Super Mario's Art: Fine Art in the Fast lane

Happy Valentines Day!!

2012-02-14T06:36:00.000-08:00

Celebrating Love (and Lust) through Art

"Center Of The Universe: Flack, Presneill, Ramos" at Raid Projects, Los Angeles, California

2012-02-13T20:28:00.000-08:00

Center Of The Universe
Jon Flack, Max Presneill and Jason Ramos
Opening reception February 4th, 2012, 7-10 pm

In the wake of the Torrance Art Museum’s broad survey of the state of LA painting – To Live And Paint In LA, RAID Projects is proud to present current work of the artists behind mounting that exhibition – curators Max Presneill and Jason Ramos, and preparator Jon Flack (whose work can also be found in the TAM exhibition).

All three painters have expanded their studio practice into the other necessary roles for a thriving art community, with a sense of participation and duty that has been a defining mark of Los Angeles contemporary art in recent years. At the center of these artists’ universe has always been their own studio practice, and the current exhibition at the TAM produced by them is a direct line from their specific interests into a larger context.

Center Of The Universe presents these three artists’ work, in an effort to complete a circle of context and provide evidence of the extra-studio trend in art today.

Raid Projects
602 Moulton Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90031

Email Contact for Gallery:
raidprojects@yahoo.com

Jason Ramos

Jon Flack

John Flack

Max Presneill

John Flack

Max Presneill

Brian Bess "Under Performing" at Cherry and Martin, Culver City, California

2012-02-13T20:14:00.000-08:00

The title of Brian Bress’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, Under Performing, suggests multiple interpretations. By it, does Bress mean to imply that he is not up to the task he has set for himself? That failure is an unavoidable part of artistic expression? Or is he simply describing a working method, one in which everything invariably occurs under something else, be it a set of assumptions, the mask of a performer, his or her costume, or just the quiet eye of the video camera that runs silently in Bress’s studio. Uncertainty on the part of both viewer and artist is a core element of Bress’s work. It contributes to the pathos—and the humor—driving the questioning of the artwork’s overarching structure, revealing new meanings and new emotions.

Under Performing features a full-length video, Creative Ideas for Every Season (2010), and eight new video portraits. In these pieces the viewer is asked to think about the structure of language and the picture plane’s inherent assumptions about space as constructed in painting as well as theater. For the video portrait, Infinite Man (Britt) (2012), both costume and mask are painted entirely in oil paint. Bress adopts the means and methods of portrait painting, rejecting the canvas for the flat field of the video monitor. If the historical purpose of the genre has been to capture the essence of the sitter, Bress’s attention to the minute details of the sitter’s outer accouterments suggest a belief that our context and our trappings in some sense define us. Beads and feathers, bulbous noses and eyes are all part of physiognomies presented by Bress in these works, revealing a cross-section of individuals and the narratives that unite them.

Bress received his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles and BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. The New Museum, New York, will feature his video Status Report (2009) in their theater from January 18 - March 25, 2012. In the past two years, Bress has exhibited his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami, FL); the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, PA); Arthouse (Austin, TX); the Parrish Art Museum (South Hampton, NY); the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (Tampa, FL) and at the Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City, Utah. His video Under Cover (2007) was included in the landmark exhibition California Video (2008) at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the accompanying catalog, California Video: Artists and Histories, and his work has been reviewed in such publications as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum and Frieze.

Address:
2712 S. La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, California
90034
Phone 310 559 0100
Fax 310 559 0120
info@cherryandmartin.com

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday - Saturday 10AM - 6PM
or by appointment

"Powers of Ten" by Charles and Ray Eames

2012-02-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only a s a speck of light among many others. Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker- with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell. POWERS OF TEN © 1977 EAMES OFFICE LLC (www.eamesoffice.com)

Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia "Papel Tejido" at CB1 Gallery, Downtown Los Angeles, California

2012-02-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia

Papel tejido

January 22 – February 19, 2012
Artist Reception: Sunday, January 22, 5 – 7 p.m.
Artist Talk: Sunday, February 12, 3:30 p.m.

CB1 Gallery is pleased to present its second solo exhibition of the work of artist Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia. The works in the exhibition, titled Papel tejido, are woven paper constructions based on the grid motif and take their visual cues from many sources including Scottish Tartan, basket weaving and abstract painting.

The show opens on January 22, 2012 and closes on February 19, 2012.
A reception for the artist will be held at the gallery on Sunday, January 22, 2012, 5 - 7 p.m.

Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia's work is informed by multiple sources ranging from personal anecdotes to art-historical and ethnographic motifs. The work on display takes structural and organizational cues from Scottish Tartan, basket weaving, and abstract painting. Grids recur throughout art history; particularly in modernism as reductive and pure compositional tools and in postmodernist repetition and seriality.

However central to 20th century art, the grid is a pre-modernist invention with origins from across the globe in the form of weaving. Papel tejido works are woven paper constructions with two sides and able to hang in all directions. Constituent paper strips are painted and cut before they are woven, effectively arresting painterly gestures and re-articulating them vis-a-vis a woven grid surface.

Born in Cd. Júarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, the artist graduated with a BA from UCLA in 2003 and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2007. In 2010, his work was featured in “The Story of O” at Otis College of Art and Design and CB1 Gallery hosted his first solo exhibition, “by Deborah Calderwood.” He lives with his wife and son in Los Angeles where he also maintains his studio. Hurtado Segovia is Assistant Professor of Illustration at Otis College of Art and Design.

Crystallomancy at Control Room

2012-02-02T22:16:00.000-08:00

Crystallomancy

OPENING Friday, January 20 7-10pm

Open hours Saturday and Sunday evenings 6 - 9pm, through January 29

Crystallomancy brings a group of artists from the dynamic and emerging art scene of Oslo, Norway to Los Angeles. Curated by Tommy Høvik and Zac Tomaszewski, the show brings together disparate practices across a wide range of media united by a bedrock engagement with ideas of perception and expanded reality - whether by referencing sci-fi tropes or the paranormal, or by trying to craft perceptual experiences that are surprising to apprehend, for their novelty, confounding nature, or overwhelming aspect.

Featuring work by:
Javier Barrios
Thomas Falstad
Christer Glein
Tommy Høvik
Are Mokkelbost
Tara Rolfsen & Oda Broch
Hans Christian Skovholt
That Purple Stuff
Zac Tomaszewski

Supported by the Office of Contemporary Art Norway

Control Room is an artist run space in Downtown Los Angeles.
2006 East 7th Street
Downtown LA 90021
info@control-room.org
(818) 720-2713
OPEN HOURS:
Saturday and Sunday evenings from 6 - 9pm and by appointment January 20th through January 29th.

Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Barker Hanger, Santa Monica Airport, January 19 - 22, 2012

2012-01-30T20:21:00.000-08:00

This was a great art fair with impressive galleries and art. Please enjoy the pictures below if you missed the fair.

"To Live and Paint in LA" - Group Exhibition at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, California

2012-01-24T20:25:00.000-08:00

To Live and Paint in LA
Curated by Max Presneill and Jason Ramos

Opening reception Saturday, January 21st, 6-9 pm

A broad survey of current and emerging painting trends and talent from Los Angeles.

Jonathan Apgar, Rebecca Campbell, Daniela Campins, Alika Cooper, Noah Davis, Tomory Dodge, Asad Faulwell, Jon Flack, Yvette Gellis, Iva Gueorguieva, Mary Addison Hackett, Carlson Hatton, Thomas Whittaker Kidd, Andy Kolar, Constance Mallinson, Allison Miller, John Mills, Aaron Noble, Antonio Puleo, Alison Rash, Nano Rubio, Conrad Ruiz, John Seal, Ryan Sluggett, Comora Tolliver, Chris Trueman, Miller Updegraff, Grant Vetter, Ben White

Roy McMakin "Two Chairs, Two Chests of Drawers, Two Pieces of Fabric, and Two Tables" at Ambach and Rice, Los Angeles, California

2012-01-23T21:26:00.000-08:00

Throughout his career as artist, furniture designer and architect, McMakin has challenged notions of domesticity, distorting the intersection between art and design with quiet subversion. McMakin’s works are the product of discreet decisions and are executed with the utmost attention to detail. Equal consideration is devoted to concept, construction and finish resulting in objects that evoke loss and vulnerability despite their seemingly austere presence.

In 4 Photographs of 4 Sides of a Green Chest of Drawers (cameras the same distance from each side) With Mike, Myself and Another Green Chest, McMakin constructs a fractured still life that appears conversely animate and inert. In four separate photographs the viewer experiences the scene from all sides simultaneously, transcending the limits of visual perception. The composition portrays McMakin and his partner concealed behind a chest of drawers. The chest ostensibly functions as façade and shelter, a humble parable that subsumes the lives of objects and individuals.

