ART
AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY MARCH 2012
edge
February 11 – March 24, 2012
LOUIS RENZONI The Darker the Shadow The Brighter the Light February 9 - March 10, 2012 ( Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm)
KIM FOSTER GALLERY
529 West 20th New York, NY 10011 212-229-0044 www.kimfostergallery.com info@kimfostergallery.com
Inside the Glass House | Oil on Linen | 32�x40�
Simon McWilliams
skotia gallery
6144 washington boulevard | culver city, ca | 90232 | 310.838.1717 | skotiagallery.com
207 W. 5th Street Los Angeles, CA 90013 213-806-7889 www.cb1gallery.com Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Sunday, 1 p.m. – 6 p.m.
February 26 - March 25, 2012 Reception: Sunday, February 26, 5 – 7 p.m. East Gallery
Laura Krifka First Blush
Wast Gallery
Daniel Aksten André Goeritz Alexander Kroll Robin Szidak Cast. Reflect.
EXCAVATE FEBRUARY 17 - MARCH 14
NEW WORK BY
THE BETTER HORSE, OIL AND WAX ON CANVAS
ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY & LAUREL HAUSLER
ART
AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY MARCH 2012
CONTENTS
EXHIBITIONS New York Philadelphia Washington DC Los Angeles
28 32 33 34
ARTISTS Richelle Gribble Rose Masterpol Eddie Rehm Laura Moretz
FEATURES 14 18 20 28
Letter from Washington DC Bay Area Figurative Art Art from a Forgotten Country: Cuba AirCraft: The Jet as Art
41 44 46 48
ON THE COVER
Michiel Ceulers
Ich schloss meine Augen um zu sehen (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders) 2010-12, oil/spraypaint on canvas, 26 x 20”
Nadine Rovner, Sara and Justin, 2008 Gallery 339; see page 32
See more on page 31
Richard Kalisher PUBLISHER Donovan Stanley EDITOR Eric Kalisher DESIGN Washington Editor F. Lennox Campello Contributing Editor Roberta Carasso Contributing Writers Jeffrey Stein, Csilla Kristof Anna Needham
acamagazine.com Advertising Inquiries advertising@acamagazine.com 561.542.6028 / Richard Kalisher © 2011 R.K. Graphics. All Rights Reserved.
Exhibition information courtesy of represented institutions.
Milton Avery, Black Lake, 1963, oil on paper, 23 x 35” Fischbach Art Gallery; see page 30
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 12:00 - 6:00PM and by appointment. Contact us by email: art@carmichaelgallery.com or call 323.939.0600 for more information.
Carmichael Gallery 5795 Washington Blvd Culver City CA 90232
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON, DC F. Lennox Campello
Carol Brown Goldberg, Enlighten Yourselves About the Essence of Junk, 2010, 14 bronze sculptures. GWU-Luther M. Brady Gallery.
Even though Washington, DC, itself is rather a small area, seen from the air the Greater Washington area is a colossal urban and suburban monster of a city-complex stretching out in all directions across to Maryland and Virginia; the locals refer to this region as the “DMV” (District Maryland Virginia). This is also one of the wealthiest areas in the world; in fact 50% of the top 20 highest income counties in the United States are located around the region. The geographical distribution of the DMV also means that galleries and art venues are widely distributed across this immense urban grid, and the economic power of DC and the surrounding counties allow a variety of public art venues to flourish. Many of the galleries in and around the DMV happen to be collective artist-owned galleries (co-ops), and we are lucky in our area to have some of the best co-ops in the nation. I say this after having seen the sort of art that some co-ops from other parts of the country bring to art fairs in Miami and New York. Co-op galleries such as Gallery West, Art League Gallery, and Multiple Exposures Gallery in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia; Waverly Street Gallery in Bethesda, Maryland; Touchstone, Foundry, Washington Printmakers, and Studio Gallery in the District; and Artists’ Undertaking in Occoquan, Virginia have been around for decades and testify not only to the staying power
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of co-ops, but the high quality of the art that they offer. Art centers are also a key part of this visual arts cultural tapestry. Venues such as the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria, Greater Reston Arts Center in Reston, Ellipse Arts Center and Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, Virginia; Capitol Hill Arts Workshop in DC; VisArts and Strathmore Arts Center in Rockville, Photoworks in Glen Echo, and the BlackRock Arts Center in Germantown, Maryland, are but a subset of the substantial number of non-commercial visual art venues around the region. Universities also abound in the area, and most of them also offer significant visual art contributions to the DMV art scene. Led by the gorgeous almost-new Katzen Arts Center at American University, galleries at the University of Maryland, Georgetown, George Mason, George Washington, Catholic, Marymount, Montgomery College, Northern Virginia Community College, and other institutions are all a key part of what makes the DMV one of the most vibrant art places on the planet. Recent notable shows at some of these venues have featured some well-known regional artists. At George Washington University’s Luther W. Brady Gallery, painter and sculptor Carol Brown Goldberg exhibited new works on paper and sculptures. While her luminous paintings are to be found in many local and na-
tional collections, it was Goldberg’s quizzical army of new bronze sculptures that captured the imagination of this show (see left page). Made up of recognizable common objects (pipes, vegetable peelers, telephones, spoons, etc.), but re-organized into new forms and given the character of bronze, these pieces re-arrange the genetic code of its component parts and are birthed into something new to the eyes: a spoon is no longer an utensil, but now an abstract component of a larger element. Even though this show affirms Goldberg as an artist also vastly talented in the genre of sculpture, it was the intelligent eye of American mega-collector Mera Rubell who first brought Carol Brown Goldberg’s sculptures to regional notice when she curated her now legendary “36 Studios in 36 Hours” show for the Washington Project for (above) Chawky Frenn, Clash of Civilizations, 2007, oil on panel, 30 x 48” at Black Rock Center. the Arts (the District’s leading artist organi(below) Lou Stovall, Magenta II, 2007, silkscreen monoprint, 43 x 43.5” at Waverly Street Gallery. zation) back in 2010. In Germantown’s Black Rock Center for the Arts, painter (and George Mason University professor) Chawky Frenn brought together a show that is sure to leave a deep impression on anyone who visited the exhibition. Titled “Be The Change You Seek!”, Frenn (disclosure: he is represented by Alida Anderson Art Projects, with which I am associated) once again used his formidable technical painting skills, coupled with a visceral commentary on social and political events, to marry together an exhibition that proves what realism can do to deliver knock-out punches to the solar plexus of the mind. Frenn writes about his work that he paints “to give a voice to my belief in the nobility and the dignity of being human. One becomes human when one lives and protects the fundamental rights of being human. One becomes human when one sees individuals with similar basic needs and aspirations instead of seeing religious, political, and economic ideologies. Monstrous sub-humans are those who inflict unfathomably inequitable distribution of resources and food supply, who wreak unabashed greed and corruption to ensure big profit and dominion, and who destroy nature and the environment in the mad unsustainable drive of the markets.” When he offers you a painting to examine, Prof. Frenn’s ability to enter the mind via a variety of interpretations leaves no area untouched, no event ignored, and no possibility unavailable. Ask three people what they sculpture, photography, jewelry, fiber and ceramics. With 46 see as the message in “Peccata Mundi” and you will get three viartists' works on display, a full spectrum of media and styles is able responses to a most somber subject somehow still offered as made available to tempt the senses, and as expected, works by a riot of color and form. established master printmaker Lou Stovall (see directly above), And for the fourth year in a row, the 23 member artists of plus a new discovery of a gorgeous graphite on gesso by HsinACA Bethesda, Maryland’s Waverly Street Gallery invited 23 other His Chen stand out among the invited artists. artists to exhibit their work alongside the co-op’s member artists. The show, titled “23 + 23”, is one of my favorites in this well-established gallery and features both nationally and locally Read more from F. Lennox Campello online. He blogs about art in recognized artists working in almost every medium – painting, Washington, DC, on his blog. Go to dcartnews.blogspot.com
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ZACKARY DRUCKER Gold Standard
VOLTA NY BOOTH V-13 MARCH 8 - 11, 2012 7 W 34TH STREET NEW YORK NY 10001 WWW.VOLTANY.COM
LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES WWW.LUISDEJESUS.COM
Introducing Seok Kim den contemporary // corner project JANUARY 26 – FEBRUARY 14, 2012 CURATED BY JAE YANG | art-merge.com | bringing promising artists to america
DEN CONTEMPORARY (SPACE B261) // CORNER PROJECT (SPACE B257) PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER // 8687 MELROSE AVE., WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA 90069 WWW.DENCONTEMPORARYART.COM // 323.422.6340
BAY AREA FIGURATION: ORIGINS AND TODAY by Csilla Kristof
(clockwise from top) Joan Brown, Self Portrait, n.d., oil on panel, 33 x 22”; Richard Diebenkorn, Seated Nude, 1963, ink wash drawing on paper, 17 x 14”; Nathan Oliveira, Seated Woman Fur-coat, 1961, oil on canvas, 54 x 50”. All images are courtesy of private collections.
