Avian Avatar, 2011

Here’s a 30 minute interview with gallery artist Lisa Adams from Creative Current. Ezrah Jean Black and Lisa discuss her paintings in her recently closed CB1 Gallery exhibition, “Paradise Notwithstanding.” (Did you know that there have been 23 articles, interviews and reviews about Lisa’s latest show published in print or online in the past 3 months?)

If you missed seeing her show, stop in and see several of her paintings in our back room and check out her book, which we have available for purchase.

Woulden, Paul Donald’s first Los Angeles exhibition opens on Saturday, October 29, 2011 and will be on view in our West Gallery through December 4, 2011. The thirteen sculptures in the exhibition push the limits of how identifications function: corporeal effort changes materials into deliberately confusing hybrid “bodies” that turn binary thinking inside out.

everyone is spirit / everyone is alone / everyone wonders why / everyone protects what they love / everyone wants to be free / everyone needs to relax

everyone dreams / everyone makes mistakes / everyone cries alone / everyone is beautiful sometimes / everyone wants to be different / everyone wants to be found

everyone has a story that they can never tell / everyone wants an answer / everyone knows the truth / everyone has a secret / everyone is damaged / everyone is a target

everyone wants more / everyone is hungry / everyone owes someone / everyone loves a happy ending / everyone wants it to stop / everyone doesn’t want it to end.

everyone is alone, 2011

After writing everyone, artist Chuck Agro realized that everyone didn’t need an image to define it. What it needed was to fill a space and to make that space a poem the reader could inhabit, walking between the cadences and feeling the slurring, the mumbling, the enunciation and the volume of the words and the slipperiness of people’s lives. 

everyone will be on view from Saturday, October 29 through Sunday, December 4, 2011, at CB1 Gallery. An opening reception for the artist will take place on Saturday, October 29, 2011, 5 – 7 p.m.

Amy Yoes, Light Lab, Mixed media (MDF, paint, lights), 23' x 18' x 13'

Amy Yoes’ white and black constructed installation fills the front room of the gallery like a haughty, well-bred aunt, who might prefer that you not mention the faint similarity to the mash-up of architectural ornament that is Disneyland’s ride, It’s a Small World. Indeed, the sculptural is elegant and speaks of a modernist connection with clean lines and geometric shapes, despite the ornamental trim. Hidden alcoves and nooks are well lit and encourage the eye to explore, even to the floor and all the way up to the lofty ceiling. The hand-painted surface adds visual pleasure and intrigue to the looking; and despite an initial sense of sterile angularity, every surface has been touched: sometimes the black is intentionally abraded to resemble newsprint and there are areas of gradient shades gray. Yoes’ black-and-white silver gelatin prints in the front room add more “spatial conundrum” to the show, while Hilde Overbergh’s oils on linen in the west gallery continue the conversation of interior abstracts in color (CB1 Gallery, Downtown).

A view of Amy Yoes' Light Lab taken during the installation process.

And, in our West gallery Hilde Overbergh‘s exhibition, Repositioning Basics, presents the artist’s new paintings which use re-contextualized snap shots of interior spaces as a starting point for her compositions. Major alterations occur in the process of the transformation from the original snapshots/collages to the artist paintings, achieving an abstract spatial dualism. CB1 Gallery is exceedingly pleased to present Hilde’s first US solo exhibition.

Artist Hilde Overbergh at work in her studio in Leuven, Belgium.

CB1 Gallery entrance on 5th St. (207), between Spring and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles

There’s a terrific OpEd by Joan Springhetti in the LA Times today which does a great job of summarizing why we live and opened CB1 Gallery in downtown.

Eight years ago, as I watched a building near my work be converted from vacant offices into lofts, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. If I lived there, in that beautiful old building, I could walk less than a block to work. That micro-distance was important: Any farther and I wouldn’t have felt safe walking home after dark.

There were no streetlights on the block back then. Homeless people curled up in doorways and under cardboard boxes. On the sidewalk was a row of public outhouses, which I soon realized were “owned” by drug dealers. (I will never forget one lunch hour watching as a man who’d just made a buy took off his suit jacket, crouched between two outhouses, rolled up the sleeve of his dress shirt and put a needle in his arm.)

