Carolyn Campbell: (en)Gendered (in)Equity: The Gallery Tally Poster Project

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Carolyn Campbell at LACE with her Thaddeus Ropac poster
Carolyn Campbell at LACE with her Thaddeus Ropac poster

Female artists are getting buried. Beneath the onslaught of male-dominated gallery openings and exhibitions, the work of photographic artist and activist Carolyn Campbell sounds a rallying cry to creatives everywhere: address the gender inequality rampant in the arts community.

Micol Hebron at LACE 2 mid size

Closing April 17 at LACE, (en)Gendered (in)Equity: The Gallery Tally Poster Project includes 450 international artists who tackle this subject, Campbell among them. All posters are 24” x 36,” and are designed to address the question as to why female-identified artists are still valued so much less than male-identified artists. Gallery Tally is a crowd-sourced, social engagement project created by Micol Hebron to examine and question the ongoing gender imbalance in the art world.

Campbell has four works in this exhibition, which have been a part of the show’s traveling itinerary from Chicago to Santiago, Chile.

Carolyn Campbell photo by Martin Cox 300dpi

“I was invited to create works illustrating the ratio of male to female artists in four galleries: two in New York and two in Paris,” Campbell relates. In her contributions to the exhibition, she meshed subjects she is passionate about – social justice, culture, art, and architecture.

“I was excited to be part of a show that speaks to gender parity. It afforded me the opportunity to examine how, when I was promoting women artists, was I able to successfully increase their visibility in the marketplace, face any challenges, and how it affected my own creative expression,” she states.

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For Gallery Tally, Campbell’s works are posters depicting Marlborough Chelsea, a satellite of the Marlborough Gallery, one of the world’s leading artist reps, and Kerry Schuss Art, both located in New York. For her Paris representations, she chose Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, and Galerie Hussenot.

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The images she uses to craft these pieces are photos of 19th century sculptures which Campbell made in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The carefully curated images have expressions that exhibit frustration, sorrow, and exasperation in regard to the poor tally of female to male artists exhibited at these galleries.

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Along with expressing this important social subject, her art for the exhibition reflects a 20-year span of Campbell’s work chronicling the funerary images of Père Lachaise in written word and photographs. Her elegiac photos make the tomb sculptures, which often mark the final resting spots of some of the world’s most famous artists, seem alive, as if the stone figures were merely staying still waiting to be photographed. With mossy green lichen and leaves, golden streaks of sunlight, and red tinged trees contrasting with the silvery grey statues, the photos feel almost archetypal.

“The female figure in funerary iconography is traditionally linked to the Seven Virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity, Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude and Justice,” Campbell says. “The images that I chose for the exhibition are powerful examples of how women embody some of the deepest qualities of the human condition.”

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From community portraits to architectural forms to her cemetery study, Campbell exhibits an immediacy and grace that brings her subjects to life. There is irony in the fact that her work in Père Lachaise creates the fluidity of captured motion in her depictions of these graceful sculptures. From drought-riven landscapes in her recent series CA Route 5 to fluid images of jellyfish in her work Ocean Sentinels, she is all about suffusing the still with movement and capturing movement in frozen grace.

Born in Washington, D.C., now a resident of West Hollywood, Campbell began taking photographic portraits and urban still-life pieces when her mother gifted her with a Rolleicord camera while still in art school. Her work with other artists at UCLA and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington led her to explore the relationship between the arts and political culture in her photography.

Whether tackling political subjects through her posters in the (en)Gendered (in)Equity: The Gallery Tally Poster Project, or narrating the subject of California’s historic drought, Campbell brings a keen eye and a sharp wit to her work.

To experience the powerful posters at Gallery Tally and get a taste of Campbell’s oeuvre, visit LACE at 6522 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028 before its closing this weekend.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Laura Grover

Francisco Alvarado and Sophia Tise – Conversation in Colors

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A dynamic duo has arrived in Los Angeles, making the city a brighter, more vibrant place, one where shape and form convey meaning. Conversations in Color opened Saturday April 9th and runs through April 24th, at the Neutra Institute in Silver Lake, featuring the work of artists Sophia Tise and Francisco Alvarado.

The two met at the studio of artist Quinton Bemiller six years ago, forging an artistic friendship based on their mutual passion for brilliant color and the juxtaposition of line and shape, as well as surprising similarities in their backgrounds.

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Both of the artists’ palettes dance with Caribbean light. Tise and Alvarado have spent considerable time in the Caribbean, and time which has gifted them with the ability to absorb and integrate its images and colors into their work. Alvarado, originally from Quito, Ecuador, was stationed in Puerto Rico while in the military, and fell in love with the beaches and beauty of the island. Tise, a former resident of the U.K., used to spend a month every year vacationing on the island of Bequia in the Grenadines.

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“I was fascinated that his colors were so similar to mine,” Tise says. “As we got to know each other’s work, we realized that we’d both spent time in the islands, which drew us to certain colors. We saw that the colors we use play off each other.” The balance between their works drew them to the idea of putting a show together. This carefully curated show has been two years in coming, but was worth the wait. As Tise says, “Our work sort of sings when you see our paintings up together.”