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There is an inviting quality in Bay Area Figurative work. The paint is tangibly buttery, applied with a force that lingers in each stroke. The ambiguity of the figuration calls the viewer to engage, then leaves space to linger. Vibrant brushstrokes, weighty colors, and dramatic composition manipulate the senses. These devices are used to hint at narrative and provoke emotion — at the time they expanded the boundaries of figure painting. The Bakersfield Museum of Art (BMOA) presents “Legacy in Continuum: Bay Area Figuration”. Curated by Vikki L. Cruz in conjunction with Roberta Carasso, art writer and critic based in Southern California, the exhibition highlights important artists from the movement’s origins to its lasting presence in contemporary works. The exhibition includes several pieces from private collections — work largely unseen by the public — giving this intimate exhibition additional appeal. These paintings are prized by their owners and will likely go swiftly back into hiding when the exhibition closes. The Bay Area Figurative (BAF) Movement — though not recognized as a “movement” until much later — began in the late 1940s when note-worthy Abstract Expressionists abandoned their strictly intellectual approach to painting and made a stylistic shift toward representation. In 1951, David Park, a well-known abstract painter, submitted a figure painting to a San Francisco art competition and won a coveted prize. It was viewed as a defection by fellow artists, but by some in the Bay Area especially, it was a welcome reprieve from the prevalence of abstraction. David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Theophilus Brown, and Richard Diebenkorn were of the first generation of painters to explore this new figurative style. Roberta Carasso, on the movement’s origins, wrote, “The Bay Area Figurative artists expanded and integrated the thinking of Abstract Expressionists by seeing a profound connection between abstraction and figuration. Artists realized that their heritage need not be discarded; that it is possible to work in both modes simultaneously. Moreover, melding two forms of expression could be a metamorphosis yielding a perceptibly new aesthetic form.” These paintings were groundbreaking because they continued to employ Abstract Expressionistic elements in their representational work, reviving and renovating a form that some deemed passé. The only key figure not included is David Park, who worked closely with Bischoff and Diebenkorn throughout their careers. Bischoff, though one of the most influential and innovative members, began and ended his career as an abstract painter — this is perhaps why his figures are so captivating. Included in the exhibition is one of Bischoff ’s colorful and fluidly painted watercolors. The untitled portrait is comprised of solid lines and dense areas of color, a deceivingly simple piece that reveals the brushstrokes of a masterful hand. Echoes of Bischoff ’s figure are seen in Joan Brown’s Self Portrait (see above left). Brown uses panels of color to delineate her figure from the background. Minimal marks are used to portray in-
formation as to gender or characteristics; rather, it is the bold composition saturated with red and ochre that creates a sense of power and meaning. Known for his monochromatic style, Nathan Oliveira depicts a seated woman subsumed by rich hues of burgundy, blue, and green. This portrait, titled simply, Seated Woman Fur-coat (see opposite page, bottom left) is of his mother, who he honors in this painting. One is left to imagine she is sitting on a bench awaiting the arrival of something or someone. She is centered in the composition with legs crossed. Her vertical leg — the one that should be resting on the ground — is lost in the darkness of the background. Her bare knee protrudes forward, and finds itself bathed by the only light in this introspective portrait. In Nude and Indian Rug, Paul Wonner skillfully defines the figure and her vast environment using minimal detail: just a few dark strokes across the pale canvas. Art historian Caroline Jones commented on his quietly captivating painting: “The narrative richness, psychological nuances, and sheer ambiguity of Wonner’s figurative works were unmatched by any of the first generation of BAF artists, with the possible exception of Elmer Bischoff ” (C. A. Jones, BAF pg.93). Wonner rose to prominence as an Abstract Expressionist and ended his career as a hyperrealist. This painting and others like it seem to capture the better of the two extremes. A major subject amongst Bay Area painters is, of course, the figure, and it is therefore a prevalent theme in Continuum. However, from the beginning the style encompassed landscapes, domestic scenes, and still lifes. Best known are Diebenkorn’s Interiors which pay homage to Matisse’s studio paintings. Theophilus Brown’s Untitled #4 mixed-media collage serves as an intriguing example of non-figuration. For Brown, Wonner, and others, even when painting the figure, it is often treated as an image or a feature of a landscape rather than the centerpiece. Fresh perspective on these themes has come from the more recent generations of BAF artists, best represented here by the works of Kim Froshin and Mitchell Johnson (see right). Froshin creates an architectural feel to the canvas by building up the paint rather than blending. Froshin’s piece titled Picnic Window is a playful combination of nostalgia, pop culture, and BAF tradition. Also creating in a collage-like fashion, Johnson adds flat geometric shapes over his existing paintings. Torrenieri, painted by Johnson in 2011, and Picnic Window by Froshin are brilliant examples of BAF today: the use of strong color and abstract elements that bring naturalism to life. The title “Legacy in Continuum” suggests that the Bay Area Figurative movement is not only for art historians. Contemporary artists working in the Bay Area are as diverse as Siddharth Parasnis from India, Waldemar Mitrowski from Poland, and Eduardo Alvarado from Spain. These artists differ in style, though they draw from the same original visual vocabulary. Their work provides the exhibition with a contemporary perspective across cultures and generations. Other outstanding artists included are: Suhas BhuACA jbal, John Goodman, Dennis Hare, and Brook Temple.
Mitchell Johnson, Torrenieri, 2011, oil on linen, 22 x 28” Courtesy of Private Collection; Kim Froshin, Picnic Window, 2011, collage, playing card, wire mesh, acrylic, ink, pencils, archival board, 18 x 15” Courtesy: Paul Thibaud Gallery, San Francisco CA
Bay Area Figurative artists are widely collected and shown at institutions such as: Museum of Modern Art, Tate Gallery, Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Legacy in Continuum: Bay Area Figuration” is an engaging view into an art movement from its courageous beginnings through today. It shows at the Bakersfield Museum of Art from March 22nd to May 27th, 2012.
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ART FROM A FORGOTTEN COUNTRY by Roberta Carasso
In the best of times, artists freely push ideas forward, leap exhibition of a Cuban gallery, with its owner Sandra Contreras, President of Artists and Writers of Cuba, and her artist husband, over barriers, and tirelessly press on to be challenged by new aesErnesto Javier Fernandez. Contreras is in a rare situation. She had thetic concepts they discover and develop. But what about artists proven her trust with the government and has obtained a commerin a repressed, totalitarian society such as Cuba? Certainly, their cial gallery license to sell for profit. The three struck up a friendartistic passions are tested too and to the extreme. Rules are not ship as they found they have much in common. Instinctively, clear, even designed to maximize confusion and put people’s daily Tesak-Arzente picked out Cuban art she would like to exhibit, but lives in a state of continuous ambiguity, not to mention the reality soon thoughts turned to an entire show and the difficulties of how of personal danger. she would have to jump through hoops to make the exhibition a Because of its unique geography and politics, Cuba is an reality, finding feasible ways to cut through red tape and bring art anomaly, a failed sociological experiment. If Cuba were not an isofrom Cuba to Laguna Beach, California. In the end, it cost $5,000 lated island floating alone, but were attached to another landmass, to ship the work a convoluted journey to Panama, then to Canada, communism may have dissolved or become more compassionthen to Los Angeles. ate long ago. But for 50 plus At that meeting Tesakyears, one man has terrorArzente developed a list of ized 11 million people, with a few artists, which became devious ways to keep them a fluid correspondence with under control. For example: others, until she had the posthere are two sets of money, sibility of 160 Cuban artists, the Cuban peso, recognized via emails, trading dossiers, international currency for and talking to as many artists the elite, while most get paid as possible. Tesak-Arzente in a Cuban type monopoly spent a week in Cuba, with money; only four new builda day that began at 7 a.m. ings have been constructed, and ended at 10 p.m. She while apartment buildings visited many studios to feel literally collapse; or, people the chemistry and see the go to jail for putting up a work. Because her standards satellite TV; emails are read; are both high and specific, and good citizens disapthe list narrowed to include pear if their skin is too dark. 11 artists who now comprise Ocean escapes are daily, the powerfully current exhialong with death. For this arbition, ¡CUBA! ticle, we will focus on an art Tesak-Arzente went into exhibition that reveals visuthis project knowing that ally concepts such as — isobefore Castro, Cuba was lation, lies, duplicity, futility, known internationally for its identity, and a saddened pas(above) Marlys Fuegos, MASCARAS, wood, crystal, canvas, acrylic and sequins, 20 sophisticated artistic sensision for freedom of expresx 20 x 2.5”. (opposite page) Havana, November 2011. Photo by Carla Tesak Arzente. bilities, a source of superior sion and personal liberty. artistry, and an acclaimed art At Salt Fine Art, in Lahistory. Certainly, this edge could not have completely disappeared? guna Beach, CA, its dynamic owner, Carla Tesak-Arzente, origi Cuba’s isolation is introduced in several philosophical works nally from El Salvador, exhibits art of the highest quality, created by William Perez. He creates a stainless steel, incised acrylic and by artists from Latin countries — art from emerging artists to art acrylic painted sculpture entitled Battleship, a paradoxical name that is shown internationally in prestigious museums, such as for an island that looks like a giant snake-like ship, doing battle MoMA and the Whitney (NYC), and in other international venwith no one except itself. Being just 90 miles from Miami, the ues. From exhibitions she has mounted, Tesak-Arzente has proven Battleship’s distance is close, but almost impossible to traverse. that she seeks “work that is skillfully conceived and has a profound Perez also creates a rhinoceros cut-out from the top of a red baby meaning, a supreme technical ability with conceptual impressivegrand piano, with the cut-out rhino standing heavily on the piano. ness, visually intriguing, grabs one’s interest, has visceral appeal, a Contrasting refinement that was Cuba and the carnal that imposes feeling, a reaction, conceptually surprising, and a singular voice.” its weight, Perez tells how the regime is unaware of the delicate Tesak-Arzente made the connection to Cuban art in 2011 instrument of its Cuban heritage, and the inhumanity it imposes. at the Los Angeles Art Fair, when across from her booth was an
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The beast has overcome beauty. To depict the lies people are constantly told, Esterio Segura creates a series, one for each year of Castro’s regime. They are sexually-oriented wall sculptures, drawn in linear painted steel. Each shows a naked man and woman copulating to represent how the people are continuously screwed. Probably one of Segura’s most intense sculptures is his Pinocchio. The classic boy, made from red fiberglass, with metal, plastic, and nylon stands frozen within a cage. His nose, which grows with each lie, has become a long fishing pole with a hefty empty hook at its end. Pinocchio stands with his arms behind his back. There is nothing to do, nothing to catch, but wait in his isolated cage. Abel Barroso brings humor to a life of futility. He burnishes wood, draws, carves, and constructs a complicated out-of-date facsimile of an international wooden phone. With many buttons and iconic drawings made to appear technically efficient, the phone is contained in an old-fashioned wooden house having a pitched room with burnished lines to look like bricks, something a child might draw. Entitled Calling Home, the phone does not work, despite its witty portrait with illusions to modern technology. The frustration is that Barroso cannot call or emigrate beyond the island’s borders. Angel Ricardo Rios also constructs witty three-dimensional common objects, redefining them in the Dada manner. His Cuernavaca is part chair, part pool, a soft cushiony aqua place to rest with pool handles emerging from it. His pun shows how the useful, like Barroso’s telephone has become useless. For several artists, individual identity is continuously tested. Marlys Fuegos, like so many artists, “hide as much as they show.” In a series of self portraits Fuegos wears a mask based on the Cuban flag. Wearing it, she is the ideal communist citizen. But in another portrait, her personally designed mask, not based on Cuban colors or symbols, has fallen off. Her face is now frozen with fear as she exposes to all who see her, who she really is, and what she really thinks. For Jorge Lopez Pardo, his identity is alienation and loneliness, “being neither here nor there.” With oil on canvas, he creates haunting black and white images that tell about solitude, being alone, unable to relate. A remote house, Pardo himself, is isolated against a blackened sky. There is pity in the work, yet extreme beauty of execution and subject matter. He also renders, with graphite, a drawing that conveys a plane crash. The plane’s tailspin is symbolic of being trapped on an island out-of-control and going no where but down. Aimee Garcia uses multimedia, but largely photography, as she explores “the personal and the political.” Like Fuegos, she incorporates herself in her images. The work is dark with deep russets and red backgrounds. In one image she holds her own severed
head in her hands, studying herself and questioning who she really is. In another work, instead of her head, she holds an old-fashioned toy doll. Perhaps that is who she is? And in a third image she cuts off her hair, revealing uncertainty, and a desire for change that can only come from her own body. Two artists who seem to have unique voices are Elizabeth Cervino and Roberto Diago. Cervino deconstructs flowers and landscapes, transforming objects into exploding forms. Using oil on canvas, she creates a triptych that transcends the political. Yet her art is clearly about a desire for a dramatic social reorder, and suggests the deep repression she experiences. Her black and white, flower-like explosions, when viewed as one in three panels, project a sense of profound repression. Diago’s work takes a different turn. He explores, with mixed media, the roots of Cuban culture, its Afro-Cuban heritage. He uses natural fibers and paint, dividing the image vertically in two. Two halves become a whole – the African and the European. He paints and sews on raw canvas, primitive configurations that reveals the dichotomy of being pulled in two direction – the ancient and the contemporary, wanting the past while desiring the future, yet uncertain where to locate himself. Ernesto Javier Fernandez has witnessed Cuba during the revolution, experienced the exhilaration of new possibilities, and now depicts the hopelessness that has set into the Cuban psyche. His internationally renowned, somber black and white photographs are enhanced with neon light sculpture in an aluminum frame. In Ideas, he captures a group of men wading towards a rickety boat, their only means of escape from this isolated, death-trap battleship. Even though everyone knows that bodies are continually washed ashore, citizens continue to escape. What then is the solution? Alejandro Campins paints the only outcome Cubans know is possible. Perhaps in future generations, young children will have an opportunity to live as Campins would like to live now. In an oil on canvas, a toddler stands by the shore. She has tossed a colorful ball in the air and watches it in the landscape of the vast ocean, not realizing possibilities that may be in store for her. Post Script: Teska-Arzente is a world traveler. She lived in many communist countries, visiting her familial Hungary for her first 16 summers. She also spent time in China, Africa, Czechoslovakia and many other countries. She states that she has never seen a communist country in such disrepair, with a government that cares little for its people. On one of the days she visited, she witnessed an apartment house collapse. ACA Roberta Carasso can be reached at roberta.carasso@gmail.com
(above) William Perez, Battleship, stainless steal, incised acrylic and acrylic paint, 12.6 x 43.7 x 7.5” (opposite top) Ernesto Javier Fernandez, Ideas, black and white photography with neon light sculpture, aluminum frame, 31.5 x 47” (opposite bot) Alejandro Campins, Espectador Pasivo/ Passive Spectator, oil on canvas, 55 x 71”
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AirCraft: The Jet As Art
Standing at the end of a runway, Jeffrey Milstein captures images of aircraft, moments before landing. Carefully positioned and using a high-resolution digital camera, he photographs them from below as they streak past.