Numerous works in the exhibit illustrate McMakin’s penchant for scouring yard sales and flea markets, an activity he has cherished since childhood. Objects and furniture are revitalized and rendered solitary with precise composite photography, paint and sculptural intervention. An antique blue four-drawer dresser is horizontally mounted to the wall, incased in an immaculate fabricated wood form that consumes the negative space. This formal disorientation compounds intimacy with Minimalism, an unlikely correlation that feels utterly natural through McMakin’s guise.
Roy McMakin is an interdisciplinary artist, furniture designer and architect. He operates and oversees his furniture shop Domestic Furniture, and his architectural firm Domestic Architecture in Seattle, WA. His first monographic survey entitled Roy McMakin: When is a chair not a chair? was recently published by Rizzoli Press. Recent solo exhibitions include Behind What it’s in Front Of: Paintings by John McLaughlin Sculptures and Videos by Roy McMakin, Quint Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA, and In and On, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX. Upcoming exhibits include Middle, a solo exhibition of new works at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, and Figuring Color, a group exhibition at the ICA, Boston, MA. McMakin’s work can be found in numerous national and international museum collections.

6148 WILSHIRE BLVD
LOS ANGELES, CA 90048
PHONE 323.965.5500
FAX 323.965.5509
info@ambachandrice.com
GALLERY HOURS:
Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 6pm
and by appointment

Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles

2012-01-23T21:15:00.000-08:00

Banks Violette at Blum & Poe, Culver City, California

2012-01-18T21:59:00.000-08:00

Banks Violette
January 7 – February 11, 2012
Opening reception: Saturday, January 7, 6 – 8pm

Simultaneously rooted in Minimalist form and contemporary in its use of industrial materials, Violette’s artistic practice freely employs diverse media, such as neon tubing, powder-coated steel, glass, salt, resin, and aluminum. Violette draws inspiration from a variety of subcultural communities, including hardcore punk and drone metal bands like Sunn O))), political conspiracy theorists, both left and right-wing religious fanatics, and most recently NASCAR and the iconography which populates the sport’s predominantly southern fan base. As if arrested in time, Violette’s sculptural objects and installations function as elegant reminders of darker moments past and present.

Complimenting Violette’s sculptures are impeccably drafted graphite drawings on paper mounted on aluminum panel. Recent subjects include a Budweiser logo split in thirds, an upside-down and fractured American flag, the Oakland Raiders logo emblazoned with a skull, and a drawing of the number “88,” a nod to NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. These dark, cultural crosscurrents within Violette’s artistic vocabulary manifest themselves both two and three dimensionally. Whether drawn, cast, burned, crushed, or coated, the final product remains indelibly linked to Violette – his hand and psyche.

Banks Violette (b. 1973, Ithaca, NY) received his B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts, New York and his M.F.A. from Columbia University, New York. Violette lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at Museum Dhont-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (2009-10); Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (2008); and Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2007). Notable group exhibitions include Kurt, Seattle Art Museum (2010); Compass in Hand: Selections from the Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009); The Shapes of Space, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2007); USA Today (works from the Saatchi Collection), Royal Academy, London (2006); and The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004). Violette’s work is included in the public collections of such prestigious institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

TUESDAY - SATURDAY 10 AM - 6 PM

2727 S. LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90034

T: +1 310.836.2062
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EMAIL: info@blumandpoe.com

Daniel Richter "A Concert of Purpose and Action " at Regen Projects, West Hollywood, California

2012-01-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

German artist Daniel Richter's second show at Regen Projects entitled "A Concert of Purpose and Action," includes bold, new paintings that explore the boundaries of social order against the backdrop of anarchic disorder. Richter's works reference war, abstraction, rock and roll, history, our shared recent past, and the political present. The exhibition title is derived from Woodrow Wilson's 1917 declaration of war on Germany, where the US President describes the role and purpose of America in relation to freedom and democracy worldwide. Richter's large-scale paintings question the context of history painting in a society whose historiographic idea of progress has been significantly altered, hence Richter's lone, heroic figures depicted singularly or in an ecstatic mass. These protagonists embody the various contradictions presented by the work: fear and joy, darkness and light, paranoia and security.

Within these strikingly colorful and exuberant works appear inhabitants of a mountain region whose landscape is composed of abstract patterns that reference natural or geological systems. Drawing from a complex visual vocabulary, Richter's nomadic spaces allow for the intersections of exoticism, myth, and reality. The concept of the sublime in Richter's large-scale tableaux characterizes contemporary natural landscapes that are inundated with an ideology from which their greatness is derived, both splendid and terrifying.