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It’s the music of island sunsets, the magic of shadows, of both abstract and more figurative sensual forms sharing pulsating color, dancing to that shared song.

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Along with their attraction to color and its use in creating a poetic visual story, both artists also incorporate the use of digital imagery into their traditional paintings. Tise explains “I was moving forward with iPad technology as a basis for my work. Extraordinarily, we were both doing the same thing in our individual ways.” With iPad drawings taking the place of simple pencil sketches, there is a layered quality to both of their works, a shifting, deepening lens like patterns seen through a kaleidoscope. Twist to the right or left and a completely different but related image shines through.

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Alvarado’s abstract art begins with creating digital images from which he is inspired to make his paintings. He notes “I’m a prolific painter. I don’t work on a single piece, I create a series based on custom color mixes, doing multiple paintings at a time. This exhibition is my Don Quixote 2.0 series. It’s based on the technology I use to create my work, on the issues and problems of privacy that technology creates. I could see that today Don Quixote wouldn’t be fighting windmills. His battle would be with technology. This gave me the idea to leverage the symbols of technology into the characters from Don Quixote,” he explains. Among them are his Sancho Panza, whose form is inspired by a pattern of sidewalk cracks that stood out to Alvarado as he considered how to paint this character, and an angularly shaped bull that seems ready to charge from the canvas.

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Each piece incorporates visuals that represent technology itself, shapes that remind viewers of a computer motherboard or the wires that connect one circuit to another, as well as fluid, sensual, curved shapes and lines.

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Tise’s images have a different sort of pattern. “The small pieces in particular have to do with time spent in England in the winter. I was fascinated by the leaf form. My mother passed away at age 92, and staying with her at that time, seeing the leaves on the ground, left something strongly in my subconscious, a certain sadness. I think all artists’ pieces have a certain sadness within. It’s certainly one layer in these paintings.” She notes that her abstract paintings are very much about the natural world. “I think they’re really a cross between my time living in the U.K. and living in the Carribean. It’s a contrast between the two, the colors of the islands passed through my Englishness.”

Layering leaves and petals and embedding them in different mediums, Tise weaves her collages and their organic nature into her paintings, including images taken from her iPad and photographs, she contrasts aged linen and glossy paper. She says she likes to create “abstract worlds through combinations of lines and formlessness,” and that each painting takes shape based on what she’s created in the painting preceding it. “I let the painting happen, feel an energy, become absorbed into the process.”

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Tise’s work is bold, but her softer palette and delicate combinations of mixed media are an excellent contrast to the rich mix of human and animal forms and linear and curved shapes in Alvarado’s work. Alvarado’s style seemingly conjures a link to Henri Matisse,

The artists compliment each other, forms and styles subtly twinned, colors forming a dynamic, a side-by-side vision of man and memory fused with shape, texture, and technology. For every grid, there is a curve, for every leaf, a forest of riotous rainbow colors. Both use techniques that make their colors as unique as they are vivid, mixing special shades and media.

neutra group at exhibitionCome for the color and stay for the conversation. The pieces speak to viewers much as the artists speak to each other, offering a superb give and take in styles, shades, and meaning.

The Neutra Institute is located at 2379 Glendale Blvd. Silver Lake, CA 90039.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Jack Burke

South Bay Art Scene: LA Art Lovers Look South

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Via Negativa Exhibition, South Bay Contemporary

The South Bay has a larger, more vibrant art scene than it is ever going to be given credit for. Much like Brooklyn will always be in the shadow of Manhattan, the South Bay will always have the behemoth of Los Angeles – stretching from Santa Monica to Boyle Heights, with which to contend. But whereas the Brooklyn art scene is regarded internationally, the South Bay scene seems to be both absorbed by Los Angeles and forgotten as well. A smattering of local media offer reliable coverage but with the LA Times so close yet so far away, you can forgive the locals for wishing there were a bigger megaphone.

But the artists and art lovers that make up the South Bay’s art world push on with or without a spotlight. I was the director at Gallery C in Hermosa Beach almost ten years ago and when that grand and spacious place closed its doors, many lamented that it might be the death of contemporary art in the South Bay;  but the region rose like a phoenix out of the ashes. The landscape is dotted with flagship spaces that have a strong foundation.

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Above, Max Presneill, director of the Torrance Art Museum.

Under the guidance of Max Presneill, the Torrance Art Museum is the undeniable center of the South Bay Art Scene. Featuring curated shows of international contemporary artists, this institution has programming that rivals any Southern California space when it comes to dynamic, rigorous exhibits that keep a finger on the pulse of where art is at and an eye on where it is going. Under Presneill’s direction, the legendary MAS Attack exhibits that include up to a hundred artists began here and now travel out of state. TAM is a non-collecting museum, which means its director has to be.

Michael Freitas Wood, Acrylic, Plaster on fiberglass

Above, the work of Michael Freitas Wood.

