Borderless at Gabba Gallery Transcends Geographic Boundaries

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Mikael Persbrandt – “Restauranten,” above

For the second installment of Gabba Gallery’s international series, Borderless, three Scandinavian artists represented by Norway’s Gallery Art Oslo are coming to Los Angeles.

The three are Ari Behn, Espen Eiborg, and Mikael Persbrandt, each both popular and highly regarded in Scandinavia. The exhibition opens March 23rd and runs through April 6th.

Behn is well-known in Norway and Denmark not only as an artist but through his best-selling collection of short stories, Sad as Hell, and a national television series, Ari and Per. His rich palette and sometimes whimsical figurative work is highly narrative. Vibrant pieces each tell a complex and highly emotional story, as with his work “The Crossing,” below.

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Behn describes the piece as depicting an “opening to other worlds, and new, great experiences.” Reflecting passages in our lives, the final passage here takes us from birth to death, the work revealing his belief that experiences of transition “make miracles possible…” In this work, beneath a darkening sunset sky, a green explosion flies, labeled “Boom,” small nude human figures  – one of which may represent a Christ-like figure – fall beneath a blue river into a strange new pink, a lustrous glowing shade enveloping them, infusing their demise with hope.

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Ari Behn,  “Swinging London,” above

An inveterate traveler, Behn’s “Swinging London” pays homage to a city he clearly loves. Written in bold black letters on the vividly colorful surface of the work are the words “My Dear Swingin’ London Revisited” and “With Love.” The iconic “Be Calm and…” signage is posted with the classic phrase “and Carry On,” among beautifully rendered post-card-like images of the Tower of London and the Bombay Bicycle Club. There is a melancholic air to some of Behn’s work, which may fit with the well-known story of his marriage to and divorce from princess Martha Louise of Norway. From his palette to his expressive mix of figurative and abstract work, Behn offers a riveting visual story.

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Espen Eiborg, “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” above 

Also from Norway, Eiborg draws viewers into a world where imagination and reality mix and merge, a day-dream of art, that is both complex and passionate, infused with a sense of happiness as well as with an ever-present awareness of darker human deeds. His mediums are varied, using acrylic and oil paints, oil crayons, spray paint, tar, and glue, working with both brush and palette knife. The artist also enhances and contrasts his images with a thick glaze from industrial varnish. In “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” Eiborg gives us a Storm Trooper from the Star Wars universe, a tiger, a gorgeous rose, beautiful women, and a lightning bolt. All are stand-out images that fuse together into a mysterious, evocative, and somehow boldly familiar place.

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“Red Hat Kate,” by Espen Eiborg, above

According to Eiborg, “When a painting reaches a critical point, I see it as being in harmony and at rest after a long journey, barren and aged with the poetry of travel. It pays homage to water, earth, sky, wind and fire, the elements from which it originated.”

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Mikael Persbrandt, “Bacon,” above

Swedish artist Mikael Persbrandt, is, like Behn, also an actor. Trained at Stockholm’s College for Artistic Education, his art and film career have paralleled in Scandinavia, starring in Susanne Bier’s Academy Award-winning In a Better World, and as one of the lead characters in the Netflix series Sex Education. In a solo exhibition of his art at the Gallery Sandgrunn, 80,000 visitors poured through the door to see his intense mixture of figurative and abstract expression, which though very different from Behn’s work, offers another fascinating and depth-filled perspective that blends these two approaches.

The haunting central blue figure in “Bacon” is both everyman, demon, and ghost; yellow lines around the chair in which the figure sits resemble the sides of a four-dimensional cube, or tesseract. The long horn cattle in an apparent stampede in “RUUS II,” seem to have arisen from a different dimension, a wonderfully eliptical web of sky and dust.

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RUUS II by Mikael Persbrandt, above

This isn’t the first time the three artists have been paired together: in fact, their work has been shown in over 60 international galleries since 2017.

Gallery Art Oslo partners Kenneth Stensholt and Einar A. Lund have worked with these artists for more than two years, Lund relates. For the show at Gabba Gallery the trio of artists seemed an exciting fit. “They all have a unique, honest, and expressive artistic language which I liked. They go beneath the surface and explore both their own emotional life and inner lives of others. They are not afraid of exposing themselves or their own lives,” Lund asserts.

He adds “For a long time I have admired Mikael Persbrandt, who is not only one of the most famous and merited theater and film actors in Scandinavia, but who is also a great painter. Very few are aware of the fact that he was a painter prior to being an actor.”

As to Behn, Lund explains that the artist’s divorce “resulted in a series of self-reflective, colorful, expressive paintings, for which he has achieved great recognition,” which Lund deeply admires. Behn’s open expression of coping with depression through his artwork was and remains profoundly affecting.

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Epson Eiborg, “Exploited,” above

About Eiborg, Lund notes “His pop art has been popular in Norway. When he lived in New York, he sold works to, among others, Robert Redford, Sean Penn, Oprah Winfrey, Dolce Gabbana, Jennifer Lopez and David Bowie.” In a truly meta moment, during the exhibition’s opening March 23rd, Eiborg will paint a portrait of an invited celebrity. To find out who – you’ll have to attend.

