Durden and Ray together in collaboration with Level Ground have brought a brilliant mix of art, video, and poetry into being as a collision of light, color, sculpture, immersive experience and astonishing fun. The Blooming in the Whirlwind exhibition closes with an artist’s talk on December 5th.
It’s a riveting show at the Bendix building gallery, one that seems fraught with rich meaning and emotion. This whirlwind is a cavalcade of dreams, desire, and collaboration.
The conversation between collectives began with poems that inspired films, that led to visual art installations. Poets were paired with filmmakers, filmmakers with installation artists.
The title is fitting, referring to a classic poem by Gwendolyn Brooks written in 1968, another chaotic time here in the land of out of control hopes and dreams. But the exhibition itself took that chaos and made of it a thing of beauty and poignance, of fallen leaves and satin kitchens, of gilt edged tears and strangely alien sculptural “life forms.”
Curated by Level Ground’s Andy Motz, Rebekah Neel, Samantha Curley, and Simone Tetrault, poetry and filmmaker pairings included poets Christina Brown, Daniel Binkoski, DeiSelah, Jireh Deng, Karly Kuntz, Madeleine St. John, Noor Jamal, Simone Tetrault, and Tamisha A Tyler and filmmakers Andrés Vazquez, Anthony D. Frederick, Andrew Neel & Alex C. Smith, Ilgın G. Korugan, Labkhand Olfatmanesh, Leila Jarman, Meredith Adelaide, Rich Johnson, and Taree Vargas.
Curated by Durden and Ray‘s team of Arezoo Bharthania, Ismael de Anda III, and Sean Noyce were installation artists Bharthania, de Anda III, and Noyce, Dani Dodge, Kiyomi Fukui, Sean Noyce, Tina Linville, Reed Van Brunschot, Flora Kao, and Ricardo Harris-Fuentes. Artworks and many of the artists in the gallery with their work, shown below.
From Kao’s glorious autumnal forest to Fukui’s leaf-imprinted chair, de Anda III’s rocking, glowing drum kit, and Dodge’s tear-stained shower of TikTok images and gold leaf tear drops, to Bharthania’s photographic nightscape, Noyce’s towering layered sculpture, and lush tactile work by Van Brunschot, the harmony and kinetic connection between writers/filmmakers/and installation visual creators was vibrantly alive.
As with many exhibitions held at the D & R space, this collab effort was as fresh and compelling as it was entirely enjoyable. Collectives that make cutting edge cool and accessible? A resounding affirmative.
This exhibition was both response to the pandemic isolation and a glorious assault on the senses – power to the people arising from the pandemic and ponderous times.
Durden and Ray is located on the 8th floor of the Bendix Building in DTLA at 1206 Maple in the fashion district.
- Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis