CHENHUNG CHEN at MOAH’S ROBOT SHOW

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Chenhung Chen weaves a web of magic with her sculptures, from delicate copper crocheted pieces to mysterious recycled wires transformed.

The artist is leading walk-through of her exhibition, I Ching in America 2.0 on Saturday, September 1 at 1 p.m. 

Focusing on the linear, inspired by the use of line in both Chinese calligraphy and American Abstract Expressionism, she creates delicate but strong sculptural works that weave a symmetry through chaos, and shape beautiful, works that express motion, much like a wave arising from an ocean.

With much of her material recycled from electronic and computer components, her ability to take technological detritus and reshape it creates works that are both haunting and alive, as if instead of conducting electrical current they are conducting the energy of art. Like her deeply dimensional sculptures, her 2D work is also focused on the linear, whether she is working with graphite, acrylic, oil, ink, or patterns created with the staples as a kind of embroidery.

Los Angeles based and born in Beigang, Taiwan, Chen says “I grew up practicing the calligraphy of ancient poetry. I thought it was beautiful both visually and linguistically. It was part of the training of traditional Chinese scholars and it was that training that left an impression upon me during my youth. I enjoyed it, as well as felt it shape my psyche and begin the development of my artistic voice.”

Later, influenced by American culture, she experimented with a variety of materials while still expressing the linear qualities of calligraphy. “I wanted to bring that elusive quality into a three-dimensional setting. This was the motivation behind much of my early work.”

Nine years ago, a friend gave her a bag of thick cables. “I decided to recycle the copper wire in the cables to crochet a different body of work. Then one day it hit me; the cable conducts electricity, just as humans do. We are conduits, conduits of that Power. We try to emulate it, harnessing electricity to advance our lives.”

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Today, Chen crochets coated wire with electrica wire, drawing in the air, drawn to the ideas of negative space, silence, and love of nature. She contrasts the materials of daily life, creating parallels that reflect yin and yang, male and female.

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Her work’s profoundly visceral quality is balanced by an ethereal, mesmerizing weaving – she is like a spider of art, making webs that transcend the possible.

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Don’t miss the artist’s talk this Saturday; the exhibition runs through September 26th.

Chenhung Chen: Artist Talk & Tour

Saturday,  September 01, 2018  1:00 PM

Her talk will be followed by an intimate conversation and tour from another richly rewarding artist, Alex Kritselis.

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Alex Kritselis: Talk & Tour

Sat, September 01, 2018  2:00 PM

MOAH is located at 655 W. Lancaster Blvd. in Lancaster. That’s 90 minutes from DTLA and worth the drive.

  • Genie Davis; photos courtesy of artists

 

 

 

Closing, Closing, Quick Go See About a Box at Shoebox Projects and Phantom Lim at TAM

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At Shoebox Projects through the 25th – when the gallery will hold a closing recepetion – are whimsical, wonderful, moving, and evocative – wait for it – shoeboxes. Using the shoebox itself in a very meta fashion given the gallery’s name, 29 artists contributed a variety of vibrant dioramas within the format of the shoebox. Some artists turned the boxes inside out, or used sections of shoeboxes to expand on the format, but the majority of the art works reside inside these perfect, minute spaces.

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There are works political and profound, tiny portals to peer inside, neon to shine. Cosmic, brooding, hilarious, and always prescient, the works here are a dazzling display of ingenuity. If the ‘tiny house’ movement offers an alternative living space for want-to-be homeowners, then About a Box offers a compact alternative to a gallery wall.

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Participating artists include: Debby Kline and Larry Kline, Nancy Larrew, Diane Williams, Susan J Osborn, Nancy Kay Turner, Emily Wiseman, Dani Dodge, Jennifer Gunlock, Kayla Cloonan, Chenhung Chen, Debbie Korbel, Elizabeth Tinglof, Lorraine Heitzman, Susan T. Kurland, Frederika Beesemyer Roede,r Karen Hochman Brown, Cathy Immordino, Steve Seleska, Colin Roberts, Pranay Reddy, Randi Matushevitz, Maya Kabat, Katya Usvitsky, Catherine Ruane, Bibi Davidson, Dwora Fried, Linda Sue Price, Ashley Hagen, Vincent Tomczyk, and Don Porcella.

