HOLDING LIGHT F e a t u r i n g Av a i l a b l e A r t w o r k s f r o m a C a l i f o r n i a C o l l e c t i o n SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER, 2021
SCAPE | southern california art projects + exhibitions 2859 e. coast highway, corona del mar, ca 92625 info@scapesite.com 949.723.3406 scapesite.com
HOLDING LIGHT F e a t u r i n g Av a i l a b l e A r t w o r k s f r o m a C a l i f o r n i a C o l l e c t i o n SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER, 2021
Holding Light developed from an opportunity to represent 12 artworks from a private collection, which I had the joy of guiding several years ago. Revisiting the artworks this many years later has reminded me of what I love most about my profession – the ability to share with others the impact of living with great original works of art via their sensory richness; their beauty, energy, power and lasting relevance. The exhibition expanded to include a total of 20 artworks by 13 dedicated West Coast artists that are all part of or in dialogue with the noted Southern California art styles referred to as Light and Space and Finish Fetish. Using traditional and non-traditional materials ranging from polyurethane resin, acrylic, thread, copper, glass, printmaking, and paint, the timeless nature of all the artworks reveal the artists mutual interest in light, color and optics. Artworks by Peter Alexander, James Turrell, and Constance DeJong emphasize the illusion of light floating in space which emerge and change based on the interaction of light from which the artworks are placed. By contrast, works by Lita Albuquerque, Mara De Luca, Peter Halasz and Lawrence Fodor depict light (as it relates to landscape, light and sky) onto their material surfaces. The artworks reward slow and quiet attention. They are testament to the inspiration of nature, the phenomena of light and space experienced outdoors and the spirit of the environments from which the artworks were created. ― JEANNIE DENHOLM
PETER ALEXANDER
Turquoise Leaner (6/18/15), 2015 urethane 94.5 x 4 x 2.5 inches
Gallery Installation
YUNHEE MIN
Untitled, 2015 acrylic on canvas 46 x 46 inches
JAMES TURRELL
Suite from Aten Reign Series (7/30), 2014 Ukiyo-e Japanese style woodcuts with relief printing Each Image: 26 x 18.5 inches
Gallery Installation
BRIAN WILLS
Untitled (Blue Green Column), 2015 rayon thread on wood 24 x 72 inches
ERIC JOHNSON
Vi Smith Madame
polyester resin and urethane 47 x 4 x 4 inches
Helen Modjeska Madame polyester resin and urethane 47 x 4 x 4 inches
SOO KIM
Untitled (Black), 2015 hand-cut photo 29.5 x 28.75 inches
CONSTANCE DeJONG
S/D Series: copper, conte, graphite, charcoal , Bristol board each 10.5 x 10.5 x 2 inches
CAESAR ALZATE, JR.
Object #38 acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 x 4 inches
Gallery Installation
LITA ALBUQUERQUE
Luna and Moon Trajectory No. 1, lithograph Image: 22 x 30 inches
MARA de LUCA
Lanvin Clouds mixed media on cut canvas with black nickel plated elements 27 x 36 inches
PETER HALASZ
Rosy Fingered Dawn II, 2021 oil on panel 24 x 24 inches
Cheshire Skies 2021 oil on panel 16 x 16 inches
LAWRENCE FODOR
Holding Light 15 watercolor on archival recycled paper on maple plywood 40 x 40 inches overall
CHRISTOPHER JEFFRIES
Stacked hand blown glass 26 x 10 x 9 inches
LITA ALBUQUERQUE
PETER ALEXANDER
CAESAR ALZATE, JR.
Born: 1946, Santa Monica, CA Studied: University of California, Los Angeles, BFA 1968; Otis Art Institute, Sculpture, 1971-2, Los Angeles, CA Currently lives and works in Malibu, CA
Born: 1939 Los Angeles, California Studied: University of California, Los Angeles B.A., University of Los Angeles, M.F.A. Currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Lita Albuquerque is an internationally renowned installation, environmental artist, painter and sculptor. She has developed a visual language that brings the realities of time and space to a human scale and is acclaimed for her ephemeral and permanent art works executed in the landscape and public sites. Albuquerque’s work questions our place in the enormity of infinite space and eternal time.