Jeffrey Milstein’s favorite spot for photographing aircraft is runway 24R at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). “You have to find the right spot underneath the flight path,” he says, “Not too far away and not too close. The plane can’t be coming in too high or too low, and if the wing dips a little bit to correct for wind, the symmetry will be unequal. It is just a matter of finding the ‘sweet spot’ so that the aircraft is lined up exactly in the camera’s frame.” A professional photographer, graphic designer, and architect, Milstein infuses his photography with his lifelong creative passion and fascination for flight. His trained eye and steady hand produce images of pristine clarity. Using photographic post-processing techniques, he distills the subject from the background to focus attention on design, color, and symmetry, creating supersized prints. They presents the power and elegance of aircraft in flight and transforms aviation technology into fine art. A collection of 33 photographic archival-pigment prints are on exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC. Milstein’s work is represented by Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.
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HERBERT BAYER "Undulated Wall" tabletop edition, c. 1967 37" x 21" x 21"
“Untitled” tabletop edition, c. 1972, 36" x 37 1/2" x 33 1/2"
"Memorial Sculpture" tabletop edition c.1960-2007 48" x 21" x 21"
"Leaning Spiral Tower" tabletop edition, c. 1969 34 3/4" x 14" x 10 3/4"
EMIL NELSON GALLERY 2862 COLORADO AVE SANTA MONICA, CA 90404 www.hugoanderson.com Email: info@nelsongallery.com
EXHIBITIONS
NEW YORK Franklin Evans Sue Scott Bowery [Mar 2 - Apr 15]
Franklin Evans: (top) wallcollectiononcanvas, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72”; memorydoubled, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72”
David Barnett Denise Bibro Chelsea [Mar 1 - Mar 31]
David Barnet, Mood Swings, 2011, collage, 22.5 x 25”. Courtesy of Denise Bibro Fine Art.
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This new mixed-media exhibition by Franklin Evans, entitled eyesontheedge, examines the processes of making art—the generation of ideas and materials, their transformation from one to the other, and the many varied states in between. As part of this exhibition, he will present paintings, sculptures, photographs, and a sound piece in an all-encompassing environment. The wall paintings and collage environments of past installations, such as timecompressionmachine from Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1, have been collapsed by the artist and transferred to the surface of large-scale canvases. Mundane materials such as artist's tape that previously played a key role as a barrier, frame, and drawing tool, are carefully recreated as trompe l'oeil representations, as the use of actual tape in the final compositions diminishes. In the past, Evans has used gallery press releases to create a framing system presented as temporal floor sculpture. This practice has morphed into the usage of visual highlights from the artist's gallery visits, captured online images, text highlights from books read over the past year, and scanned photographs from family albums. The viewer will discover various aspects of Evans, as an artist and a person: his childhood in Nevada, his mixed Mexican heritage, and his gay male
identity. By focusing on the myriad visuals referencing the various aspects of Evans' personae, some of these "peripheral" images remain on the periphery, while others become a focal point, as they do for indexicalmeasfocalscreen2012. The archive of hundreds of photographs is threaded to create an "image curtain" that divides the main gallery in two and which occupies an artistic space that builds on the Atlases of Aby Warburg and Gerhard Richter. Entering this tandem exploration of periphery and focus, the viewer walks into the gallery over Evans' sculptural "library", an elevated floor and installation object in flux. It starts as a representation of the literal, moves to a residue of process, evolves as the ideas are extracted from the represented books, and settles into the sound piece 1967 in the main gallery room. 1967 consists of 350 fragments from his readings in the past year, ranging from Justin Spring's biography of Samuel Steward, Secret Historian, to October Files' Robert Rauschenberg. The text extractions are voiced by five performers and are played on random shuffle. Operating in the slippery nonlinearity of memory, 1967 takes us back to Evans' birth year. Evans' work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe and is part of several permanent collections.
Recent Constructions and Collages, a solo exhibition of recent work by David Barnett, feature the artist's detailed, deftly executed works, which comment on the ongoing interplay between humanity and technology as well as evoke a Renaissance or Medieval aesthetic, with traditional portraiture and iconic imagery. Recent Constructions and Collages features two and three dimensional work and introduces a further development in Barnett's vocabulary: two-and-a-half dimensional wall-mounted assemblages. Comprised of found objects and mixed media, such as discarded medical instruments, photographic elements and ripped topography; Barnett combines these elements with mechanical parts. Whether through the literal combination of man and machine, as in Workmen's Circle, which depicts a half-boy, half-robot riding a futuristic bicycle made from found sprockets, wheels, and springs — the boy and the contraption have converged, blurring the line between man and machine — or in his modified pastel painted and penciled collage, In Your Face (book), a tongue-in-cheek look at the
superficial aspects of today's digital social networks, Barnett prompts the viewer to participate in this timely dialogue. Utilizing remnants of photographs from a discarded yearbook, we see behind each photo's façade, catching glimpses of the inner personality which is often hidden behind composed portraits. In another example, Cyclopedia, a meticulously created categorized list of traditional images — the bird and the Renaissance man — have been betrayed by technological elements. These portraits may reveal a loss of soul in contemporary society or a character tethered to a machine unable to fly to the heavens. Suggesting that technology has become its own religion, we are left to worship machines instead of our traditional deities. Other works, such as The Garden, present traditional and universal themes simultaneously; in this case Adam and Eve conjure the themes of creation and consequence of the human experience. Barnett has had solo exhibitions throughout the world. He also has held teaching positions at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, and the School of Visual Arts.
EXHIBITIONS With Bruised and Battered, Dutch artist Piet van den Boog pushes the limits of portraiture by directly confronting emotion head-on by way of large-scale paintings of faces. In this new exhibiton, oil and acrylic paint make up the flesh tones and fine facial details while abstract strokes in rust tones, cerulean blues and greens are chemically etched into the cold lead surfaces becoming a powerful metaphor for the internal scars we all possess.The imposing portraits depicted in the paintings, some as tall as 6 feet, are truncated from the body, consequently becoming nostalgic monumental ruins of a lost time. Akin to the brutal candor seen in the portraits of Jenny Saville and Lucian Freud, they surpass their own representation and acquire a bold, autonomous presence because of their distorted nature. They are not meant to remind the viewers of a specific person, but rather, they become an emblematic entity in and of themselves. The works' transcendence as universal symbols of emotionally charged memories is further reinforced in van den Boog's choice of titles, many culled from song lyrics and poems. In the painting If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man, a line from a Tom Waits song, a male figure appears to hover above the viewer, who unexpectedly finds themselves thrust into an undermined position, as if knocked down in a battle. The title does not identify the individual portrayed but a perspective on humanity. The face looks back at the viewer with the haunting insistence of an un-
shakeable memory and the etching pain of heartache. A modern day Alchemist, van den Boog experiments with base metals like lead, copper and steel as a visual allegory of personal transmutation, and a quest for an emotional panacea — that cure-all for the human soul. It is van den Boog's technical process which ultimately imbues the portraits with relatable human qualities. His masterful application of paint is calculated and controlled, while areas of exposed metal are worn and weathered by acids and other oxidizing chemicals in a process left mostly to chance. This element of technical surrender alludes to the unforeseen consequences of intimacy and the perpetual co-existence of pain and pleasure. Remember, remember, this is now, and now and now, quoted from the journal of tortured poet Sylvia Plath, is one of two self-portraits in the show. Piet's guarded gaze presents a balanced juxtaposition of emotional fragility and inner strength and resilience, both of which delineate the parameters of human emotion. Van den Boog reminds the viewer of the uncontrollability of life's forces, with all of their sheer prowess and unpredictability, and the undeniable beauty of the present moment. Piet van den Boog currently lives and works in Amsterdam. His work is in many important international museums and collections, most notably, the Drents Museum in Assen, Netherlands; Scheringa voor Realisme Collection in Amsterdam; and the Art Collection of Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in Den Haag, Netherlands.