At the other end of the region, the San Pedro scene is thriving. With South Bay Contemporary now operating in high gear, the nonprofit art organization is engaging emerging and established  artists in exhibitions dealing with topics exploring science, humanities and current issues. Establishing small Critique groups and inviting guest curators, SBC is engaging the art community as a whole.  Consider their May group of shows: first is “Skyline” – Ben Zask’s curated exhibition of contemporary sculpture with an emphasis on found materials, and two solo shows – PET by Tracey Weiss and “Connections” by Michael Freitas Wood. While the Weiss show exists as commentary on the recycling of plastic, Freitas Wood gives viewers a formalist tour-de-force with exquisite gridded compositions that reflect the visual complexity of our contemporary communication systems and yet, serve as perfectly attuned meditations on sophisticated anti-imagery in our overstated era. These three SBC exhibitions would be at home at any name gallery or not for profit art center throughout Southern California. In the South Bay, SBC’s programming stands as a testament to the commitment of the community to embracing a wide swath of the best local contemporary art.

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Above, Ron Linden of TransVagrant / Warschaw Gallery.

One Southern California art veteran, Ron Linden, is also curating in the South Bay.  His TransVagrant / Warschaw Gallery in San Pedro has hosted exhibitions for almost a decade now, specializing in rigorous, almost scholarly shows, primarily of painting. Be they solo or group shows, Linden’s space has a severe eye for the reductive, the historical and the dedicated. Fearlessly championing Modernist forms and playing the long game with art history, TranVagrant / Warschaw exists in a context free from art world tropes that chase what was on the cover of last month’s ArtForum.  It is one of the crowning achievements of the South Bay, inspiring and informing the whole scene.

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Above, South Bay Contemporary head Peggy Sivert-Zask.

It is no coincidence that Ron Linden, Max Presneill and SBC head Peggy Sivert-Zask are full time studio artists in addition to their professional curating professions. The nascent South Bay scene has an overflowing amount of things going on, but is still operated by an all-volunteer army, or at least a committed brigade. To wear two hats in the South Bay is the norm. But unlike so many art communities, the South Bay is refreshingly open to and inclusive of artists from the wider region.

San Pedro has had an art scene for over twenty years, waxing and waning with the vagaries of the larger economy, but currently hitting its stride with austere and precise spaces like Linden’s as well as experimental gems like Cornelius Projects, whose range of exhibiting artists runs from the adventurous Peggy Reavey to the punk pioneer Joe Baiza.  But the South Bay is expansive and one cannot confine all the action to any one point on the map no matter how many exciting things are happening there. Over in El Segundo, the El Segundo Museum of Art is radically redefining the boundaries of what an art museum can show – earning it the scandalous LA Weekly headline as L.A.’s most fascinating and rebellious museum last year.

Baker's Dozen Torrance Art Museum Installation View
Baker’s Dozen Torrance Art Museum Installation View

An article this length could easily be composed three more times to mention all that is going on in the South Bay. Between the Orange County Line on the East, the Pacific Ocean on the South and West and the 105 Freeway on the North, L.A.’s South Bay is no longer the working class stepchild of Los Angeles County. It is becoming an inescapable arts destination with movers and shakers contributing to the big picture: great contemporary art careers that matter.

Sunrise Suprises – A Play in 2 Acts by Vic Bagratuni

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Elizabeth is about to finish her dissertation. She is very much in love with her girlfriend and their life together. But then her brother and his best friend show up-they are on the run. Their arrival forces Elizabeth to confront her past and finally make a choice about the kind of person she wants to be. A waking nightmare in which fears and memories become actual and the psychological becomes all too real. A Play by: Lucy Thurber

Performed at New York’s Monroe Theater this January, Sunrise Surprises served as a stellar follow-up to Vic Bagratuni’s previous playwriting debut, The Strasberg Legacy. Directed by Nick Dorman and starring Bagratuni as Danny, the actor’s second play has been optioned as a pilot for Amazon.

Elizabeth is about to finish her dissertation. She is very much in love with her girlfriend and their life together. But then her brother and his best friend show up-they are on the run. Their arrival forces Elizabeth to confront her past and finally make a choice about the kind of person she wants to be. A waking nightmare in which fears and memories become actual and the psychological becomes all too real. A Play by: Lucy Thurber
The story: In love with her girlfriend and their life together, graduate student Liza is contentedly finishing her dissertation. At least until her brother and his best friend Danny (Bagratuni) show up on the run. Their on-the-lam arrival forces Liza to confront her past and make a choice about just who she is and who she wants to be. With fears and memories becoming all-too-real, it’s a psychological nightmare that digs deep into Liza’s psyche.

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From handsome leading man to stone cold killer, Bagratuni always dreamt of being an actor, and began performing at the tender age of five. He is very much a method actor, using sense memory to find his own voice. His writing has paved the way to create a fully rounded artistic experience. It took him two years to write, and he describes Sunrise Surprises as rooted in a longing for his own family connections.

He sees his writing as an extension of his belief that actors are true storytellers. “Our purpose is to reveal and serve the truth of the imaginary world provided by the playwright or the script. We have to bring it to life. Start internally from the soul and work your way to the external behavior and mannerisms.” As an actor and writer, Bagratuni endeavors to take his audience on “an emotional roller coaster.” Come along for the ride.