After initially working as an architect, Alexander became known for his pioneering work in the Space and Light Movement in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. He was among a group of artists that chose to play with light and its effects on reflective, translucent, or transparent materials, such as polyester resin, Plexiglas, fiberglass, acrylic and tinted glass. They were known for using color and light to investigate the nature of perception, the viewer’s experience and the relationship between the viewer and the art object.
Born: 1973, Orange County, CA Studied: Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA, B.A. Illustration 2000, California State University, Fullerton, CA, M.F.A. Drawing and Painting 2018 Currently lives and works in Anaheim, CA
Born in Santa Monica, California she was raised in Tunisia, North Africa and Paris, France. At the age of eleven she settled with her family in the U.S. In the 1970s Albuquerque emerged on the California art scene as part of the Light and Space movement and won acclaim for her epic and poetic ephemeral pigment pieces created for desert sites. She gained national attention in the late 1970s with her ephemeral pigment installations pertaining to mapping, identity and the cosmos, executed in the natural landscape. Lita Albuquerque’s work is included in The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and is collected by prominent Museums and Foundations, such as: The Whitney Museum Of Art, The Museum Of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Getty Trust, The Frederick Weisman Foundation, The Los Angeles County Museum Of Art, The Orange County Museum, The Laguna Art Museum, The Palm Springs Desert Museum, as well as numerous embassies and corporations and private collections on an extensive worldwide basis.
Personal Statement: “I’m a romantic, and I believe in it. I believe in the value of things. I believe that objects can be made that can have an extraordinary effect on me and others.” Alexander is collected privately and publically, notable by The Broad Foundation, The Getty Foundation, The Metropolitan, the Laguna Art Museum, Orange County Museum of Art, The Anderson Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Alzate transcends ideas and builds forms, shapes, and texture on the canvas with paint, through the accumulation of his actions and activity. The canvas receives his ritual of brushing thousands and thousands of layers of paint with a heat process. After many hours, days, and weeks devoted to the crafting of the artwork, the paint and the canvas is transformed into a meaningful painting that engages the mind generating interpretations and significations. Caesar Alzate, Jr. is included in numerous private collections.
CONSTANCE DeJONG
MARA de LUCA
LAWRENCE FODOR
Born: 1950, San Diego, California Studied: University of New Mexico Currently lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Born: 1973,Washington, D.C. Studied: B.A. at Columbia University; M.F.A. at California Arts Institute in 2004 Currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Born: 1951, Orange County, CA Studied: Otis Art Institute, M.F.A. 1976 Currently lives and works in both Santa Fe, New Mexico and Los Angeles, CA
Mare de Luca is a painter whose work evokes a sense of atmospheric abstraction that brings to mind dusk, sunsets and planetary orbs. Throughout her work there is a sense of reflected ambient light.
Artist Statement: Holding Light Series These paintings relate to the concept of the macrocosm versus the microcosm or, in more literal terms: the indefinable vastness of the ocean as it relates to the seemingly fixed vignettes of tide pools. These ideas are a point of departure - distilled, translated and refined into the abstract language and vocabulary of paint.
There is a mystery to DeJong’s work, but not mystery in the usual sense of something hidden: hers, rather is the mystery of the visible. The work hovers in a field with enough presence to engage you but not enough to explain itself. DeJong’s aesthetics are often compared to Minimalism, but she distinguishes her work as reductive rather than minimal. “A Minimalist would bolt a sheet of copper to the wall, I would suspend it, illuminate it, and let it bleed”. It is telling that she is interested in the nuances of an artist like Vermeer, who is hardly a precursor of Minimalism. Her ongoing challenge, then is to make reductive work and keep it expansive. DeJong has exhibited internationally with projects produced by organizations such as the Dia Foundation for the Arts and Minetta Brook. She is an artist and writer who produces fiction texts and language/image based work for performance and theater, audio and video installations. She currently teaches art and art history at the University of New Mexico. DeJong is collected privately and publically, by the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM; Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM; Fisher Landau Center for Art, Long Island City, NY.
