Landscapes of Four Ecologies takes its name from Reyner Banham’s 1971 publication, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, yet surveys those interstitial spaces Banham downplayed: the river, the coast, the hills and canyons, and that which is“haunted by the desert” (in Joan Didion’s words.)

In this Pacific Standard Time exhibit of nearly three dozen carefully crafted pictures, one will find many scenes containing fragments of long-forgotten endeavors. Like an archaeologist, Ruwedel does his best to tread lightly so that others might have the experience of uncovering for themselves faint traces of that which precedes and may still survive us. If we look intently, we might be struck by how brief and small – though still consequential – is our time on earth. The ultimate beauty in these pictures may be the way they, like the writings of Carey Mc Williams, Joan Didion, Mike Davis, Jared Farmer etc., leave us with a deeper and less settled sense of our complex habitat.  

Image: Mark Ruwedel, Pacific Palisades #5, 2015 

Mark Ruwedel: Los Angeles, Landscapes of Four Ecologies

Gallery Luisotti

Rusha & Co. is proud to present 'When It Rains, I Pour' a group exhibition curated by Keziah Toscano.

Artists Featured: Pui Tiffany Chow, Chloe Diaz, Eric Dwight Hancock, Gwen Hollingsworth, Chris Johst, Kate Harlowe Jones, Humberto Maldonado, Lyndsey Marko, Jean Nagai, Rebekah Rubalcava, Ari Salka , Sienna Shields, Zoe Toscano, Natalie Wadlington, & Daniel Wang.

When It Rains, I Pour

Rusha & Co

The Hammer Museum at UCLA is delighted to announce Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective, the first comprehensive survey in 30 years devoted to the unequivocally distinctive, female-focused work of American artist Christina Ramberg (1946–1995). Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was on view earlier this year, the exhibition presents a rare opportunity for visitors to experience more than 100 works across a range of media including paintings, quilts, and archival ephemera. The exhibition will be presented at the Hammer from October 12, 2024, to January 5, 2025.

Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum, said, “One hallmark of the Hammer Museum’s exhibition program is presenting retrospectives for previously under-recognized artists. Christina Ramberg, who died at the age of 49, had a brief but provocative and influential career. I am pleased that the Hammer will bring this artist’s work to West Coast audiences as the L.A. venue for this touring exhibition.”

Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective features several key pieces from public and private collections, many of which have never been on view prior to this exhibition. From intimate early paintings focused on the pattern and form of women’s hairstyles and garments, to mature work that pictures the body barely holding together, the exhibition presents Ramberg’s most iconic imagery while offering a rare opportunity to see all phases and elements of the artist’s 20-year career. 
 
Ramberg pushed boundaries with her paintings while questioning idealized body types and gender presentation. She is best known for these stylized paintings of fragmented female bodies, but she also experimented with quilting, printmaking, and drawing. Among her contemporaries, she served as an archivist, note-taker, slide-maker, collector, and diarist. Sketchbooks and 35mm slides from Ramberg’s informal archive of ephemera offer a fuller understanding of the artist’s practice and how she digested an enormous breadth of source material to create her edgy yet empathetic body of work. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue (published by the Art Institute of Chicago and distributed by Yale University Press), available at the Hammer Museum’s store.
 
CREDITS
Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is curated by Mark Pascale, Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator, and Thea Liberty Nichols, associate research curator. The presentation at the Hammer is organized by Paulina Pobocha, Robert Soros Senior Curator, with Ashton Cooper, curatorial assistant.
 
This exhibition is supported by Cartier.

Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective

Hammer Museum

Join us for a conversation with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist to celebrate the launch of the new publication ‘Gustav Metzger: Interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist’ (2024) at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles. 

On the occasion of ‘Gustav Metzger. And Then Came the Environment,’ the first-ever Los Angeles exhibition and the second major US presentation dedicated to Gustav Metzger’s oeuvre, please join us on Sunday 15 September at 11 am for a conversation with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine, and Kate Fowle, Curatorial Senior Director at Hauser & Wirth.  