"Daniel Richter's paintings of the last ten years have often been set in urban Western context and informed by a notion of the apocalyptic. No less construed, though, than the mountains, plains, and trails of the places we contemplate here. The ambiguity of the scenery balances between the hallucinatory appearance of the Taliban figures and the sleepwalking guerrilla-guitarist on the one hand, and the strikingly uneventful splendor of the landscapes on the other. Nothing really happens in this uncanny mix of beauty and terror, and that being so, it makes the work an immediately identifiable texture woven of the unbroken thread of inexplicable violence, paranoia and often-inappropriate heroism that runs through Richter's work."
(Kold, Anders, "Itzi Bitzi," 10001nacht, Koln: Snoeck, 2011, p. 74)

Richter's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including the artist's most recent show at the Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, Germany. A major survey of the work opened in 2007 at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg and traveled to the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands; the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain; and the Denver Art Museum, Colorado, USA. In 2010, Richter designed a series of stage sets for the Salzburg Opera's production of Lulu in conjunction with his solo museum exhibition at the Rupertinum Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg, Austria. In 1998 he was the recipient of the prestigious Otto Dix award, and in 2002 the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin awarded Richter the Preis der Nationalgalerie.

Regen Projects
633 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424 Fax. (310) 276-7430
www.regenprojects.com

January 7 – February 18, 2012
at Regen Projects II
9016 Santa Monica Boulevard (at Almont Drive)
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 7, 6:00 – 8:00 pm

John Chamberlain "Rayvredd"

2012-01-05T20:37:00.000-08:00

"Automobiles are a loaded subject, especially in the decades following World War II in the United States, which has led some observers to ascribe specific social meanings to Chamberlain's art. The crushed automobiles have been connected to the violent death of Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, who wrapped his car around a tree in 1956, and then to the slightly later, 1960s car-crash paintings of Pop artist Andy Warhol. Chamberlain was skeptical. Of his choice of automobile sheet metal, the artist once said, "Michelangelo had a lot of marble in his backyard, so to speak; I had a lot of this stuff."

Using a common material is best for sculpture, he added, because it "doesn't get in the way of doing an uncommon thing."

Painted sheet metal was not the only material Chamberlain employed. A large 1986 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles included sculptures made from Plexiglas, paper, foam rubber and aluminum foil, as well as collages, drawings and paintings.

Chamberlain spent considerable time in Los Angeles, especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where several of the foam-rubber sculptures were made. In the 1980s, he moved his studio to Sarasota, Fla., and most recently he was working in Shelter Island, N.Y. His sculpture is in the permanent collections of many museums internationally, including MOCA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas; New York's Museum of Modern Art; and Tate Modern in London."

John Chamberlain dies at 84; American sculptor, December 23, 2011|

http://articles.latimes.com/print/2011/dec/23/local/la-me-john-chamberlain-20111223

By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Art Critic

John Chamberlain (1927 - 2011), "Rayvredd," 1962

On Display in Orange County: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, California

2012-01-04T21:30:00.000-08:00

On Display in Orange County: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture , the exhibition revealed the fascinating process of commissioning and creating 12 remarkable sculptural works that are now on display in Orange County in the South Coast Metro area, an important corridor for art between Segerstrom Center for the Arts and South Coast Plaza.

Organized by independent curator Bonnie Rychlak, former curator at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, the exhibition explores how a number of these site-specific works were created—from conceptual sketches and blueprints to models and finished sculptures—and offers a context that deepens the experience of viewing the sculptures themselves, which are all located within easy walking distance. Photographs, artist’s renderings, maquettes, videos and archival materials survey these works, made by a roster of sculptors that includes some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century: Jean Dubuffet, Joan Miró, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Serra, James Huntington, Charles O. Perry, Tony Smith, Henry Moore, George Rickey, Aiko Miyawaki, Richard Lippold and Marion Sampler.

“From Richard Serra’s scale model of his incredibly large Connector sculpture, to the photographs of Joan Miro’s Oiseau, this exhibition explores the fascinating and often lengthy process through which the artists create sculptures that were commissioned to embellish public spaces,” stated Ms. Rychlak. “This contextual exhibition of iconic post-war-era sculptures is a public invitation to learn about and enjoy these impressive works of art on display at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and South Coast Plaza.”

The sculptures featured in the exhibition were purchased or commissioned by Henry T. Segerstrom, Managing Partner of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, to be displayed publicly and made accessible to pedestrians visiting or working in Orange County.

“I am delighted that so many people will be able to learn about the creative process behind these wonderful works of art and then simply walk over to see sculptures themselves,” stated Henry T. Segerstrom, the cultural philanthropist who for more than 30 years has been building the cultural landscape of Orange County. “This exhibition reflects our ongoing and deep commitment to bringing top-tier art to enrich the lives of those living, working and visiting in Southern California.”

David Smith, "Fermi" 1975

Jean Dubuffet, "Tour Aux Jambes" 1973 - 80


Richard Lippold "Fire Bird" 1986


Richard Lippold, Model of "Fire Bird" 1986

Richard Lippold, Side View of "Fire Bird" 1986

Richard Serra, "Connector" 2006

Richard Serra, View of "Connector" 2006

Richard Serra, Interior View of "Connector" 2006

Richard Serra, "Connector" 2006

Joan Miró "Oiseau" 1981

George Rickey, "Four Lines Oblique Gyratory-Square IV" 1973

Charles O. Perry "Ram" 1979

Isamu Noguchi, "California Scenario" 1980 - 82

Henry Moore, "Reclining Figure" 1981

Minimalism at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

2012-01-02T20:37:00.000-08:00

Installation View with Larry Bell in foreground.