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Shoebox Projects is located in The Brewery Arts Complex just east of DTLA.

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Then head south through September 1st for Phantom Lim at Torrance Art Museum, a mind bending and material morphing exhibition about perception, liminal boundaries, and physical space.

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Curated by Benjamin Tippin and Max Presneill, mixed media works spill from the edges of their mediums and into the sublime and surreal in the main gallery. The works alter the perception of their form – air filters become a robot-like creature, wire and metal a dragon, wood wall sculptures are a tribute to stained glass, a tumbleweed becomes a red flaming bush.

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Artists include: Coleen Sterritt, Jessica Stockholder, Joan Tanner, Valerie Wilcox, Steve DeGroodt, Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, David Gilbert, Julia Haft-Candell, and Gedi Sibony.

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A fitting adjunct to the main gallery exhibition is in Gallery 2: Nascent Love features large scale and lyrical mixed media art works by Erika Ostrander and Christian Tedeschi. Contemplative and somewhat haunting, the works seem to transcend time, as if artifacts from another era.

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The Torrance Art Museum is located in the heart of Torrance – which we promise is less than 30 minutes from the heart of downtown.

There’s no reason not to make it a double header.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and gallery overviews provided by TAM

Collectivity Shines at Durden and Ray

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Closing this weekend, Collectivity at Durden and Ray gives viewers a blueprint for the modern world. A joint-exhibition between two art collectives – Hyperlink in Colorado Springs, and Durden and Ray here in Los Angeles – hence the title – the show was collaboratively curated by UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art Director Daisy McGowan and Durden and Ray artists Lana Duong and David Spanbock.  Representing the works of 12 artists from each collective, the show offered a fresh look at image making, and what these images mean to us.

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Larua Shill’s dynamic – and ironically Instagram-ready – mixed media sculptural work, Separation Perfected, features selfie sticks, plaster, and laser cut mirrors. Her held-aloft cluster of handsare lifting mirrored cell phones to take the ultimate selfie..  Reflective of today’s cultural mores and on what makes art truly art,  the work is compelling visually and emotionally. What do we see in these mirrors but ourselves? And what do we reflect? Creation? A memory? A reverential tribute to ourselves as the ultimate significant other?

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David Leapman’s series of gold ink and watercolor works are also visually dazling;  the prolific artist also offers large scale works such as Vampire Blues, using cristalina and acrylic on canvas. Leapman’s dayglow Rambler’s Gristle vibrated with color, a mysterious voicing of change and possibility in a world that seems overwhelming at times.

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Leapman above, Jackel below.

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Ben Jackel’s stoneware, ebony and beeswax sculptural works Fortress Wesel and Fortress Sedan evoked a sense of flight and a wish for escape. As with many of the works here, a sense of mystery, and of a future inexorably tied to the past seemed to whisper from these works.

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Sijia Chen’s lush, lavender-dominant Veil resemebled an abstract sunrise, shadows aslant, or a look into a wordless, wondrous afterlife.  The large scale work has an ethereal glow.

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Jorin Bossen’s oil, acrlic, and pastel works – virtually headless, rust-colored images of gunslingers from the old west – are time travellers, icons caught in a transition between now and the past.  Representative of the masculine ideal, no faces to distract us, these works have a rooted irony,  as well as being potent memorials to a part of the American mythos.

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Powerful, witty, and passionate,  Collectivity offers a brilliant commentary on the components of our modern life, and on our beliefs, hopes, and dreams. The exhibition offers evocations of the past and lush portals into an unknown future.  The show was brilliantly laid out,  taking us into tomorrow and yesterday, moving skillfully between the hyper-awareness of our modern existence and the restive spirit of the great unknown we all face. Above all, this is a show that invites viewers and artists alike to go dancing forever in the art of the now.

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Durden and Ray is now located in the Bendix Building in the heart of the Fashion District. Come for the art and stay for the sunset, too.