The talk marks the launch of this new publication – ‘Gustav Metzger: Interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist’ – on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition presented in conjunction with the Getty’s PST ART initiative, ‘Art & Science Collide.’ 

This event is free; however, reservations are recommended. Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launch-and-talk-hans-ulrich-obrist-on-gustav-metzger-tickets-971283594377
 

About Hans Ulrich Obrist 
Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine in London, and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show ‘World Soup’ (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 350 shows. 

Obrist’s recent publications include ‘Ways of Curating’ (2015), ‘The Age of Earthquakes’ (2015), ‘Lives of the Artists, Lives of Architects’ (2015), ‘The Extreme Self: Age of You’ (2021), and ‘140 Ideas for Planet Earth’ (2021), ‘Edouard Glissant: Archipelago’ (2021), ‘James Lovelock: Ever Gaia’ (2023) ‘Remember to Dream’ (2023), and ‘Une vie in Progress’ (2023). 

About the Exhibition 
‘And Then Came the Environment’ presents a range of Metzger’s scientific works merging art and science from 1961 onward, highlighting his advocacy for environmental awareness and the possibilities for the transformation of society, as well as his latest creative experimental works, created in 2014. The exhibition title comes from Metzger’s groundbreaking 1992 essay ‘Nature Demised’ wherein he proclaims an urgent need to redefine our understanding of nature in relation to the environment. Metzger explains that the politicized term ‘environment’ creates a disconnect from the natural world, manipulating public perception to obscure pollution and exploitation caused by wars and industrialization, and that it should be renamed ‘Damaged Nature.’  

Exhibited for the first time in Los Angeles, works here include the earliest film documentation of Metzger’s bold chemical experiments on the South Bank in London (‘Auto-Destructive Art: The Activities of G. Metzger,’ directed by H. Liversidge, 1963); his first mechanized sculpture with Liquid Crystals—’Earth from Space’ (1966)—and the stunning, large-scale projection, ‘Liquid Crystal Environment’ (1966), one of the earliest public demonstrations of the material that makes Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), now omnipresent in our computer, telephone and watch screens.  

‘And Then Came the Environment’ also presents early kinetic projects Metzger developed in the Filtration Laboratory of the University College of Swansea in 1968 (‘Dancing Tubes’ and ‘Mica Cube’); various iterations of his projects against car pollution including the model ‘Earth minus Environment’ (1992); and the Light Drawing series (2014), using a plotter machine, a technology he first used in 1970, with fiber-optic light directed by air or hand. 

The exhibition will be complimented by a new short film created by artist Justin Richburg, who animated Childish Gambino’s 2018 hit ‘Feels like Summer,’ which references climate change. Richburg’s piece was inspired by and responds to Metzger’s 1992 essay ‘Nature Demised.’ The animation represents the first time Metzger’s ideas have been directly expressed through a new medium, thus reflecting his interests in ongoing transformation and his conviction that younger generations were the most essential, urgent audiences for his work. In 2012, five years before his death at the age of 90, Metzger wrote: 
 
‘The future of the world is what we are after. We start with the young and then when the young are twelve, fifteen, and then twenty-one, they can enter politics, and if they have got this initiation/introduction to key issues...it will make an enormous difference to the future of the world.’ 

‘And Then Came the Environment’ coincides with two major European institutional exhibitions devoted to Metzger’s oeuvre and contributions: ‘Gustav Metzger. All of Us Together,’ curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Vassilis Oikonomopoulos and Arthur Fouray, at LUMA, Arles, France (30 June 2024 – onwards) and ‘Gustav Metzger,’ curated by Susanne Pfeffer and Julia Eichler, at Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt, Germany (27 July 2024 – 5 January 2025). 

About the Publication 
On the occasion of the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Publishers will release ‘Gustav Metzger: Interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist.’ Drawing from more than two decades of conversations with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine, this richly illustrated volume offers a comprehensive overview of Metzger’s life, approach to art, and political activism. With a candor that comes from speaking to someone who knows him well, Metzger discusses his childhood in pre-Second World War Nuremberg, his participation in and co-organization of the 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) after his move to London, and his visionary thinking about environmental destruction, among many other topics. This panoramic book, which is complemented with a new, rigorously researched chronology, is a vital resource for Metzger scholars and newcomers alike. The publication is edited by Karen Marta with the support of Alexander Scrimgeour, managing editor and Michaela Unterdörfer, executive director of Hauser & Wirth Publishers.  