Dan Flavin

Brice Marden

Donald Judd

Craig Kauffman

Richard Artschwager

Ellsworth Kelly

Larry Bell

Dewain Valentine

Rodarte at LACMA

2011-12-28T20:48:00.000-08:00

RODARTE: Fra Angelico Collection, presented in the museum's Italian Renaissance gallery, features a group of extraordinary gowns by Kate and Laura Mulleavy. The collection is inspired by Italian art, specifically the Renaissance frescoes in the monastery of San Marco by Fra Angelico in Florence, Italy, as well as the Baroque sculpture, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) in Rome. Rodarte’s signature dressmaking techniques and sculptural details can be seen in each of the gowns. Silk fabrics (including chiffon, georgette, lamé, organza, satin, taffeta, and tulle) are draped and manipulated to give form, texture, and tonal variety to the color palette inspired by the frescoes. The gowns are customized utilizing a variety of materials such as feathers, SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS, sequins, and custom-made silk flowers. Hand-forged gold metallic accessories such as a headpiece, breastplate, and belts dramatically complete the look of several key gowns.
The Fra Angelico collection will enter LACMA’s Costume and Textiles Department, which houses over twenty-five thousand objects, representing more than one hundred cultures and two thousand years of human creativity in the textile arts.
Kate and Laura Mulleavy received their bachelor’s degrees in liberal arts from UC Berkeley in 2001. Following their graduations, they returned to Los Angeles and launched Rodarte in 2005. Since then, Kate and Laura have won numerous awards and accolades, including the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year in 2009, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Fashion, and the 2010 National Arts Award from Americans for the Arts. Earlier this year, Rodarte’s first west coast exhibition, Rodarte: States of Matter, was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Rodarte’s works are featured in the permanent collections of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Museum at FIT in New York City.

MERRY CHISTMAS!!

2011-12-23T22:49:00.000-08:00

"Tracing Mobility" at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany

2011-12-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

The exhibition Tracing Mobility at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany sets out to examine how electronic networks and mobile media are transforming our conceptions of time, space and distance.
The exhibition presents the positions of 16 international artists who trace the shifting terrain of global and local mobility, virtual and material movement. They use varying approaches to pursue the numerous questions of our present’s mobility: Where can we escape to when online- and offline worlds converge? What does the movement of a body in a landscape indicate when every point of the earth is within reach through the aid of digital technology? How do mobile devices and media alter our mindset and change our perception of time and space?

The exhibiting artists are: Frank Abbott (UK), Aram Bartholl (DE), Neal Beggs (UK/FR), Heath Bunting (UK), Janet Cardiff / George Bures Miller (CAN), Miles Chalcraft (UK/DE, Simon Faithfull (UK/DE), Yolande Harris (UK/NL), Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser (DE), Landon Mackenzie (CAN), Open_Sailing (FR/JP), plan b (Sophia New & Dan Belasco Rogers) (UK/DE), Esther Polak & Ivar van Bekkum (NL), Gordan Savicic (AT/NL) , Mark Selby (UK), and Michelle Teran (CAN/DE).

Tracing Mobility at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Opening reception, November 23, 2011. Video by Astrid Gleichmann.

"Medley" Group Show curated by Thinh Nguyen. at thinhstudio, Hawthorne, California

2011-12-20T21:02:00.000-08:00

Artists Karen Chu, Patrick Grugan, Julienne Hsu, Summer Janelle, Mike McLain, Laurence McNamara, Daniel Porras, Brian Rochefort, and Emily Smith inaugurated a new alternative experimental exhibition space, thinhstudio in Hawthorne, California. I wrote a short essay to compliment the show.

Essay by Mario Vasquez

The Medley of the Mix

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.”

William A. Foster

When one thinks of the word “medley,” it instantly becomes associated with a musical arrangement. It is also defined as a, “An often jumbled assortment; a mixture.” In this sense, it becomes a perfect metaphor for the art of the 21^st century, where nothing dominant and everything is mixed within the social, economic, political and identity dynamic that is the contemporary.

In 1911 contemporary art was beginning to shift away from the visual language that was the 19^th century. There was Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, and Futurism. All defined the early 20^th century. It was painting, sculpture and architecture. This was the art of 100 years ago. So what makes the art of 2011?

Artist in 2011 have a wide array of styles and visual tools to express themselves in multiple ways and approaches. Styles? Artists today are not bound by the avant garde or modernist conventions of the now. They are truly free to choose the vehicle in which to make a new visual language to communicate to the viewer. The visual vocabulary of the 20^th and 21^st centuries acts as a tool box where the artist acts as a strategist. Thus, the artist creates a medley of the visual.

In “Medley,” the emerging artists all reflect this approach. They approach various issues and practices using the various techniques, styles, and practices of the past. They thus create a medley , a mixture of everything to create something new. It is a sign of the ages as hybrid form the visual language of today.

**Mario Vasquez**

Summer Janelle

Karen Chu

Patrick Grugan

Daniel Porras

Laurance McNamara

Mike McLain

Emily Smith

Julienne Hsu

"Bon Voyage" Group Show at WPA, Chinatown, Los Angeles, California

2011-12-13T20:57:00.000-08:00

Bon Voyage | Holiday Group Exhibition
December 10th-11th
Gallery Hours: 12–6pm, Sat-Sun.
Reception: Saturday, December 10, 6-10pm

Bon Voyage, was a special two-day exhibition and holiday party featuring work by all the members of WPA: Bart Exposito, Andrew Hahn, David Hughes, Charles Irvin, Pamela Jorden, Michael Minelli, Rachael Neubauer, John Pearson, Terri Phillips, Fil Rüting, Amy Sarkisian, Henry Taylor, Ryan Tomcho, Tyler Vlahovich.

WPA is takin' it on the road. Which "road" or which "it" we can't say right now; only that we will be moving from our Bernard Street space as of December 12, 2011. What started out as a one year proposal for a dozen or so artists turned into a two year commitment to a space that occupies not only the inherent traditions of the white cube but the challenges and possibilities offered through collective risk.

Holiday cheer and end of year celebrations await. DJ sets by the yams throughout the evening beneath the mistletoe and tinsel. Special hourly calendar raffle and discounts Saturday evening. We hope you can attend.

Marking this transition WPA has produced a 13-month calendar for the new year, a collaborative project featuring artwork by each of the members.
Limited edition of 100, including a unique rubberstamp collage by Dave Hughes, only available at the gallery - $20.
Gallery hours:
Open 12-6pm, Saturday-Sunday or by appointment.

Bon Voyage WPA Holiday Exhibit from Andrew Pearson on Vimeo.

Tyler Vlahovich, "Strata Drawing", 2010, Ink on paper, 17 x 24 in.

John Pearson, "untitled (Knoxville)", 2011, Silver gelatin print (ed. 1/3) 11 x 14 in.

Charles Irvin, "Pseudo Mandala", 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 in.

Pam Jorden, "Chord (C, D, E)", 2011, Unique screen prints, 30 x 22 in.

Ryan Tomcho, "untitled", 2010, Gouache on paper, 15 x 20 in.

Terri Phillips, "Something of Value", 2011, Plywood and glass, 42 x 9 x 9 in.

Andrew Hahn, "Oh Please Do!", 2011, Linocut monotype triptych, 30 x 22 in. each

Fil Rüting, "Snow Globe", 2011, 60 min. looped HD video, Blu-ray edition of 5

Rachael Neubauer, "Study for the Valley", 2011, Mixed media, 18 x 47 x 12 in.

David Hughes, "Printing Block Apartment Building", 2010, Wood, wire, and ink, 6 x 6 x 1 in.

Michael Minelli, "Office Party Virgin", 2011, Sculpey III, 3/4 x 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (detail)

Michael Minelli, "Office Party Virgin", 2011, Sculpey III, 3/4 x 1/2 x 2 1/4 in.

Henry Taylor, "untitled", 2011, Acrylic on canvas 24 x 8 in.

Bart Exposito, "The Archer", 2011, Acrylic and Pastel on Canvas, 20 x 16 in

Pamela Jorden, "Bon Voyage", 2011, Oil on linen, 30 x 30 in.

Ryan Tomcho, "untitled", 2011, Gouache and panel, 20 x 16 in

Charles Irvin, "Merry Xmas", 2003, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 in.

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: "In the Presence" at the ICA, London, 23 November 2011 - 15 January 2012

2011-12-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

Martin Boyce: 2011 Winner of the Turner Prize

2011-12-05T19:54:00.000-08:00

Martin Boyce is this year's winner of the Turner Prize in Great Britain. Boyce's work engages with the historical legacy of Modernist forms and ideals to create deeply atmospheric installations drawing upon text and elements of design. His investigations will often re-stage the outside within the gallery space, evoking the urban landscape through precisely explored sculptural details. Steeped in an understanding of the concepts of Modernist design, his work draws upon its visual language with a complex repertoire of forms. Noted for his engagement with how these objects are produced, Boyce is interested in how their original political or aesthetic ethos changes over time. His meticulous sculptures bear out his imaginings for the alternative lives these objects might lead if created at a different moment.I had the pleasure of seeing his work at the Orange County Museum of Art in Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy during the summer. I loved his mobiles and sculpture. I am happy to see him win the Turner Prize this year.