Her works are inspired by the landscape of everyday life in Los Angeles with its “stunning natural beauty coexisting in a cultural climate of facile content.” The style of painting is conceptual and relative to the making of the paintings, which are often made using unique techniques that are non-traditional and incorporate the use of collage and other processes. DeLuca is collected privately and publically, by the Alexander Plaza Berlin, Germany; New York Medical College, New York; and the Universitetets Kunstsamling, University of Oslo, Nor way.
I have long been intrigued by the sensitivity of watercolor; it is a direct, unforgiving and intimate painting process. Painting with watercolors correlates to the practiced meditation of yoga, as does my counting and recording of the points of light captured on each individual painted panel. They are my mantras. In as much as watercolor painting is in direct opposition to my large scale oil paintings, it is an exercise in placing my studio practice in the immediate, the present and the personal. Lawrence Fodor is represented in the permanent collection of the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas; The Embassy of United States, Tanzania; and JP Morgan Chase Corporate Art Collection.
PETER HALASZ
CHRISTOPHER JEFFRIES
ERIC JOHNSON
Born: 1974 La Jolla, California Lives and works in San Diego, California
Born: 1974 Bakersfield, CA Studied: California State University, BA, Glass, Chico, CA Currently lives and works in Laguna Beach, CA
Born: 1949, Burbank, California Education: University of California, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Irvine, Ca, University of California, Masters of Fine Arts, Irvine, CA Currently lives and works in San Pedro, CA
Halasz addresses highly evocative subjects such as night landscapes and atmospheric realms, drawing from the diverse traditions of Romantic painting, 19th century French Realism, and the California Light and Space movement and offering contemporary insight to seemingly traditional modes of representation. Halasz has been exhibited nationally at the Grand Rapids Museum of Art and at several galleries in Los Angeles, La Jolla and New York. His work painting has been reviewed in publications such as Art Papers, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Art Scene, The Surfer's Journal, LA Fashion Mag and Riviera Magazine. Halasz lives and works in the San Diego area.
Christopher Jeffries unique style and distinct designs reflect the hand of a dedicated, passionate and master craftsman. Through extensive international education and experience with some of today’s most inventive and renowned glass artists, he is known for his high level of technical proficiency and ability to innovate. Jeffries studied sculpture and design at Lorenzo De Medici in Florence, Italy and later was influenced by time spent in the Czech Republic, a country known for its rich traditions in hand blown glass art. Through an apprenticeship with master glassblower Igor Muller, Christopher acquired the fine techniques and designs that inspired his career. His diversity of experiences and skill soon earned the recognition of Dale Chihuly, with an apprenticeship at the prestigious Boat House in Seattle, Washington. Most recently Jeffries taught at the historic Corning Museum of Glass in New York. His works are found in private, corporate and museum collections internationally.
Inspired by both art and science, Eric Johnson creates composite works of pigment, wood, automotive lacquer and resin. His sculpture forms are informed by the aerospace industry, his ancestral boat builder heritage, the Hot Rod culture of Southern California and his abiding interests in mathematics, cosmology and biology. He is considered a secondgeneration Finish Fetish or L.A. Look artist and has developed an artistic vocabulary that incorporates his fascination with manufactured, seductive surfaces and industrial materials. Johnson rotates and turns his sculptures, forming spirals that are reminiscent of the “ S-curve”- a traditional art concept where a figure’s body and posture is implied. Art scholar, Tyler Stallings notes Johnson’s Madame series “offer a sly reference to Constantin Brancusi’s famous Endless Column (1918), while suggesting they are slices in an infinite extension to either side.” The artist discovered a new process method for this series by use of a three-axis gimbal; a mechanism that allows him to spin a polyester resin, biomorphic-shaped mold so that the sides of it are coated evenly, in all directions. Eric Johnson has received many awards, most notably a grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation. He has been included in numerous museum shows, among them Laguna Art Museum, a solo exhibition at the Torrance Art Museum, Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion at Orange Coast College and a retrospective at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History.