About PST ART 
Hauser & Wirth is part of PST ART as a Gallery Program Participant. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, 'PST ART: Art & Science Collide,' this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about 'PST ART: Art & Science Collide,' please visit pst.art. 

Book Launch and Talk: Hans Ulrich Obrist on Gustav Metzger

Hauser & Wirth DTLA

Born in Nuremberg to Polish-Jewish parents, Gustav Metzger (1926 – 2017) fled Nazi Germany to England via the ‘Kindertransport’ when he was 13. When he began his art studies in 1945, he entered a world inspired by scientific experimentation, just as the Atomic Age—in all its paradoxes—dawned. 

Over seventy years, through his writing, calls to action and art, Metzger wrestled with the contradictions of his time by championing how both ‘auto-destruction’ and ‘auto-creation’ in science, ecology, politics and art were equally important tactics to address the state of humanity. 

‘Gustav Metzger. And Then Came the Environment’ is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and his second major show in the US. The title comes from Metzger’s 1992 essay ‘Nature Demised’ where he proclaims an ‘urgent need to redefine notions of nature and the environment,’ because ‘environment’ is a term that ‘has been hijacked by the forces that are manipulating the world’ and it should be renamed ‘Damaged Nature.’ 

The show features seminal early experiments developed with scientists, such as ‘Dancing Tubes’ (1968) developed in the Filtration Laboratory of the University College of Swansea and ‘Liquid Crystal Environment’ (1965) which was one of the earliest public demonstrations of what would become Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD)—now omnipresent in our computer, telephone and watch screens. For the first time an animation has also been commissioned in response to Metzger’s writings. Artist Justin Richburg—who created the animation for Childish Gambino’s hit ‘Feels like Summer’—will produce a short in response to Metzger’s ‘Damaged Nature’ manifesto.  

The exhibition will be accompanied by a Hauser & Wirth Publishers book featuring decades of conversations between Metzger and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.   
  
‘Gustav Metzger. And Then Came the Environment’ will be presented in conjunction with the Getty Museum’s citywide PST Art initiative, ‘Art & Science Collide.’ 

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New York-based artist Firelei Báez has achieved wide acclaim for her paintings, drawings and immersive installations that explore the influences of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora against the backdrop of colonial histories and narratives.

This September, in her first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, Báez will present ambitious large-scale canvases, drawings and her first-ever bronze sculpture at the gallery’s Downtown Arts District complex. In vivid and richly layered works, Báez depicts fantastical figures and alternative worlds. Femme figurations entwine with verdant plant life, intricate hair arrangements and elaborate textile designs that overlay found historical documents. Báez’s exuberant paintings imagine new worlds and narratives, drawing on beauty to reprocess the effects of violence and trauma. Destabilizing the categories of gender, race and nationality, she consistently pushes the boundaries of established histories and knowledge. A wide range of disciplines and cultural references are incorporated into her work, including art history, science fiction, pop culture, anthropology, folklore and fantasy.

The exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles coincides with two museum surveys, ‘Trust Memory Over History,’ at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg Germany (6 June – 13 October 2024) and ‘Firelei Báez,’ at Vancouver Art Gallery Canada (2 November 2024 – 16 March 2025), and follows the artist’s first UK exhibition ‘Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream)’ at South London Gallery (28 June – 8 September 2024). 