Brenna Youngblood "The Mathematics of Individual Achievement " at Honor Fraser, Culver City, California

2011-11-30T20:44:00.000-08:00

The Mathematics of Individual Achievement, is a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Los Angeles-based artist Brenna Youngblood.

Negotiating the tension between representation and abstraction through the language of photography, collage, painting, and more recently, sculpture, Brenna Youngblood's practice has explored and transformed some of the conceptual and formal strategies associated with American West Coast assemblage. Initially trained in photography, Youngblood began to treat her photographs as source material for large-scale layered collaged compositions that mined the relationship between the autobiographical and the historical. Invested in exploring the multidimensional qualities of materials, Youngblood soon began to expand her formal sensibilities, leading to unconventional treatments and juxtapositions of materials and forms. Photographs, wallpaper, textbook pages, wooden sheets, and paint, amongst other things came together to create Youngblood's unforeseen palette. Similar to predecessors like Rauschenberg, and perhaps more accurately, Noah Purifoy, John Outterbridge, and Betye Saar, Youngblood began introducing found materials to her work, translating the accumulative conditions of the studio into painterly objects with a raw sculptural quality.

While shaped canvases, plywood, and other materials began to serve as backdrops for Youngblood's painting exercises, more recently, Youngblood has furthered her investigations; the new materials that exist in the studio have called for a different conceptual approach to both painting and sculpture, one that Youngblood communicates through this exhibition. Like in many of her previous projects, Youngblood draws from documents and materials in her personal archive to establish both a point of departure and context for the work, a conceptual gesture that echoes the process through which materials are selected and used in her broader practice. In this particular instance, Youngblood takes her old elementary school math book as a point of departure. Intrigued by the visual composition of each page—her penciled problem solving marks and residue of erasers—Youngblood takes both the visual and material language of the math book to create a series of wall sculptures that take the form of familiar arithmetic symbols and equations. These works create an infrastructure for the exhibition that Youngblood playfully uses to speak about the human attempt to rationalize, solve, and reach concrete solutions—a self-reflexive process that she herself engages in through this show. A selection of paintings that demonstrate her signature approach to the utilization of photographic imagery as painting material are included alongside a new body of sculptural wall paintings of stars, clouds, and domestic icons, juxtaposing her now perfected material techniques with her ongoing interest in the everyday, the subjective, and the politics of personal narrative construction.

As the mathematical signs create a translating mechanism to reveal the relationships between these works, viewers will also be presented with a new sculptural work that marks Youngblood's most recent experiments with free standing sculpture. Taking on some of the iconography normally used in her paintings, Youngblood converts a symbol from the math book into a large-scale jungle gym sculpture. Youngblood hints at some of her more recent aesthetic investigations, allowing us for the first time to trace a historical trajectory of her creative process and its influences. In creating a seemingly rational system with which to read the work, Youngblood puts forth an interrogation of objectivity, more specifically in relationship to our ongoing debates about the condition of painting, its viability, and its relationship to other mediums. In this environment of sculptural paintings and painterly sculptures, Youngblood extends these debates even further, presenting viewers with aggressive interrogations of both painting and sculpture traditions that simultaneously remind us about the possibility of both mediums' intimate coexistence.

Brenna Youngblood earned a BA in 2002 from Cal State Long Beach and an MFA in 2006 from UCLA, where she studied with Cathy Opie and James Welling. Recent solo projects include exhibitions at Jack Tilton Gallery, Susanne Vielmetter Berlin Projects, Margo Leavin Gallery, Wignall Museum, and the Hammer Museum. Youngblood has also participated in exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Harris Lieberman Gallery, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, the 2008 California Biennial, and the California African American Museum.

GALLERY HOURS
TUESDAY — SATURDAY
10AM — 6PM

2622 S. LA CIENEGA BLVD.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90034

T: 310.837.0191
F: 310.838.0191

Whitney Bedford at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, California

2011-11-23T20:22:00.000-08:00

Presenting some of her largest paintings to date, the exhibition includes new seascapes in which shipwrecks and lightning storms feature prominently. Bedford continues her explorations into the emotional potential of the landscape by charging up ocean paintings that are historically more often connected with themes of war or expanding frontiers. By projecting her personal fears and anxieties onto the landscape, Bedford creates an intense juxtaposition of restrained drawing technique and gestural bursts of paint that add an explosive tension to the work.