Today, the outhouses are gone and there is a restored landmark (the former St. Vibiana’s Cathedral) and two major new civic buildings (Caltrans and the LAPD headquarters) across from me. The streetlights are on; that was the first of many civic initiatives my neighbors and I became involved in as we rolled up our own sleeves. We fought for a park, to save a neighborhood landmark, for a Metro line to be built underground, not above. Even when we didn’t prevail, we won. We got to know our elected representatives and their staffs, developers, city planners, the LAPD and Fire Department. And we got to know each other.

Slowly but surely, new businesses opened: coffee shops, galleries, theaters, groceries and dozens of restaurants and clubs. It’s been exciting every time. Blocks considered unsafe became safe. Initiatives by police and social service agencies reduced the number of people living on the streets as well as the most blatant drug dealing.

Gradually, Main and Spring and other streets came back to life. When I walk down the street, I always see someone I know. When I ask what’s going on, something usually is.

I walk to the library (the branch in Little Tokyo and to the Central Library on 5th Street). I walk to my doctor’s and optometrist’s offices, to Walt Disney Concert Hall and to the free Grand Performances. I walk to one of the coolest little hardware stores in the world (Anzen Hardware & Supply), to a great store for used books (The Last Bookstore) and to purchase art supplies (at Raw Materials). I walk to restaurants with friends for dinner and drinks, and we never need a designated driver.

Often, my neighbors and I put together impromptu dinners in each other’s homes. There are plenty of great cooks in the kitchen, and lessons too. We’ve savored incredible cheese souffle, pho, arroz con pollo and apple pie. We throw parties to celebrate neighbors becoming citizens, and we held a centennial celebration when our building turned 100.

Living downtown means coming to terms with seeing poverty, mental illness and broken spirits. But it also means realizing that “the homeless” are individuals with names and emotions, and that a piece of sidewalk is sometimes a home.

My community is filled with marvelous artists, musicians, lawyers, bankers, photographers, filmmakers, architects, nurses, doctors, clothing designers, educators, engineers and skateboarders. And it is also home to their bulldogs, poodles, greyhounds, labs and schnauzers.

I’ve watched with joy as neighbors have started families. Some of them then decided to shift to a suburban setting. But for others, it’s worked well to stay put. Just down the hall is a delightful 7-year-old who has never lived anyplace else: We knew her as a newborn, and watched her learn to ride a bicycle.

Plenty of downtown residents have lived here longer than I have. Many more have moved in — and some have moved in and out. This place is not for everyone. It can be noisy, gritty and annoying.

But if I didn’t live downtown, I wouldn’t have had the chance to hang out in a real speakeasy. To come home for lunch when I was on jury duty. To watch life unfold on the street and marvel at the skyline from my own windows. To be not only part of a community but part of building it.

I didn’t know any of that when I decided to give up my commute to live downtown. My job is no longer downtown — it requires a long, cross-town commute. But now it’s downtown I can’t give up.

We couldn’t have said it any better.

A MORASS OF CONTRADICTIONS 2010, 48 X 40 INCHES, OIL AND SPRAY PAINT ON PANEL

The viewer’s gaze unhinges the schism between a utopic past and a dystopic present, whose wrath is concealed by an arsenal of exacting moves executed invisibly by the hand of artist Lisa Adams. By implementing a set of painterly techniques of her own creation, which includes the meticulous use of sponge rollers to create mosaic patches, abstract and intricately layered backgrounds and tentative lines achieved by dipping paint along the edge of an illustration board, Adams achieves a visual tug and pull that requires acute attention. Her works operate on a cinematic level as the canvases are imbued with an optical luminosity akin to the rack focus applied in cinema. For a single moment the background and foreground converge to form a cohesive narrative, but only for a fleeting moment, and then the viewer must reconstruct the narrative after the vision fades. The works of Lisa Adams are breathing entities that reconcile the remnants of a world walking the balance between decay and possibility.

Read the entire article here.

HK Zamani, Untitled (5), 2011, Oil on canvas, 24" x 36"

In addition to a wonderful LA Times review by David Pagel of our current exhibition, there is an article in the June issue of Bunker Hill Magazine about the gallery and the exhibiton.

“The new abstract works in this exhibit expand upon the notion of the uncertainty of the earthly elements. Zamani quotes Deepa Mehta when he explains his inspiration, ”Elements can nurture us, and can destroy us. It’s their inherent power and their dichotomy that intrigues me: fire for its conflagration, earth for its solidity and water for its fluidity. Conflict seems to be an essential component of our lives. Without it and its resolution, growth is an impossibility.””