Nominated for the Young Belgian Painters Award in 2011, twenty-five-year old Michiel Ceulers recently finished a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, where he was the youngest artist ever to be accepted in the program. Following exhibitions in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, London, and Zurich, this is his first solo show in the United States. Ceulers concentrates on the bare essentials of painting: canvases and wooden panels, paint and spray paint. He is entirely committed to painting as an ongoing art form, saying in an interview that painting "has been declared dead a few times, but still many people consider painting the most relevant medium." Part of the impulse associated with the logic of chance the artist submits his canvases to can be seen as an attempt to move beyond from the boundaries of painterly tradition. As a result, the artworks' origins are not only painterly, they are also conceptual. For Ceulers, his "paintings are the result of events that form a chain reaction, so in a way they are larger than the canvases
themselves — they are spatial." He maintains steady ground, balancing the idiosyncrasies of his practice against the tradition of modernist paintings, which he clearly belongs to. He mainly paints abstractions. But he uses words, rather than numbers, in his titles — to help viewers decipher some of the ideas he is playing with. Several titles originate with Kant, and some are lyrics from songs. This combination of high-mindedness and lack of pretension add to the works' whimsy. As for the paintings themselves, he is decidedly exploratory in his process. His practice thus is informal on several levels without succumbing to an overly ad hoc, limited expressiveness. Many of his works involve tight grids; these bear some resemblance to Yayoi Kusama's infinity net paintings. But Ceulers' efforts are not characterized by obsessiveness. He is remarkably inventive within the medium he has chosen, mixing planning with chance and furthering the tradition of contemporary painting. Michiel Ceulers lives and works in Brussels and Berlin.
Piet van den Boog Mike Weiss Chelsea [Feb 23 - Mar 24]
Piet van den Boog, I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions, 2011, acrylic, oil and rust on lead mounted on wood, 79 x 63”
Michiel Ceulers Ana Cristea Chelsea [Feb 23 - Mar 31]
Michiel Ceulers: (top) The Girl with the Lad on Brick Lane (Das Buschwoman), 2011-2012, oil gloss and spraypaint on canvas, 60 x 48”; (bot) detail of Ich schloss meine Augen um zu sehen (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders), 2010-2012, oil and spraypaint on canvas, 26 x 20”
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EXHIBITIONS Milton Avery Fischbach Chelsea [Feb 16 - Mar 17]
Milton Avery, Lone Pine, 1955, watercolor/paper, 22 x 17”. Courtesy of Fischbach Gallery.
Benjamin Cottam Klemens, Glasser, and Tanja Grunert Chelsea [Feb 16 - Mar 17]
Benjamin Cottam, detail of Blue Sky, 2012, oil on aluminum, 6 x 4”. Courtesy the artist & Klemmens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc.
Louise Belcourt Jeff Bailey Chelsea [Feb 17 - Mar 17]
Louise Belcourt, Mound #1, 2011, oil on canvas over panel, 30 x 41”. Courtesy of Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York.
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Delivery a memorial address at the New York Society of Ethical Culture in January 7, 1965, Mark Rothko said declared that Milton Avery “is first a great poet. His is the poetry of sheer loveliness, of sheer beauty. Thanks to him this kind of poetry has been able to survive in our time. This — alone — took great courage in a generation which felt that it could be heard only through clamor, force and a show of power. But Avery had that inner power in which gentleness and silence proved more audible and poignant. From the beginning there was nothing tentative about Avery. He always had that naturalness, that exactness and that inevitable completeness which can be achieved only by those gifted with magical means, by those born to sing….” Among the works featured in this exhibition is a large oil painting, From the Studio, from 1954. This important painting was shown at the Whitney Museum in 1955 just a year after Avery painted it.
Later the painting was included in the Avery retrospective that the Whitney organized in 1960. A related painting, Window Plants, 1955, painted just a year later than From the Studio provides another glimpse of the artist’s investigation of color, geometry, and space. Also included in the exhibition is a selection of rarely seen woodcuts and drypoint prints created by the artist in the 1930s and the 1950s. Several beautifully fresh crayon drawings and watercolors show the artist’s mastery of these mediums. Coastal View, a watercolor from the 1920’s, is an early example of Avery’s fascination with the colors and luminosity of the sea.Two impressive large sheet oil on paper landscapes, painted in Lake Hill, New York during the summers of 1962 and 1963 are representative of the works Avery produced during the last of his summer painting excursions. These late works are in many ways a summation of Avery’s remarkable accomplishments.
Nothing is quite what it seems at first glance in Benjamin Cottam’s sublime and mysterious paintings that seem to transcend their materiality. In this exhibition, Cottam departs from his signature minimalist black oil paintings in exchange for intense layers of red that conceal a subtle surprise. In addition, Cottam presents a new body of work, Blue Skies, small expressive paintings whose tranquil nature belies a darker narrative of tear gas abuse. The lush monochrome red paintings retain the inherent qualities of the artist’s work — his mastery of oil paint applied in glossy layers, up to 20-30 per painting, that seduce viewers deeper and deeper into the works until images gradually emerge. Referencing holographs and the layered effect of flash photography Cottam uses to capture his subjects, the paintings stack their tonality backwards, exaggerating the imagery before bringing it back to normal. The faces that emerge, stark images of Cottam’s friends, mostly unknown and under recognized artists, stare out from the panels, stripped of any trace of their persona or
sentimentality. The abstraction and constant shift in perceptibility supports Cottam’s “lack of belief in portraiture.” Benjamin Cottam’s Blue Skies series departs from the personal to the political. Working on ultra thin aluminum, light reflects off the translucent blue sky background and what the artist calls “happy, little, white puffs.” The intimately sized 6 x 4 inch seemingly bucolic paintings actually reference a more sinister history of destruction — governmental abuse of tear gas against their own people from public protests at G8 summits, Arab Spring, Occupied Wall Street, and more. Utilizing alla prima technique used since the inception of oil painting, Cottam challenges himself to master the inherent fragility and immediacy of the process in which the whole painting is completed in a single sitting. The reward is the delicate line and fluid energy captured in the work. As Cottam intentionally destroys the vast majority of these paintings before they’re finished, the presentation of five paintings from this series is exciting and rare — a first for the artist.
In Louise Belcourt’s series of new painting, Mounds, color, light and space are pushed to make mound-like forms that merge landscape and cityscape views. The mounds are piled, stacked and overlap one another. Curving shapes may denote mountains or bodies of water, while rectilinear shapes suggest high-rise buildings. Subtle and dramatic shifts of color differentiate various weights and densities. Green may be bright, or verging toward black. Red can be almost brown, or intensely vivid. Deep blues sometimes fade to cream, evoking changes in light during the day. The sense of
physicality is heightened in the way that Belcourt uses perspective. Tension is created by near and far spaces butting against each other, while foreground and background move in and out. Color and light function like notes in a musical composition, striking a balance in order to form a cohesive whole. Belcourt refers to her new work as “paintings of sculptures of landscapes”. The mounds seem almost tangible, creating a pictorial harmony that’s both simple and mysterious. Belcourt’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. She lives and works in New York and Canada.
EXHIBITIONS Alec Soth’s new exhibition, Broken Manual, is the first opportunity to view such a large selection of this important body of work in New York. The majority of photographs that comprise this compelling series were taken over a four-year period, from 2006-2010. They reflect Soth’s increasing interest in the mounting anger and frustration that some — specifically male — Americans feel with societal constraints and their subsequent desire to remove themselves from civilization. The resultant work is a group of portraits of men and the landscapes they inhabit that are poignant, disturbing and mysterious. Soth’s uncanny ability to gain the trust of those whom he photographs gave him unprecedented access to these notoriously elusive individuals, in moments, variously, of brooding, deep reflection or vulnerability. The genesis of the work is Soth’s fascination with the life of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who, prior to his death in 1968, lived for almost three decades at the remote Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Additionally, Soth studied the years that Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph spent evading the authorities in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. In visits to these two locations, Soth realized that both these men’s stories ignited “a fantasy of retreat”. Soth’s alter ego, Lester B. Morrison, was borne out of his research on this topic. Morrison created a text — the eponymously titled manual that accompanies the exhibition — written to aid others who, like him, choose to retreat from society and live off the grid in a
remote area of the country. In it, he offers helpful hints on everything from disguising one’s appearance to creating a pseudonym. Soth, in turn inspired by Morrison’s manual, traveled the country taking photographs that illustrated Morrison’s ideas. Morrison proclaims: “Let this book be your guide. Over the last few years I’ve studied the experts of escape. Let us now praise these lonely men: hermits and hippies, monks and survivalists.” He goes on to explain, “I’ve included a number of photos by my comrade Alec Soth. When you look at these scenes, try to put yourself in the picture. Visualize your new life on the lam. Before you know it, you just might make the break.” In addition to the photographs in the main gallery, gallery two will include a site-specific installation of the special edition of the Broken Manual book. This highly sought-after, signed and numbered edition is placed inside larger found books, the interiors of which have been carved out to create a secret repository for the manual, an action that mimics the concealment of covert material by someone living a double-life, who must hide evidence of their alternative existence from those around them. Gallery one will feature the 2011 full-length documentary, Somewhere to Disappear, running 57 minutes. Directed by Laure Flammarion and Arnaud Uyttenhove, and produced by Mas Films, the film follows Soth as he travels across America in search of the subjects for Broken Manual. The screening schedule for Somewhere to Disappear will be posted in the gallery and on the gallery’s website.
“Polarized Space,” an exhibiton of paintings by Mary Corse, John McCracken, and John McLaughlin, explores the works of these three southern California artists, made over the course of three distinct generations. It is approached here in a context that attends to the artists’ rigorous use of minimal form and restricted composition. Each artist creates paintings that evoke a visceral, philosophical, and visual experience. Individually, the works serve as a point of departure toward an enhanced relationship with space and perception; collectively, along with the early work of Robert Irwin, they survey core examples of painting within what is referred to as the “Light and Space” movement or southern California Minimalism. Four rare examples of John McLaughlin’s small-scale paintings from the 1950s and ‘60s exemplify the artist’s career-long effort to encounter the truly abstract and to eliminate material reference. Working exclusively with a vocabulary of simple rectangular shapes distributed upon neutral fields, these gem-like paintings depict
the remarkable variety McLaughlin was able to achieve within his disciplined realm of elemental forms and subtle variations of hue and tone. Three paintings by John McCracken inhabit a genre that bridges the space between McLaughlin’s (philosophical) and Corse’s (environmental) approaches to art making. Like futuristic renditions of the mandala, these paintings address space and perception by way of a hypersegmented, monochromatic canvas. Variations in the color and intensity of action from work to work illuminate the range of McCracken’s exploration of space and perception in a two-dimensional form as a means of accessing realms or dimensions beyond the familiar. Two paintings by Mary Corse explore a polarized duality between perceived depth and two-dimensionality. Fields distinguished from one another not by color but by a sense of weight or luminosity move in and out of the viewer’s perception, challenging the audience not only to capture but to simultaneously comprehend floating, glowing panels, and bands.