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  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

 

 

California Drawin’: Frederika Roeder Paints a Landscape

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Frederika Roeder has a California state of mind. She says her art is inspired by the state and its “diverse landscape that ricochets from barren deserts to peaks of 11,000 feet in the Sierra Nevadas, to epic surf along the Pacific Coast with swaths of blue skies holding it together.”
As a self-described “4th generation Californian,” Roeder grew up with the ocean, desert, and mountains defining her early years.
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“My grandfather used to take me on weekend excursions to the high desert of Lucerne Valley. He like to explore the old mines and take the dirt roads into the unknown distance.  It was he who taught me to love the rocks and sand, and yuccas and the Saguaro trees…. I learned to watch the endless horizons of the desert.”
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Her family’s love for California was intergenerational – Roeder says her father was one of the first surfers in southern Orange County,  an area which still resonates with her, particularly the area around Dana Point. “For me it embodies all that is iconic about Southern California. There is also a narrative of my life buried in the landscapes.  I think of our landscape as essentially high contrast, not a blend, so it can be exhilarating to go from one area to another and learn to love them all.”
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Roeder has transferred that love of landscape into her work. “I would like viewers to take away from my art a sense of awe, beauty, and inspiration that hopefully and possibly transfers back to the respective beauty of place that they have experienced personally. And if not that, of California,” she relates. “I want viewers in a way to be redirected both to their own lives in respect to the beauty of landscape,  the fragility of our own coasts, deserts, and mountains in the face of the inevitable onslaught of civilization and necessary development. These places deserve to be respected, cherished, and held in awe.”
With that in mind, Roeder believes that “This is the beginning phase of resisting the bulldozers that tear the state apart, segmenting it into freeways so those endless horizons become less and less.  Perhaps it leads to environmental activism.”
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Roeder hopes that viewers of her work “take away a re-appreciation for the blues of the Pacific, the nearly synthetic pinks of sunset, and the glistening whites of Sierra snow, and San Clemente sprays of white from the waves. In some of my work, I have been inspired by a long walk at the beach with the green of kelp interspersed with the black of mussel shells.”
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Roeder has worked as an artist all her life, and is today “continuing to explore my San Clemente Series,” lush paintings that evoke sea, sky, and sand (above).
  
She says her color palette is “anything derived from the ocean –  from kelp, to waves, to foam, to tar, to coves, to huge swells, the night sky, the sand, the sounds, and the smells, as well as the unsurpassable beauty of Tahiti, Hawaii, California beaches, the great Sonoran deserts as far south as Borrego and north to Lancaster and northeast to Bishop – and the mountains that line all of this.”
It is a palette that vibrates with light, life, and nature; her abstract works seem to send energy right off the canvas. Her use of light, space, and color evoke an artistic environment that is entirely original and yet one which seems innately familiar – a kind of homecoming, perhaps, for California.
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To say natural landscape is the quintessential driver of Roeder’s work is not hyperbole. She’s in love with the “gently morphing” sunset colors; and sees “the browns and grays of the desert sand and LA as a neutral that makes the colors even more vivid.  The pines of the Sierras and the gray green of the oaks are not absent from my palette, often referencing them with a line like a pinstripe on a Mustang Convertible,” she explains.
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Darkness, too, gets its due. “Even the dense fog, black nights, and the red tides have influenced my color sense.”
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She adds that “Once I realized that nature can be as neon as it gets, it seemed to justify my use of neon, interference, luminesence, and all things shimmering.”
Her colors are textured and rich, with a depth that seems to come naturally to her in her use of layers, and overlapping colors. Roeder says this visceral quality has not always been the case with her work, which has grown more textural in recent years.
“Combining mixed media collage, acrylic, and ink, and acrylic pens with glazes and full body acrylic with even mediums that make it even thicker, has become interesting and vital to me,” she relates.
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For Roeder, her technique and mediums all come back to the landscape itself. “I like to think again to nature where everything is mixed: smooth against rough, thick against thin.”
As an artist, as well as a conduit for the natural beauty that she personally adores, she says she also allows the canvas  — or ground — to be part of the painting.  “It is both an historical reference to canvas as one of the main grounds for art-making, as well as a reference to the sound and look of real canvas sails, and a non-digital reference point.  I also just like the look, feel, neutrality, and perfect off-whiteness of canvas.  It adds a natural consistency and texture to the paintings I like.”
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Roeder’s work is as rich, varied, and jeweled as the landscapes she so admires – and transmits to viewers through the many-faceted dimensions of her art.
– Genie Davis; photos: Frederika Roeder