Gustav Metzger: And Then Came the Environment | Firelei Báez:  The Fact That It Amazes Me Does Not Mean I Relinquish It

Los Angeles, CA) —The Hammer Museum is pleased to announce Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice, a groundbreaking exhibition that centers environmental art practices addressing the climate crisis and anthropogenic disasters, and their inescapable intersection with issues of equity and social justice. Part of Getty’s region-wide initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Breath(e) is curated by artist Glenn Kaino and guest curator Mika Yoshitake and features more than 100 artworks by 25 international artists. The sprawling exhibition will fill the majority of the Hammer’s galleries and outdoor spaces, and includes specially commissioned works by Mel Chin, Ron Finley, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Garnett Puett, and Lan Tuazon. The exhibition will be on view at the Hammer from September 14, 2024, through January 5, 2025, and is presented in partnership with Conservation International.
 
Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin said, “When I first began talking with Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake about an exhibition that would respond to the climate crisis, it was 2020—at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning in the United States in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Both the metaphorical and the literal practice of breathing—the right to breathe—was at the top of our minds. Breath(e) poignantly and intelligently spotlights the work of artists who address the urgent concerns of climate and social justice.”

Breath(e) spotlights 25 intergenerational and transdisciplinary artists whose practices encompass photography, multimedia, augmented reality, painting, living organisms, and more. The exhibition seeks to address the existential dangers posed by the climate crisis and to advocate for a nonhierarchical worldview influenced by ancestral indigenous knowledge, which envisions all elements of nature as one family rather than as materials for use and exploitation by humankind.
 
A number of artists have created works commissioned specially for Breath(e):
Multidisciplinary artist and enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold, Cannupa Hanska Luger’s site-specific, multi-part installation Sovereign relates to his ongoing Future Ancestral Technologies, which blends indigenous wisdom with science-fiction speculations.
Garnett Puett, a sculptor and fourth-generation beekeeper, creates “Apisculptures” in collaboration with a bee colony. Puett has created a structure in which visitors may safely enter and witness the bees’ gradual creation of a sculpture
Inspired by systems aesthetics, maintenance, and feminist ecological art of the 1960s, Filipino artist Lan Tuazon will present an outdoor installation made from five techniques of material invention using sculpture as a test-site of repair. Tuazon’s work considers how plastic waste operates within the circular economy and invites viewers to donate their own plastics to be shredded and made part of the installation. In this work, sustaining change can be a few acts that serve ecological beliefs.
Environmental activist Ron Finley, also known as the “Gangsta Gardener,” will present a large-scale garden installation outside of the museum’s bookstore and galleries.
Known for his commitment to making socially engaged conceptual art that addresses the most urgent issues of our time, Mel Chin’s project IOV (Interpretation of Vision, pronounced “eye of”) attempts to dismantle division and promote empathy, which he considers the first step in a collective undertaking to fight climate change and persistent social injustice. This multi-stage commission began with an open call for stories from people whose lives were changed by an extraordinary phenomenon, resulting in artworks derived not from the artist’s own vision, but instead honoring and elevating the experiences of the respondents.
Some works in the exhibition illustrate what scholar Rob Nixon calls “slow violence,” disastrous governmental or corporate practices which may not immediately reveal their impact on communities or ecosystems. Artist and activist LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photo series Flint is Family depicts the water crisis that affected Flint, Michigan, a city predominantly comprised of Black and Brown communities. Scientist and artist Brandon Ballengée makes portraits of marine species that have been driven to extinction by human-caused disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, using the oil itself as his medium. Performance and installation artist Yangkura traces the migratory movement of trash and debris that originated in Southeast Asia and South Korea and washed ashore on Japan’s Tsushima Island—polluting their ultimate destination while leaving the originating waters clean. The artist creates “monsters” from the debris, who are trying to find their way back to their home. Vietnamese-American artist Tiffany Chung, herself a political and climate refugee, creates large-scale vernacular architectural models that consider forced migration and human displacement resulting from climate change—including projections that portions of Vietnam will be fully consumed by rising sea levels by 2050.
 