Alec Soth Sean Kelly Chelsea [Feb 3 - Mar 11]
Alec Soth: (top) 2007_10zl0006, 2007, framed archival pigment print mounted to 4 ply museum board, framed: 54 1/4 x 44 1/4”, edition of 7 with 3 APs; (bot) 2008_08zl0215, framed archival pigment print mounted to 4 ply museum board. framed: 54.25 x 44.13”, edition of 7 with 3 APs. Both images © Alec Soth, courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery, New York.
Corse|McCracken|McLaughlin
Franklin Parrasch 57th St [Feb 23 - Mar 17]
John Mclaughlinl, #31, 1958, oil on board, 7.5 x 7.5”.
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EXHIBITIONS
MID-ATLANTIC Yuichi Hibi and Nadine Rovner
Gallery 339 Philadelphia [March 9 - May 5]
(top) Yuichi Hibi, 127 Carlton, 1994-1995. (middle) Nadine Rovner, Someone Knows, 2006 (bot) Rovner, Julie, 2007. Courtesy of Gallery 339.
Mia Rosenthal Gallery Joe Philadelphia [Mar 3 - Apr 14]
Mia Rosenthal, After Cole: The Oxbow, 2011, ink and graphite on paper, 20.63 x 27.87”.
32 A|C|A March 2012
An exhibition of photographs by Yuichi Hibi, 127 is titled after a type of film. In the mid 1990s, Hibi bought a new camera on the street, a Sawyer Mark IV, which is a late 1950s Japanese Twin Lens Reflex camera that uses 127 film. Prior to this, he had captured his shadowy cinematic images of New York and Japan with the quintessential street-photography camera, a 35mm. While still compact and easily hand-held, the Sawyer has a bit more formality than the agile 35mm. Its appearance seems to suggest a more studied approach, and it did in fact lead to a body of work that was distinctly different from most of Hibi’s earlier images. In 127, the street is still Hibi’s milieu and his photographs still evoke a sense of cinematic drama, but these square portraits are not fleeting moments captured; they convey thoughtfulness and collaboration. The pictures also represent a different way for Hibi to unravel the enigma of New York—through New Yorkers themselves rather than the city’s streets and buildings. The images are direct and in some cases challenging, but Hibi has clearly connected with his subjects, portraying them with empathy and compassion, making them leading characters in his evolving narrative of city life. Born in Nagoya, Japan in 1964, Yuichi Hibi trained as an actor and filmmaker, achieving success in a broad range of film and theater productions. In 1988, he moved to New York to further his career in film, and it was at this time that he began to make photographs. Speaking virtually no English, Hibi was the quintessential outsider; he found himself immersed in a culture that was beyond his reach. Trying to understand his new surroundings, Hibi photographed the city late at night, creating images that described and explained New York to him. With their quiet inten-
sity and sense of longing, these early nighttime images captured Hibi’s perspective as outsider and observer. His photographic work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around world, and his work has been published extensively. In Somewhere Not Here, Nadine Rovner’s scenes of longing, anticipation and hope are formed rather than found by the artist. Rovner works in the tradition of the staged photograph, beginning with a feeling or idea, and creating a scene to portray it. While often associated with contemporary artists, this approach to photography goes back to complex dramas that were made for the camera in the 19th century. Staged photography is also the foundation for most photographic commercial work, and it has long been a bridge between photography and cinema. Rovner draws from all these precedents, yet her images stand out for their subtlety and understatement. Rather than the harsh irony or hyperrealism that often characterize staged photography, Rovner’s images dwell in a hazy border between reality and memory, hinting at a hidden story, but revealing only fragments. These spare dramas have little overt action, but they contain a palpable sense of tension, like the opening moments in a film, when many things are possible, or the closing sequence where much remains undetermined. Her richly textured environments and enigmatic characters deftly explore the terrain of early adulthood, evoking the uncertainty that accompanies growing up and having to make difficult choices. Her subjects seem conflicted about what to do with new-found freedom and responsibility — in essence, where to find home and family at this next stage of life. The solitude and sense of deliberation that come across in the pictures suggest that there is no easy road home.
An avid documenter, Mia Rosenthal gathers data from all manner of sources such as boxes of cereal, stamp collections or television shows. Once she has gathered her data, she begins her drawings. In her new series, American Landscapes, Rosenthal examines the flora and fauna of the Hudson River Valley. All of her research is done from her own home over the internet from sites such as US Fish and Wildlife Service Conservation Library or USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Thousands of sketches provide her source materials. Of this series Rosenthal states, “I am currently creating drawings as an homage to the Hudson River School. In the iconic paintings of such art-
ists as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, and Albert Bierstadt, there is a celebration of the American landscape and bounty of nature. I was interested in doing my own celebration of the bounty of nature, through drawing the immense variety of living organisms including: mammals, birds, insects, butterflies, reptiles, amphibians, fish, crustaceans, plants, fungi and microorganisms. Using the literal geographic confines of the Hudson River Valley, I used the Internet to research life forms present in that are.” Rosenthal’s drawings are included in the collections of the Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
EXHIBITIONS Pharos is an exhibition of 15 wall-sized wood block prints and ink drawings by Israeli artist Orit Hofshi. The exhibition title, taken from her 2012 piece, means both milestone and beacon. Hofshi’s work has long conveyed the notion of passage—both in the historical sense but also humanity’s individual renewal. Hofshi’s massive prints render agitated landscapes in black, ocres and shades of grey—the terrain alternately wild and marked by man’s imprint. Often depicting her native Israel, the plains and ruins are haunted by history, suggesting nostalgia, despair and meditation. The arid lands, symbolic and ordinary for every Israeli are reconfigured through Hofshi’s intense study of artists such as Albrecht Durer, Kathe Kollwitz and Anselm Kiefer. The scale is proportional to the human body and viewers physically enter her space, experiencing each narrative. Her woodblock prints achieve monumentality while retaining an intimate
quality in the abundant, intricate detail; each work imprinted or drawn by hand. Hofshi’s virtuosic mastery of printmaking has developed over her entire career, specifically with spoon printed woodcuts on hand-made Abaca and Kozo paper. She has insistently pushed the boundaries of her art, finding metaphoric ways of presenting her prints as traces of carved images and echoes of a time-consuming process. She integrates her carved wood templates as part of three-dimensional installations—notably Kairos (2006, Tefen Museum, Israel), her prominent contribution to the Philagrafika exhibition, If the Tread is the Echo (2009) and Convergence (2011, created for List Gallery, Swarthmore College). Hofshi was born in Kibbutz Matzuva, Israel in 1959. She lives and works in Herzliya. Having frequently and widely exhibited in many museums and art centers in Israel, she was the subject of a solo exhibition at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
“You, Me, We, She” features contemporary female artists working with or responding to community or collective identity in their practices. The exhibition features twenty artists and artist groups who work in a variety of media and with a range of methods. Select artists in You, Me, We, She take the public or groups of people as their subjects and investigate social and relational concerns; others create work that conceptually speaks to communal identity. Additional artists in the exhibition are engaged in a practice that is defined by a performative, process-based, or site-specific approach. While the level of finish or output varies between artists, all share a concern with the idea of exchange
and exploration of quotidian experience - artworks act as social interstices and attempts to redefine community revolve around the complex forms of identification that exist between individuals and larger collective entities, identities that are in re-negotiation through encounters with others. The artists in the exhibition are Becca Albee & Kathleen Hanna, Art Book Club, Anna Banana, Johanna Billling, Tammy Rae Carland, Stephanie Diamond, DISBAND, Annika Eriksson, Ilona Granet, Kara Hearn, Donna Henes, Corita Kent, Fawn Krieger, Justine Kurland, Jennifer Levonian, Shani Peters, Mika Rottenberg, Julia Sherman, Francine Spiegel, and Martha Wilson.
Janet Biggs’s Kawah Ijen features a new multichannel installation — A Step on the Sun — and a single-channel video by the same name. Biggs has achieved international renown working in extreme on-site conditions and maximizing cinematic techniques to create stunning interpretations of human strength in extraordinary environments. In A Step On the Sun, the artist focuses on hardships overcome by a sulfur miner in the Ijen volcano, in the East Java province of Indonesia. Biggs’s video centers around a crater situated almost two miles above sea level, which houses the world’s largest sulfuric lake. We watch as the miner collects hardened sulfur crystals and packs them into a basket. Amid clouds of toxic sulfur dioxide gas, he carries heavy loads up a steep, rocky path from the crater floor to the rim, then to a distant weigh-station. The footage confronts us with a
provocative mixture of natural beauty and human exploitation. Biggs subverts documentary structure, portraying co-existing but colliding worlds in a faceted narrative wherein she juxtaposes the sulfur mining scenes with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photos of an experimental weather balloon launch. The pictorial array is accompanied by a soundtrack of noises recorded inside the volcanic mine which is punctuated by cello and violin passages commissioned by the artist. “A Step on the Sun” adds a poetic voice to ongoing discussions on bio-politics and global-humanism. [Also showing is Wilmer Wilson IV’s Domestic Exchange, which engages issues of identity and race by appropriating the brown paper bag as a cultural symbol identified with bag lunches, alcohol and skin color, enacting a liminal struggle between freedom and self-destruction.]
Orit Hofshi Locks Philadelphia [Mar 2 - Apr 13]
Orit Hotshi, Remnant, 2008, ink drawing on carved pine wood panels, unique, 103 x 141.7”. Courtesy of Locks Gallery in Philadelphia.
“You, Me, We, She” Fleisher/Ollman Philadelphia [Feb 23 - Mar 31]
(top) Tammy Rae Carland, Covered Wagon, Rootworks, 2004, digital archival c-print, Edition 1 of 3, 20 x 24”. (bot) Corita Kent. people like us yes, 1965, serigraph, 23 x 35”. Reprinted with permission from the Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles
Janet Biggs Conner Washington DC [Mar 2 - Apr 13]
Janet Biggs, A Step on the Sun (still), 2012, 5-channel video + single channel video. © Janet Biggs, courtesy of Conner Contemporary Art.
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EXHIBITIONS
LOS ANGELES James Welling Regen Projects II Los Angeles [Feb 29 - Mar 31]
James Welling, #16, 2008
“Requiem for the Sun” Blum + Poe Los Angeles [Feb 25 - Apr 14] (top) Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Phenomena and Perception B), 1969/2012, glass: 0.38 x 78.75, stone: 11.87 x 15.75 x 19.63” (bot) Nobuo Sekine, Phase of Nothingness, 1969/2012, stainless steel, and granite, installed dimensions variable.
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This exhibition of James Welling will present a selection from two of his recent bodies of work: Geometric Abstraction (2008) and Maison de Verre (2009). This pairing examines the dialogue between photographic representation and visual experience that is at the core of Welling's work. Geometric Abstraction extends the exploration Welling began in 1998 with his New Abstractions. The original 1998 prints were made from digital negatives of photograms created by laying long strips of paper onto 8x10 inch sheets of black and white photographic paper. A few of the digital negatives of the photograms were accidentally created as positives. In 2008, these accidental positives became the point of departure for the Geometric Abstractions. Using an array of colored filters placed in the color enlarger (a technique used in Flowers, 2004-08), Welling filled the white areas with intense swaths of color. In 2009 Welling photographed the Maison de Verre in Paris, France. Designed in 1932 by Pierre Chareau as the medical and home office for a gynecologist, the Maison de Verre was considered an early twentieth-century architectural
masterpiece. For Welling, despite its glass walls, the house is dark and somber, and the interior light is shadowed and opaque. Welling photographed the interiors of the house to intensify the existing light found on the first two floors. Using Photoshop Curves, Gradient Maps, and Hue and Saturation adjustments, Welling modified the color in the Maison de Verre to such an extent that he essentially created a new work of architecture on top of Chareau's masterpiece. James Welling engages the materials, production, and history of photography, into an interrogation of the nature of the medium. Welling creates photographs that are equally about vision, light, negative, and solid as they are about the depicted image and subject. Using an experimental approach to the medium of photography, Welling investigates a variety of formal and theoretical ideas about picture making. Appearance and illusion, the historical nature of cameras and of the photographic print, what we see or think we see in the act of perception, and how things are revealed photographically have long been at play in Welling's work.
“Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha” examines the postwar Japanese artistic phenomenon Mono-ha (School of Things). Representing an important art historical turning point, "Requiem for the Sun" refers to the attitude of aesthetic detachment and renewal of matter in response to the immanent loss of the object as a sun in Japanese postwar art practice. Included in the exhibition are works by Koji Enokura (1942-1995), Noriyuki Haraguchi (1946-), Susumu Koshimizu (1944-), Katsuhiko Narita (1944-1991), Nobuo Sekine (1942-), Kishio Suga (1944-), Jiro Takamatsu (1936-1998), Noboru Takayama (1944-), Lee Ufan (1936-), and Katsuro Yoshida (1943-1999).Mono-ha's primary tenet explores the encounter between natural and industrial objects, such as glass, stones, steel plates, wood, cotton, light bulbs, leather, oil, wire and Japanese paper, in and of themselves arranged directly on the floor or in an outdoor field. Evident in their works is a tendency based not on the art historical recuperation of objects, but on maintaining an affective relationship between works and our surrounding environment. That is, the works
operate as a process of perceiving a perpetually passing present that opens the materiality of the work beyond what is simply seen. These practices are linked to the cultural milieu of process and post-minimalist art apparent on an international level during the 1960s and 1970s. What distinguishes their work is the refined technique of repetition as a studied production of difference developed over time in each artist's practice. The exhibition will show select key installations, works on paper, and photographs that unveil resonant concepts and artistic methods relative to the exhibition. Some themes include perceiving works as actions or events, experiments in topology and spatial continuity, visceral materiality, and the contingency of the body. While the art of Mono-ha has been the subject of exhibitions in Asia and Europe, it is virtually unknown in North America. Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha will provide the audience with a critical introduction to this extremely significant work. [In conjunction with the exhibition, Blum & Poe will publish a 232-page catalog, which will include an essay with new scholarship by Mika Yoshitake, translations of artists' texts, a chronology of historical exhibitions with accompanying rare installation photographs, and new photography of the works installed at Blum & Poe.]
EXHIBITIONS The Strange Young Neighbours, a solo exhibition by Pietro Roccasalva, includes paintings, drawings, a neon work, and a large-scale sculptural installatio. Roccasalva explores the potential for art objects to become active agents of simulacrum, sites where the animate and inanimate worlds undergo profound crossing. Painting serves as the orbital center for a practice that includes sculpture, performance, and video, and that has increasingly come to represent a self-contained universe of poetic narratives and philosophical inquiries. Roccasalva has referred to his paintings as 'microchips', devices that organize an ever-expanding network of processes and allusions. Synthesizing compositional strategies drawn from religious iconography, modernist collage, and digital distortion, and skillfully rendered over months and even years, the figures in the paintings are both deeply familiar and impossibly strange. They freeze the gaze and conjure the sense that though artworks can never be fully understood, they are caught with their viewers in an endless feedback loop of exchanged signification. The Strange Young Neighbours borrows its title from a standalone tale in Goethe's 1809 novel Elective Affinities.
In the story, a near-catastrophic drowning plays a key role in uniting a young couple destined to be together since childhood. Though the onset of adulthood and its misunderstood passions temporarily drive them apart, when the girl jumps from a moving boat and the boy saves her, they finally realize that they are in fact meant to be married. This tale is just one of the texts that inform Just Married Machine, a major sculptural installation that occupies the center of the gallery and sets the stage for a series of new paintings as well as the tableau vivant. A wooden boat suggests direct connection to Goethe's narrative, but the other objects suggest that additional processes are at play. In fact, the scene is also based on a still/ still life taken from the short Pasolini film La Ricotta. Roccasalva has allowed a series of visual slippages to transform objects depicted in what is essentially a traditional nature morte into fully realized, life-sized objects.
Sam Falls seeks to represent time: “its persistence and the signs of life present in the inanimate.” He uses photographic processes, combined with painting and sculpture materials in order to “give a feeling to constant variable, like light and weather, as well as our relative experiences of time.” He seeks to connect the gap between viewer and artist by starting a dialogue about the object itself. In this new exhibition, several house pictures were taken in Joshua Tree, California, using film. Falls put large colored sheets of fabric along the interior walls of
these burnt out houses to create a different imag of the house. The fabric was exposed to the sun and left to fade. The film of these altered houses were then scanned into the computer. Falls used the color-picker in Photoship to choose the color of the fabric and mimic its geometry over the image. He had these colors digitally matched at Home Depot and then used mixed enamel house paints to physically paint over the sky of the roofless houses using a roller. Through this multi-step process, he formed the image over time rather than capture it in a single instant.
Cast. Reflect. features work by artists, Daniel Aksten, André Goeritz, Alexander Kroll, and Robin Szidak. Moving away from the need to recreate objects found in the environment to understand the environment, these art-makers seem to be re-ordering foundational truths, whether or not these truths are evident.The work of the four artists in the exhibition, while working in different media, dealswith the constant flux that is central to contemporary abstract art: ideas of the past--casting shadows onto the present. All are artists working in Los Angeles today — reflecting light back onto the past, creating a dialog between contemporary art and its historical forebears. Furthermore, in a literal sense, not unlike the attempt of art to reflect literal sense-making, the very objects presented in the show will inevitably cast shad-
ows and reflected light onto each other. Daniel Aksten’s recent work stresses the conceptual end of painting, as container of visual experience, true unto itself, and strives to enmesh the conceptual with the object itself. The sculpture and wall pieces of André Goeritz are embedded with a symbolic interaction between that which is, was, or ought to be its meaning. Alexander Kroll’s paintings deal with scale, painting history, intuition, systems, emotions, and painting as means of producing an object that can embody and contradict these issues. Employing a slight hand, Robin Szidak’s pieces simultaneously retain their familiar origin and are transformed; a playful juxtaposition of an inherent or perceived opposite in the material, outlines paradoxical relationships and creates a conceptual loop.
Pietro Roccasalva, Just Married Machine, installation view. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery.
Pietro Roccasalva David Kordansky Los Angeles [Feb 11 - Mar 24] Sam Falls M+B Los Angeles [Feb 18 - Mar 31]
Sam Falls: (top) Untitled (House, Red and Yellow, Joshua Tree, CA), 2012 , enamel on archival pigment print, 44 x 55.5” (bot) Untitled (House, Blue, Joshua Tree, CA), 2012, enamel on archival pigment print, 44 x 55.5”
“Cast. Reflect.” CB1 Los Angeles [Feb 26 - Mar 25]
Alexander Kroll, Ice Folds, 2012, oil and spray paint on linen, 10 X 12".
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EXHIBITIONS Fiona Banner 1301PE Los Angeles [Mar 17 - May 15]
Fiona Banner and Name Creative, The Greatest Film Never Made, 2012, graphite on paper, 46 x 69” Courtesy of 1301PE, Los Angeles.
Delia Brown Martha Otero Los Angeles [Mar 3 - Mar 31]
Brown, Lavender Bandana, 2010-2011, oil on canvas, 28 x 48”. Photo: Kristy Leibowitz. Couresy of Martha Otero and Country Club.
Carolyn Castaño Walter Maciel Los Angeles [Feb 25 - Apr 7] Carolyn Castaño, Narco Venus (Liliana Andrea), 2011, acrylic, glitter, gold leaf and rhinestones on canvas, 69 x 141.5" Courtesy of Walter Maciel Gallery.
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Ranging from her “wordscapes” to found and transformed military objects, acclaimed British artist Fiona Banner’s work is known for exploring the limitations and possibilities of language and its cultural parameters. In a homage to Orson Welles failed attempt at his first movie, “Heart of Darkness,” Banner constructs an exhibition that articulates man’s hubris. Welles wrote the script Heart of Darkness, based on Joseph Conrad’s 1890s novella, in the late 1930s. "Like the original novel, Welles’ script for Heart of Darkness is a parody of power gone bad — but it is also a narrative of seduction, a lens as well as a mirror. Welles film was never made because it was considered too expensive, and too uncompromising artistically, and also because its narrative parallels with the rise of fascism in
Europe. Today other parallels are drawn,” says the artist. Banner reveals the intricacies of narrative as she combines the visual and the written. She presents graphite drawings based upon specially commissioned movie posters, as well as a large wall drawing, and sculptures that convey human desire and constraint. Unboxing, The Greatest Film Never Made exposes how humans reference themselves; wild with the dualities of ambition and restraint. With this exhibition Banner has redefined a story of the past by uncovering its relevance to the modern self. Fiona Banner was born in 1966. She lives and works in London, where she also runs The Vanity Press. Banner is represented in major collections in the US and abroad. In 2002, Banner was shortlisted for the Turner Prize at Tate Britain.