Here’s the link to the Bunker Hill Magazine article.

And, if you missed it here’s the link to the LA Times review.

“Their humble, down-to-earth demeanors make a virtue of ambiguity. Each seems to be an expansive landscape and a tabletop still life. “Untitled (15)” evokes Morandi and sand castles. “Untitled (12)” brings together the beauty of the Taj Mahal and the pleasure of a long hot bath. Others turn tiny details — four blades of grass, three lime-green lumps and a slithering pink line — into worlds of possibility.”

–David Pagel

Three other review have recently been published.

HK Zamani, Untitled (10), 2011, Oil on canvas, 60" x 72"

HAIKU REVIEW: “HK Zamani, by now a veteran Los Angeles painter, shows some of the most powerful works of his career. Although the smaller canvases are conceived differently than the larger, all the works display an authority born of simplicity, compositional rigor, and a formal language at once literal and mysterious. While abstract, these paintings function imagistically as landscape spaces both “natural” – they impart a sense of vista – and dreamlike in their constant self-interruption and inference of spaces within spaces. The small paintings are infectiously rhythmic, while the larger ones, where color plays a more prominent role, take on both a greater tactility and a pervasive, surprising luminosity. You can’t stop looking at these things, not even the little ones, not only because there is always something else to see, to find, but because you don’t want the combined pleasure of picture and paint, possibility and substance, to end.”
– Peter Frank
The Huffington Post

“In this solo exhibition of 16 recent paintings, Los Angeles artist and curator, HK Zamani, creates his own compelling visual lexicon. Painted in the last two years — mostly in less than five months from January 2011 until the artist completed the last strokes the day the show was mounted — the work is so fresh, the scent of oil paint wafts off the canvas. Ambiguous in a satisfying way, the paintings are abstract, but at the same time, offer contextual references to landscapes. Architectural forms emerge from layered horizontal planes, described in rich texture, rendered in visible brushstrokes. The dome shape is echoed repeatedly, a comforting symbol, like a welcome refuge of civilization in an unfamiliar expanse of desert.”
–Megan Abraham
Whitehot Magazine
Read the complete review here.

“Those with deeper knowledge of the downtown and alternative scenes know HK Zamani as the pioneering director of POST gallery, which ran from 1995 to 2005, and has conducted 30-day show-per-day endurance exhibition runs during the past two Julys. Zamani’s own work has been conceptual and sculptural. But his recent exhibitions, including the current one, have served as a sort of ‘coming out’ as a painter, at least publicly.  With “In-between Air, Land and Sea” Zamani explores abstract landscapes with a rich painterliness that, while strongly evoking Philip Guston, is far less referential.”
–Michael Shaw
Visual Art Source
Read the entire review here.

Two curators, Kristin Calabrese and Joshua Aster, have organized an exhibition featuring 38 unfinished paintings by 38 artists.  The exhibition opens on Thursday, June 16 at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and allows you, the viewer, to interact with these “unfinished” works and contemplate these issues and engage in the artist’s process.

Lisa Adams, Stump Without a Pot, Unfinished Painting, 2011 Oil on panel 30" x 36"

Included in the exhibition is this unfinished painting by CB1 Gallery artist Lisa Adams.  Once completed, this painting will be included in Lisa’s exhibition at the gallery this coming December.

So, stop in at LACE between June 16 and August 28th and see it and the rest of the exhibition and then, come to CB1 in December to see it in Lisa’s solo show.

Unfinished Paintings features work by Lisa Adams, Joshua Aster, Nina Bovasso, Delia Brown,Kristin Calabrese, Sarah Cromarty, Sydney Croskery, Noah Davis, Gerald Davis, Mark Dutcher, Mari Eastman, Brad Eberhard, Bart Exposito, Michelle Grabner, Alex Grey, James Hayward, Salomon Huerta, Xylor Jane, Valerie Jaudon, Chris Johanson, Annie Lapin, Jose Lerma, Caitlin Lonegan, Dan McCleary, Shiri Mordechay, Loren Munk, Laurie Nye, Eamon Ore-Giron, Susie Rosmarin, Frank Ryan, David Ryan, Katia Santibañez, Kenny Scharf, Cary Smith, Linda Stark, Don Suggs, Mitchell Wright, and Brenna Youngblood.