The exhibition further questions anthropocentric realities that are at the crux of modern life and imagines alternate modes of agency. Some of these works incorporate cutting-edge technology, such as Mika Tajima’s New Humans II, which utilizes machine learning to activate an undulating pool of black magnetic liquid, whose movement is produced by patterns based on data sets sourced at a scale beyond human comprehension. Los Angeles-based artist Rob Reynolds has created a massive rendering of an iceberg—viewed via augmented reality—affixed to the side of the office tower which abuts the museum and was once the headquarters of Occidental Petroleum. The iceberg upon which the work is modeled at one time had a footprint roughly the size of Westwood Village, where the Hammer is located; it now no longer exists. Michael Joo, in collaboration with digital artist Danil Krivoruchko and Snark.art, generated a collection of more than 10,000 NFTs modeled after the crystalline structure of coral reefs; the underlying algorithm was subsequently utilized by scientists at the University of Hawai’i to create 3D prints derived from calcite crystal formations, the basis of coral exoskeletons and reef structures, which they used to study the development of fish species reliant on coral reef habitats.
 
In conjunction with Breath(e), the Hammer is piloting the international Bizot Green Guidelines, which provides expanded climate condition standards for gallery temperature and humidity based on recent conservation research. Adoption of these updated protocols will significantly reduce the Hammer’s HVAC energy use, the largest component of its carbon footprint. The Hammer will continue to apply these guidelines for future exhibitions.
 
Breath(e) is presented in partnership with Conservation International, a global nonprofit dedicated to sustainability. Melanie Janin, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer at Conservation International, said, “Conservation International has a long history of partnering with organizations and unlikely allies such as the Hammer Museum for positive impact: taking risks that others deem too great; incubating ideas that others have not considered; and breaking down silos that others view as unavoidable. We are inspired by the courageous inquiry of the participating artists in Breath(e), and hopeful that audiences will be emboldened to conserve our planet through urgent action after experiencing this powerful exhibition at the Hammer.”

Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice 

Ian Douglass, Joel Otterson, Jess Goehring, Cheyann Washington, Liv Aanrud, Brittany Kiertzner, Uzumaki Cepeda, Monica C. LoCascio, Kristin Reger, Renata Daina, Daniela Parhisi, Preston Douglas Boyer, Lucien Dante Lazar, Lissy Funk 

Wonzimer is proud to present Sometimes A Wind Blows, a group exhibition exploring the diverse possibilities of textile art. The title of the show, taken from David Lynch’s Blue Velvet soundtrack, reflects the sweeping, ephemeral meditation of material on display. 

Each artist showcases a wide range of techniques and media, from embroidery, weaving, painting, printing, and knitting to experimental manipulations of linen, velvet, or silk. Bringing together legacy artists with new generations of artists, this show explores the enduring appeal of textile art, as both tangibly luxurious and mysterious. 

Installation, sculpture, and the inherent relationship to the surface of painting are all invoked in this exhibition. The disparate works coalesce into a shared sense of this romantic freedom offered by textiles: of the ethereal yet deeply felt whisper of wind that we interface with through fabric. An explicit sense of craft pushed into novel forms, emerges as a crucial concern in this diverse field. 

From this expansive perspective, the works on display invite viewers to engage with the tactile nature of textiles, with shimmering significance in the contemporary zeitgeist. Exploring the environmental implications of material choices and through-lines of historical and cultural connection, Sometimes A Wind Blows offers a panoramic perspective on the world of textile art. 

Sometimes A Wind Blows

Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to present Monday’s Child, Math Bass’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view from November 16th, 2024, to January 11th, 2025.

In the exhibition, the artist presents a new selection of paintings, the latest iterations of their iconic Newz! Series. These paintings are activated and accompanied by sculptural translations of similar poetic themes in the form of a series of three apple sculptures, a concrete-coated sculpture entitled “Full Body Parentheses,” and a sound installation. Monday’s Child finds exuberance in ambiguity and asks the question: where might meaning lie in a field of unlimited language?

The nine paintings, all oil on linen, draw on the artist’s bespoke lexicon of symbols. These symbols resemble letters, bodily forms, architectural fragments, animals, bones, and other items.  Bass arranges and rearranges these symbols iteratively on each canvas. In the artist’s compositions, each symbol is an empty space of meaning, filled in by the context in which it finds itself. Repetition of these symbols, rather than codifying them into one solid signification, exposes the difference at the heart of each iteration; there is always a gap in meaning, something unnamable left out of and left over in the viewer’s reading.