In collaboration with Country Club Projects, Los Angeles-based artist Delia Brown entitled Last Exit: Punta Junta. These new works continue Brown's Guerilla Lounging project, where private lodgings of the upper class are borrowed for several hours in which to party and 'play house' with friends from the middle and lower economic spheres. In these confidently executed oil paintings, Brown satirizes the act of leisure, while simultaneously indulging in it to gross proportions. Armed with a paperback of sociologist Thorsten Veblen's best-known work The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) as a field guide, Brown and her friends lounge in the airy spaces of exclusive private villas on the Caribbean island of St. Barth. The paintings, made from photographic documentation of these escapades, contain imagery reminiscent of pictures of the bourgeois leisure created by 19th Century French paint-
ers such as Toulouse-Lautrec, and the artists of the Century Neue Sachlichkeit (though with more subjectivity than the former and with less contempt than the latter.) Brown and her black-beret-and-camouflage-clad cadre live out their fantasies of “conspicuous consumption.” They drink cocktails, smoke Cuban cigars and sunbathe, with fists pumping the air and a selfrighteous sense of entitlement, as if there were a political imperative to their decadence. Tightly bound within Brown's work is the youthful desire to “live large” (perhaps stemming from the artist's driving impulse to create, in order to defy mortality or transcend the tragic banality of circumstances and surroundings) in spaces where luxury is normalized and excess is acceptable. The fleetingness, or temporality, of the “guerrilla lounging” experience begs admittance of the failure of luxury and excess as a replacement for that which we lack.
El Jardin Femenil Y Otros Ocasos by Los Angeles-based artist Carolyn Castaño continues to explore personas and narratives associated with the narco-wars, drug trade and political dramas currently unfolding in Latin America. Although there is an obvious awareness of the human toll lost from these conflicts, a deeper meaning of opposing fantasies about wealth, power, love, criminality, honor and beauty is unveiled. These fantasies very of-
ten come into high relief in our perceptions of women and narco-trafficking The paintings are executed in colorful acrylic paints with the inclusion of glitter, rhinestone appliqués and metallic pigments that have become Castaño’s signature mediums. The role of women in the male-dominated drug culture is performed in many guises as mules, money launderers, trophies and wives. Not coincidentally, many of these women are also beauty queens, models, actresses, or TV journalists. The show includes large format paintings of young female victims shown in the nude buried under layers of darkly painted foliage. The dead bodies of each nude resume art historical poses typical of Renaissance and Romantic era paintings that lie beneath dense areas of painted skulls, marijuana leaves, poppy flowers and coca plants, evoking a dark grave within a garden grotto.
00 100 ARTISTS OF WASHINGTON, DC
Award-winning artist and art critic F. Lennox Campello has authored the first ever art book focusing on artists from the greater Washington, DC area. With more than 700 images, this beautiful hardcover coffee table art book from Schiffer Press is available from your local bookstore, online or by calling 610-593-1777.
Book Details ISBN: 9780764337789 224 pages, 8½x11� Hard cover with 735+ images
Shana M Zimmerman
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EXHIBITIONS ARTISTS
Richelle Gribble
The Evolution of an Artist
by Jeffrey Stein
When Richelle Gribble paints, her face hovers alarming-
has been featuring alongside that of fellow Idyllwild Arts Academy alumnus and bona fide cultural phenomenon Shepard Fairey. At ly close to the Work In Progress — so close that the slightest false twenty-one years old, she’s already developed a body of work that, movement could result in a forehead-first collision with the square according to Robert Alderette, Associate Professor at the Roski wood panel in question. Her brow is habitually furrowed, divulging School of Fine Arts at USC, “shows an intense investigatory relaa deep concern about the implications of each placement of color, tionship between what paint is and how it becomes the topic she an intensity that is only slightly undercut by the flamingo-like has determined for it.” This profile means to further explore the stance of her lanky, Nova Color™-splattered legs. She has a tendenaspects of her artwork that are unique, compelling and might be cy to work at a blistering pace. Every so often, that pace is abruptly refreshing to people who like to consume contemporary fine art. permeated by a several-minute long deliberative pause featuring An immediately lots of squinting apparent trait that and head scratchwarrants discusing. Sometimes, sion is Richelle’s during such a use of texture. Her pause, she’ll sudpieces often feadenly resolve to ture widely dislook at the easel parate materials, from a distance like used fishing greater than 6 to tackle and empty 8 inches, meaning film cartridge conthat she must navitainers, paired gate a floor littered with caked-on, with other works in topographic acrylic progress, resulting formations. Even in the sort of appreRichelle’s blendhensive tip-toeing ing of shades often that is usually resuggests a physical served for cartoon sensation, e.g. an characters. A curaerial view panel sory glance around from A Tribute to her studio reveals Betsy Ross, 1777 WIP ranging from (see left), wherein a paperback-size shimmering, alchepanels to severalmistic sea at once foot long canvases, conveys impenas well as some inetrable depths and sights into her curthe frothing foam rent fascinations: of the shoreline. magazine clippings However, Richelle’s of stadium crowds; textural tendencies faded disposable also seem to elucamera photoA Tribute to Betsy Ross, 1777 , 2010, acrylic, newspaper, NovaPlex on canvas, 10.5 x 10.5” (25 panels), cidate at least one graphs of skyscrapfacet of her process: her willingness to cede some authority to the ers’ reflective windows; an architecture student’s discarded cardmaterials themselves. This propensity for experimentation maniboard cutout; a macro-evolutionary, paleo-biological text entitled fests itself continually, whether in the amoeboid glaze that creeps Networks: The Vital Principle. across each panel of the Motion series, or in the glitter- and magaRichelle Gribble is a prolific artist. In her three years at the zine clipping-covered panels of System IV. It is often difficult to University of Southern California, she has already been the subject discern the order of operations at work, i.e. whether the material of two solo exhibitions — Parts per Million and From Neuron to or found object inspired the given representation, or if, in fact, the Network Society, respectively. Notably, her work recently captured material simply fit neatly into a thoroughly preconceived design. the attention of the Vice Provost of USC, whose office is currently Another such example can be found in To Remember You By, in displaying PpM through the end of the academic year. Her work
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Richelle Gribble: (top line from left) System V, 2011, acrylic paint, NovaPlex on canvas, 54 x 36”; A Tribute to Betsy Ross, 1777, 2010, acrylic, newspaper, NovaPlex on canvas, sigle panel detail of 25 panels, 10.5 x 10.5”; Motion: Morning, 2010, paper, plastic, crayon, NovaPlex, oil pastel, acrylic, ink on wood, 9 x 7”. (middle section) Tackle Box Composition, 2010, fishing tackle, acrylic, bubble wrap, canvas on wood, 3 panels, 7 x 9” each; (bottom image) To Remember You By, 2010, cardboard, digital print, graphite, ink, on wood), 3 panels, 110.5 x 24” total.
EXHIBITIONS ARTISTS
Richelle Gribble which a Nova Plex™-doused photograph of the LA skyline seamlessly flows into an acrylic rendering of the same buildings. The half-glaze/photo, halfacrylic result is sensuous and surreal, an apotheosis of textural experimentation; at its best, this practice does not only affect the viewer viscerally, but also offers a peak into an improvisatory, organic artistic process. Nevertheless, Richelle isn’t just a progressive, experimental technician – she also takes pride in her firm conceptual direction. She describes her work as consistently exploring two extremes: intimately personal subjects and macrocosmic perspectives. Taken in whole, Richelle’s oeuvre selflessly invites the viewer into her most private, emotional experiences, while simultaneously forcing the viewer to consider those experiences from an incredibly distant perspective. Often, this is achieved through scale; works like the Tackle Box series (which assembles memories and personal artifacts of Richelle’s late father) and her aforementioned Motion series are executed on almost miniature surfaces (9 x 7 in. wood panels). These presentations seem to beg the viewer to carefully remove the petite panels from the gallery wall, rest each one in her hand and meditatively consume the images. Contrastingly, her more recent exhibitions, Parts per Million and From Neuron to Network Society, have featured predominately large-scale works that deal with expansive ideas. Of her latest series, Richelle shares: I find myself increasingly disinterested with representing the individual molecule, particle, or person; those entities must be defined through collective interactions, however chaotic those interactions may be. Indeed, the individual consistently becomes dwarfed by both the scale and density of these pieces… Ultimately, it is my goal that the viewer becomes lost in these systems, drawn in by the vivid colors and labyrinthine lines, until her own individuality has become a consequence of her surroundings. The imposing and vibrating System V exemplifies this ethos; its overwhelming scale and pulsating rhythms hypnotize the viewer, forcing her to call into question her place within a complex network. A similar phenomenon occurs in A Tribute to Betsy Ross, 1777, wherein the separation provided by an aerial perspective renders each landscape abstract, foreign, and increasingly mammoth in relation to the viewer. All this is to say that Richelle’s work consistently expresses something poignant about the existential loneliness of your average modern human being. It seems that the summation of her technical prowess and conceptual strength is an ability to sincerely confront the plight of the individual within the context of an increasingly fractured and chaotic reality, all without resorting to the sort of irony and irreverence that has become commonplace in today’s art world. Whether it’s through a portal into a private moment or a prodigious rendering of a complex system, Richelle’s work offers each viewer a unique opportunity to confront the most essential questions about what it is that defines the human experience. ACA More about Richelle Gribble can be found online at richelle-gribble.com
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EXHIBITIONS ARTISTS
Rose Masterpol
Capturing Moments on the Canvas In Her Own Words
I was born into a family with no means, and was the
only child of four to be given up for adoption at birth. From there, I was placed in a Catholic Charity where I was rescued by the wellto-do Masterpols. While the Masterpols offered what on paper could be seen as a blessed life, the reality was much different. The environment was brutal. In response, I drowned myself in art and music to find internal peace from all the external chaos. I am a classically trained flautist, and even though at one point I considered becoming a professional musician, I knew from a very early age that I was a visual artist at my core. At age 21, I jumped on a plane to Los Angeles. In this creative mecca the beginning of my life was now ahead of me, and I was committed to never looking back. I graduated in Art and Design from CalArts in Valencia, California. Design is my creative job and painting is my creative outlet and passion. This allows me to utilize different skills [visual involves only one side of the brain: right], which I love. I have explored all kinds of artistic mediums, such as pottery, drawing, photography, collage, sculpture, but I find painting is my true creative calling. I constantly see paintings in everything I look at, even an oil stain on the road. But I have never painted a canvas
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from an image in my mind. My work comes out best when I am open and free of thought with music as my muse. Although I am best known for my Abstract Expressionist works, I have taken a very slight departure from them. My new series establishes a platform for impressions that coincide and metamorphosize into coherent people, places, and things. Also, I have exchanged the use of charcoal for ink, which I find more playful and controllable. The work is about pure painting: the simple truth. It is a convergence of color, shape, stroke, and line. With the intention of building something from nothing come emerging symbols, faces, things and noticeable images that reveal themselves. I paint from myself, not from an object, a clever thought, trend or gimmick. I construct and deconstruct until I unravel an abstract portrait. I do not analyze, strategize or conceptualize anything. I paint, build, layer, let the painting happen, and follow it. I call the body of the painting the groundwork. I call the second layer the framework, and the third layer the depth of field. This also provides a hierarchy of the different forms as well as maintaining a dream-like quality. All of this is done through what I like to call the Free Association Process. I relate to the school of thought/process from the periods of
(opposite page) The Dream, 2012, acrylic and ink on canvas, 72 x 48” (top) Gladiator, 2011, acrylic and ink on canvas, 48 x 60”(bot) Bodega, 2012, acrylic and ink on canvas, 48 x48”.