SOO KIM
YUNHEE MIN
JAMES TURRELL
Born: 1969, South Korea Studied: UC Riverside, B.A., Cal Institute of Art, M.A. Currently lives and works in Los Angeles and teaches at the Otis College of Art and Design
Born: 1964, Seoul, South Korea Studied: Art Center College of Design Pasadena, B.F.A., Kunstakadamie, Dusseldorf, Germany, Harvard University, M.A. in Design Studies Currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Born: 1943 Pasadena, California Studied: B.A. Pomona College, M.A. Claremont Graduate University Currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Kim often employs techniques of cutting and layering in order to introduce areas of absence or disruption in what we tend to take for granted--the interpretation of photographic images. Kim believes that “the lengthy process required to create her photographs infuses them with a "slowness" that finds its counterpart in the amount of time it takes the viewer to comprehend them.” Her work often incorporates narrative elements or makes reference to literature, such as her series A Week Inside Two Days (2005) or They Stop Looking at the Sky(2006), an installation of large photographic collages. The series Midnight Reykjavík was influenced in part by architects' writings from the 1960s on utopian communities. Kim is collected privately and publically, by J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Broad Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Judith and Michael Ovitz Collection, Susan Bay and Leonard Nimoy Collection, Joyce and Ted Strauss Collection.
Color is a primary focus for artist Yunhee Min. It operates as compositional fields, creating seemingly stable foregrounds while also generating movement through contrasting hues or subtle changes in tonal value. In combination with the artist’s use of geometric form, the paintings develop tension between their overall surface and the edges of the canvas. In Min’s hands, painting becomes a dynamic chess game between color and form. Rather than subscribing to the myth of abstraction as an aesthetic style of reduction, she is interested in approaching abstraction as an operation, as an ongoing process of making new relations and connections through material engagement. Min is collected privately and publically, by UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA.
Since the 1960s, James Turrell has created an expansive body of work that offers profound revelations about perception and the materiality of light. With their refined formal language and quiet, almost reverential atmospheres, his installations celebrate the optical and emotional effects of luminosity. Turrell emerged as one of the foremost artists associated with what is known as the Light and Space movement, which began in Southern California in the mid-1960s. Building on his early research into sensory deprivation (particularly the Ganzfeld effect, in which viewers experience disorienting, unmodulated fields of color), his art encourages a state of reflexive vision that he calls “seeing yourself seeing,” wherein we become aware of the function of our own senses and of light as a tangible substance. These perceptual concerns are coupled with a deep commitment to the natural world and an interest in orienting his work around celestial events. Personal Statement: “I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some ways gather it, or seem to hold it…my work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing.” Turrell is collected world-wide, privately and publically, notably by Tate Modern, London; the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the de Young Museum, San Francisco.
BRIAN WILLS Born: 1970 Lexington, Kentucky Studied: B.A. from Denison University, Ohio, M.A. from Harvard Currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Brian Wills makes multi-media works that bridge painting and wall sculpture. The linear structure of Brian Wills’ artwork points to minimalism, but also gives a nod to Op Art and the phenomenological aspect of Southern California artists from the Light and Space movement. By utilizing light and space, these pieces rely on perception and investigation. When reviewing the work for the Los Angeles Times in December 2013, Christopher Knight wrote: “The differences between light reflection and absorption disrupts optical continuity across the Wills’ surfaces. The bars of rayon thread seem to glow from within, advancing and receding in space depending on your physical proximity to them and creating three-dimensional curves where none exist.” Artist Statement: “My work measures color, motion, texture and depth, exploring the mechanics by which our visual cortex sees. The construction is layered, often creating one impression upon first viewing, then revealing itself gradually, after reflection and investigation.” Wills work has been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout Southern California and New York City and is in many public and private collections including La Colección Jumex, Mexico; The Jarl Mohn Family Foundation; and The Frederick R. Weisman Foundation.
southern california art projects + exhibitions
Published on occasion of “HOLDING LIGHT Exhibition” September - October, 2021 Curated by Jeannie Denholm Catalogue Design by Kathleen Updyke Brown © 2021 SCAPE | southern california art projects + exhibitions All artwork © individual artists SCAPE | southern california art projects + exhibitions 2859 e. coast highway, corona del mar, ca 92625 info@scapesite.com 949.723.3406 scapesite.com