In this exhibition Bedford focuses on an elusive moment where forces collide and become ungraspable through distance - the moment when a storm gathers and unleashes its first raw energy or when emotions collide and trigger powerful charges. For Bedford, lightning functions as a moment of charged realization and her work aims to give expression to this powerful release where major forces are subject to dramatic change.

Also on view will be collaborative outcomes, produced with artist Dane Mitchell, in the form of works on paper, intimate sculptures and a scent - all of which act as votives and conduits. Bedford and Mitchell worked with famed French perfumer Michel Roudnitska to produce a scent intended as a medium to quantify vast distances. It contains molecules of ambergris collected from the belly of a whale, of seaweed dense ocean, and ozonic electrical notes of a gathering storm. This distillation is meant to act as a spell to evoke a shifting change.

Whitney Bedford received her MFA at the University of California Los Angeles in 2003. She was the winner of the 2001 UCLA Hammer Museum Drawing Biennial and received a Fulbright Graduate Fellowship from the Hochschule der Kuenste, Berlin, Germany. Recent exhibitions include "Houdini: Art and Magic, 1919-1949" at the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; "This Is Killing Me", at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; "X - Snow Falls in the Mountains", St Paul's St Gallery, University of Auckland, New Zealand; "The Triumph of Painting, part 5, Which Reality?", The Saatchi Gallery, London; "Step Into Liquid", Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, among others. Whitney Bedford has had exhibitions at D'Amelio Terras Gallery, New York, Galerie Lelong, New York, Art:Concept, Paris, France, and at Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand. This is her second solo exhibition at the gallery.

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects is located at 6006 Washington Blvd in Culver City, 1 block west of La Cienega at Sentney Avenue, on the south side of the street. Gallery parking is available across the street from the gallery off of Sentney Avenue. Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am - 6 pm and by appointment.

SUSANNE VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES PROJECTS
6006 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
phone 310.837-2117
fax 310.837-2148
http://www.vielmetter.com

Chuck Close at Blum & Poe, Culver City, California

2011-11-15T21:29:00.000-08:00

Blum & Poe is very pleased to present new paintings, prints, and tapestries by Chuck Close. This landmark exhibition is Close’s first one-person show with Blum & Poe and represents the most significant body of work assembled in Los Angeles in sixteen years. Featured will be new large-scale oil paintings of artists Kara Walker, Laurie Anderson, and Zhang Huan; works from Close's ongoing self-portrait series; intimately scaled portraits of musician Paul Simon and arts patron Agnes Gund; a collection of prints; and immaculately crafted Belgian Jacquard tapestries. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity for viewers to experience Close’s stylistic range and technical capacity, while providing a deeper understanding of the human portrait.
Close’s nearly 50-year exploration of the human portrait is staggering in its breadth and level of dedication. Rather than landscapes or everyday urban scenes, Close has focused on his own image and those of his peers, differentiating his practice from photorealistic painters. His early paintings were predominantly large-scale and executed in acrylic on canvas. He has since evolved a process whereby these portraits begin as photographs, which are enlarged, transferred, and gridded on the canvas, allowing Close to work with his brush meticulously inch by inch.

Close moves freely between painting, photography (both analog and digital), numerous modes of printmaking and drawing, and most recently the art of Belgian Jacquard tapestry weaving. In an effort to capture his subject’s essence, Close has become fluent in myriad techniques, both traditional and exploratory. In 1972, his artistic practice extended beyond the canvas with an introduction to printmaking at San Francisco’s Crown Point Press. Following that collaboration, Close endeavored to expand his contribution to portraiture through the mastery of such varied drawing and painting techniques as ink, graphite, pastel, watercolor, conté crayon, finger painting, and stamp-pad ink on paper; printmaking techniques, such as Mezzotint, etching, woodcuts, linocuts, and silkscreens; as well as handmade paper collage, Polaroid photographs, Daguerreotypes, and Jacquard tapestries. His astonishing proficiency in a diverse range of media has firmly defined each new body of work as unique and progressive for its time.

Chuck Close (b. 1940, Monroe, WA) lives and works in New York. He received his B.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle and his B.F.A and M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art and Architecture. Throughout his distinguished career, he has been the recipient of many honors, such as the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Art (1991), election to Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1998), and the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton (2000). He has been honored with numerous retrospectives, including Close Portraits, held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1980-81), which traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Retrospektive, at Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (1994), later presented at the Lenbauchhaus Stadtische Galerie, Munich; and most importantly Chuck Close, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1989-99), which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Seattle Art Museum, and Hayward Gallery, London. Close’s work is in the permanent collection of over 70 public institutions worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan; Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, amongst many others.