In the selection of paintings in Monday’s Child, some compositions – the titular Monday’s Child, Thursday’s Child,  and About About Face – seem to toy with representation, approaching the revelation of a referent without fully going there. Yet others go in a different direction altogether, suggesting infinite space or expansion in an imaginary field.

The familiarity of the symbols in the Newz! series only heightens their uncanny quality. Indeed, familiarity is its own theme in the artist’s work, finding expression through eerie renditions of Americana, commercial nostalgia, and mid-century design.

Bass’s mother was a teacher, and apple forms were common in their childhood home, an everyday motif of growing up as well as the emblem of nearby New York City. The apple sculptures in Monday’s Child stand for both original sin and the infamous apple on the teacher’s desk. The tall concrete-coated sculpture, Full Body Parentheses, reimagines a form from a thrift store lamp in Palm Springs, transforming it into a larger, more abstract, and experiential piece that serves as punctuation for both the paintings and the bodies that enter the gallery. Meanwhile, the sound installation features field recordings of crows that the artist came upon during a walk in Los Angeles, adding a stark background to the themes of positive and negative space in the show.

Before the artist’s last exhibition at the gallery in 2021, their mother passed away, inflecting the work in that show with themes of loss. Prior to this exhibition, the artist found themselves expecting their first child, which brings a further sense of expansiveness, mystery, and anticipation into the current work. The two exhibitions together form a sort of yin and yang, representing two sections of a spiraling life cycle.

Math Bass: Monday's Child

Vielmetter Los Angeles

Overduin & Co. is pleased to present the gallery’s first exhibition by Michael Bala.  

“The world is still deceived with ornament.”

With ornament. With the found object. With everyday patterns. With their associations, structures, and functions. With their shadows. Michael Bala’s first solo exhibition, Eye Comfort, references the early-twentieth century lighting system sold by the Chicago-based National X-Ray Reflector Company, a system that boasted the ability to illuminate retail and residential spaces by concealing lamps behind ornamental fixtures.

Bala, too, conceals his sources. Umbrellas, red oak balusters, and heads-up pennies are just a few of the materials Bala repurposes to assemble this fourteen-piece exhibition. Whether peeled off the pavement or salvaged from the dump, these objects resculpt relations to the world; for instance, bicycle horns become wall-mounted, their fluting bells flare vertically into illuminated sconces. Bala’s interest in and ambivalence toward perspective crafts new visual orders for these otherwise forgotten objects. Tricks of the eye give way to slips of sense. Bala’s deceitful decoration expands the gaze towards touch, a multisensory dialogue that pushes and pulls in more ways than one.

Knock, knock, knock. Eyes seem to rap on the wood providing structural and conceptual support to these artworks. More than a verification of materials, this inquiry is in line with the age-old apotropaic practice of knocking on wood. Offered in return is a warding and protective cast stimulated by the simple engagement with everyday objects, decorative architecture, or ornamental readymades. Here, crown molding plays the role of an exit sign acting as the threshold between what is in and out. Pinstripes accent the contours of the cornices’ bodywork, however for Bala, delineating what adorns and what composes is a futile exercise. Slick as Nails (exit #1), the first of three patterned emergency exits, takes its modified title from a Robert Pollard song. Eye Comfort heeds the song’s starting lines as instruction: “Be drawn to what's wrong and believe everyone / Go ahead touch your nose & off you go up and run.”

	- Isabel Casso, 2024

Michael Bala (b. 1994, Maui, HI) is a Los Angeles based artist working in sculpture. Bala received a BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Bala’s work centers around the reframing of found objects and salvaged architectural fragments. Overlaying structure and ornament, Bala’s material interventions construct a typology of ever mutable forms from society’s cast-offs. Bala’s work has been included in exhibitions presented by Clearing in Los Angeles, Clearing in New York, Castle in Los Angeles, Tiffany’s Door in Los Angeles, Et al. in San Francisco, and Paul Soto in Los Angeles.

For more information and images, please contact the gallery at office@overduinandco.com.     

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, or by appointment.