Miro, Motherwell, Picasso, De Kooning, Kline, and Pollack. While a photographer captures one single moment on film/digitally, I paint moment by moment until I see and feel I have all the right moments captured on the canvas, so much so I can call it finished. Then, I see a grid-like abstract life portrait of things I have not seen before. I won’t allow myself to transfer an image, an object, or an idea to the canvas. I am not interested in that. What I am interested in is allowing something to happen, something that was not happening before, that does not already exist. The work then is ironic and intuitively forming; breathing with a presence of its own and features the element of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions. I call this liberation of imagination. This new body of work revives abstract surrealism. It comes from everything I have done up to this point. I have applied a new technique on top to give it strength, representational imagery and depth, thus making the work more profound. With this, I hope to give the work a presence that will not allow the viewer to take more than a glance. The work should both evoke the senses and provoke thought so that the viewer is caught in a trap of revealing imagery and emotion. Each viewer is dependent on their own perception and experience, thus leaving each with their own theory of what they see, feel and their unique thought processes. This might be one of my favorite experiences as a painter, that each viewer has their own personal experience with the work. Working in my studio in downtown Los Angeles, I have been exhibiting since 1987. I have showed in Columbus (Ohio), upstate New York, Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Clarita, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and Vail (Colorado). My list of collectors includes celebrities such as Jane Lynch, Sela Ward and Robert Gore Rifkind (Rifkind Foundation of LACMA). I have exhibited with Jane Seymour, Tony Bennett and established artist Sam Francis. My work also appears in commercials such as American Express, Budweiser (Super Bowl, 2012), Time Warner, Apple and in the film Oceans 13. Every month my collector list grows, leaving me grateful and hungry to create ACA more and more. Masterpol has a solo exhibit coming up this April 2012 with the Katherine Cone (previously curator for Shepard Fairy’s Gallery Subliminal Projects) Gallery, as well as a solo show in Santa Barbara at Artamo Gallery in May. More of her work can also be seen at www.masterpol.com
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EXHIBITIONS ARTISTS
Eddie Rehm
Belligerently Depicting the Morale of Life & Art by Anna Needham
"The Belligerent Plasticity of Duality in He, Himself,” Eddie Rehm’s new solo show at Dino Eli Gallery, refers to the concept that also defines the idea that one can start out well, get to something, and for some reason — maybe it’s just the impulse to say fuck it — unconsciously sabotage it and watch it all go to shit. We can be our own worst enemy without even realizing why. But we (often) come to the point where we each say, “I’ve got to stop doing this.” One can take that negative side, and turn it around on its head and make it something that can be productive, using its strength towards a positive outcome. “Effectively, in hindsight, it becomes a blessing in disguise.” says the artist. A theme or script in our lives that seems entirely relevant in our current society’s state is
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a powerful, recurring theme in these lastest works revealed by Eddie Rehm. “The art work is belligerently striking, with art-medium experimentation, a style all its own. And since I‘m committed to bringing my clients and patrons high quality, investment-grade art, I just had to work with the Eddie Rehm to exhibit an eclectic array of art that sets a forward standard with the addition of my newest gallery” says Dino Eli owner of both Orchard Windows Gallery & the Dino Eli Gallery. Rehm sees his art as part of a larger context. “If art history has taught us anything, it’s that pre- and post-war economic ups and downs, and society in its progression as a whole, have given art a nuance. The artistic styles,
(opposite page) Rehm at work (top right) Cognitive Duality, 2012, mixed media on cotton fabric bed sheet & industrial plastic, 60 x 60” (bot right) The Belligerent Plasticity of Duality in He, Himself, 2012 mixed media on bed sheets and plastic, 48”48”. Photos courtesy of Lisette Ruch.
movements, and artists in these time periods signify just that. We are on the precipice of a major change much needed right now in our society. I feel that 21st century art will reflect that change and bring back art for art’s sake. I think of the simplistic quote: ‘Out with the old and in with the new.’ Artists need to create, and the ones that do will be the ones known to me and you.” Eddie Rehm is one of the hottest new artists to emerge in a long time. His work has been described by art critics and analysts as “a fusion of raw emotion, deliberately instinctual design, and art-medium experimentation.” Gallery Owner Dino Eli says that Rehm “has a style that is unique, raw, and refreshing. It’s only a matter of time before the whole world knows who this artist is.” This must-see art event in the Lower East Side of Manhattan gives a forward looking glimpse of examples of early 21st century art. As the artist says, “The 21st Century will not consist of perfect execution but of a concept analogous ACA to the moral of the times.” Rehm has participated in numerous solo exhibitions, displaying in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, Boston, Miami, East Hampton and Pennsylvania, as well as many local art leagues and associations. His latest show, “The Belligerent Plasticity of Duality in He , Himself,” is at Dino Eli Gallery in the Lower East Side of Manhattan from February 11 through 24. See dinoeligallery.com and eddierehmart.com
EXHIBITIONS ARTISTS
Laura Moretz
The Relationship Between Form and Space In Her Own Words
I create large-scale abstract paintings built up of layers of poured acrylic painting intersected with various forms of drawing. The poured paint creates a montage of drips, bubbles, and cracked paint that celebrate the little catastrophes of each painting's process. Improvised mark-making using ink, marker, and charcoal respond to the painting's development. Each painting dictates a process of creating and dissolving systems, a meditation of space and formlessness, and a celebration of movement and fluidity. I begin each painting with raw canvas, stretched horizontally on the floor. Each painting begins with the movement of the first layer of paint and medium. This first imprint to the canvas, once dried, becomes the blueprint to which the rest of the painting responds. I am not interested in imagining a beautifully finished painting or trying to create a certain feeling through the painting. I am intrigued by a painting's ability to become it's own experience. This experience evolves as each layer of the painting responds to what has happened before it. The colors, pours, line work, and space begin to converse with each other and create their own system. When these layers of movements engage together, they become part of the same biology. Ideally, the painting breathes
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and harmonizes as its own experience. What reads as obvious as a pour of paint which announces its medium through texture and transparency, becomes transformed by its interaction with the rest of the process. My paintings question the relationship between form and space. The negative is just as important as the positive. Sometimes, I find that the negative is more important. It is space that is the ultimate mystery. Space is what holds the rest of the painting together. I work on raw, exposed canvas because I want that space to read true to what it is. It is really important to me that my paintings be authentic to what they are. In my paintings, that space is untreated canvas, not a perfectly prepped surface. The exposed canvas allows for layers to build and dissolve into the canvas through layers of transparency. This allows for the relationship between form and space in my paintings to be interactive and interconnected. My paintings are an expression of movement. All the paint comes to the canvas through way of some form of vessel that is poured, thrown, dripped, twisted or tilted onto the canvas. I am sure that if there was a fly on the wall of my studio, it would be witnessing some pretty funny looking dance moves.
Laura Moretz: (left) Sherbet Meltdown, 2011, acrylic, enamel, marker and charcoal on raw canvas 60 x 72�. (below) The Escape, 2011, acrylic, enamel, marker and charcoal on raw canvas 36 x 36�.
Often I have the entire floor of my studio covered in paintings, so meandering between them and orchestrating which way the painting comes on or off the canvas involves a decent amount of balancing skills. Although I call myself an abstract painter, in the traditional sense of the word, I see myself as a realistic painter. I don't see abstraction as taking something and expressing it in a more abstract manner. I also don't see my paintings as striving to express a sublime. Unlike Kandinsky, the blue spot doesn't refer to a mountain or the yellow spot to the sun. The yellow spot is a yellow spot. A mixture of pigment and acrylic medium poured out of a container and arriving on the canvas is it's own unique expressive. The way I paint celebrates the medium itself, whether is it a pure metallic or a beautifully mixed shade of blue, the paint makes no apologies. It announces itself as what it is. What could be more real than that? ACA More about the artist, visit at lauramoretz.com
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M o s h é
E l i m e l e c h
Rhythm and Blues (detail) 2011, from the Arrangement series, acrylic and mixed media.
Moshé Elimelech’s newly released monograph Reflections and Arrangements is now available, with an introduction by Los Angeles gallerist Louis Stern and essay by art critic Peter Frank. For more information about Moshé Elimelech and to order his book visit www.MosheArt.com
20th Century Art by Sidney Gross • Rolph Scarlett
• John MacWhinnie & artists of the Hamptons
Contemportary Art by Harriette Joffe • Eddie Rehm
Rejoice All Our Days -Harriette Joffe - 2007
Davenport & Shapiro Fine Arts www.
DavenportandShapiro.com
37 Newtown Lane - East Hampton - NY • 631 604 5525
Jeffrey Milstein is represented by Kopeikin Gallery
Kopeikin Gallery 2766 South La Cienega Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90034
info@kopeikingallery.com (310) 559-0800 (310) 559-0802 fax
Contemporary Fine Art Paintings Sculpture Works on Paper Tucson, Arizona since 1976
154 East 6th Street, Tucson, Arizona 85705
520.629.9759
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