Lund says he hopes he can continue to work with Gabba curators Jason Ostro and Elena Jacobson, who introduced the Borderless series in April 2018 with art from Latin America. Their goal: to connect Los Angeles with a different part of the world through the language of art. With Borderless: Scandinavia, they continue to do just that.

Gabba Gallery is located at 3126 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles. The exhibition opening runs from 7-11 p.m., March 23rd.  For more information, visit https://www.gabbagallery.com/

Vina Blair: Graceful Abstracts Arrive from Malaysia

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Describing her work as a mixture that merges “memories, meditation, and life itself,” Malaysian-based artist Vina Blair has moved from photographic work to highly original acrylic on canvas abstract works that she says were initially inspired by her passion for Jackson Pollock, but have shifted into completely unique, dynamic forms.

“I feel that I’ve made very bold attempts and breakthroughs at this point, and I’m excited to be exhibiting in both New York City and Guangzhou, China this year,” she says.  She will be presenting her work at two art expos in both locations: Art Expo New York in April and the Guangzhou Art Fair in June.

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Raised in Johor, Malaysia, Blair has long felt an affinity to both nature and busy urban environments. Both, she relates, have shaped her vision as an artist and a desire to create meaning from color patterns, surreal impressions, and her own emotions. She terms herself a quintessential “observer, having a deep affection towards the nature, emotions, feelings and spirituality that I encounter.”

In her current body of work, she then turns that affinity into lush, swirling abstract works. In many of her paintings, she uses a limited color palette, her brush strokes and lines speaking in a kind of inchoate language, resembling sky, wind, water, and floral elements. “My themes are full of philosophical speculations,” she asserts.

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Largely a self-taught painter, she relates that to her, “Art is an effective communication tool that could touch others’ hearts,” a belief which has encouraged her to create expansively.

She adds “I create layered surfaces and use a strong palette, letting them both flow together to make a lyrical and yet deeply concrete image.”

In her past photographic work, she manipulated her images to shape abstract works focused on “identity, relationships, emotions like desire and despair;” images that took on the quality of dreams

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In her painted work, she likes rich blues and glowing golds, streaks of thick white, ribbons of color that seem to twine and dance. Watery images implode with light; others seem to resemble cyclones and rivers, caligraphy and a kind of Rorschach test of art.

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The work moves and shifts as the viewer does; the tumult of curves and lines compelling and intuitive. Blair transcends location and neatly edges into a kind of universal conception of color and movement that evokes the origins of life.

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Her “birth” of abstract images is not about fury and fire but rather more about a shifting perspective, a kind of formless grace, and a sense of transition, an acceptance of change.

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The art fairs in which Blair is participating this year should introduce her work to a wider audience; Blair is  eager, she says, to shape more beauty for a global and universal audience.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by artist

Fantastic Four: A Super Hero and Heroine Quartet Hit the Art World

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Left to right, above, it’s the fantastic four artists and friends: Bob Branaman, Gay Summer Rick,  Catherine Ruane, and Mike Street.

At Venice’s Mike Kelley Gallery at Beyond Baroque through March 15th, the work of four exceptional SoCal artists makes up the Fantastic Four exhibition. Each artist is quite different from the other, yet their work in the rambling upstairs/downstairs gallery is brilliantly compatible in a quite wonderful show curated by Bob Branaman.

Gay Summer Rick’s intense golds, oranges, and pinks are the stuff of California dreams; Catherine Ruane’s delicate, ruminitive pieces are touched in gold and have an astonishing jewel-like glow; Mike Street’s work feels both modern and yet that it would not be out-of-place in Greco-Roman times, both monochromatic and richly narrative; while Bob Branaman’s work is all vibrant color, exuberant and blossoming with life.

In short, this is an exhibition to savor, in terms of its differentness among the artists – who are all friends – and their similarities. Each in their own way present work that is emblematic of their lives in California; images born both of imagination and the emotional alchemy that arises in the diverse environments of their home state and the fertile field of aristic dreams.

Enjoy the fantastic ride: these four take you on roads of beauty that refuse to remain unmapped.

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The glow of Gay Summer Rick’s work, above and below is astonishing. It is the fire of sunsets, the rising light of dawn, the backdrop, love-song, and legacy of Los Angeles. From freeway commuter views toward the sea to the skies that simmer and shift above the downtown cityscape, Rick is perhaps the quintessential artist for LA. Radiant work here, as is her norm; with an underpinning of dreamy light even in the most prosaic landscape.

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With Catherine Ruane’s work, below,  there are familiar aspects of her oeuvre, too, and many previously unexperienced. Her gorgeous, often black and white drawings of trees and branches, flowers, and desert have been supplanted here by smaller, very jewel-like etchings.

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From beautiful, motion-filled, wind-swept palms to fish with gold highlights on their scales, this is perfect, dazzlingly precise work. Each piece is a work of wonder, something so finely crafted that the viewer simply does not want to look away.

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Mike Street’s work here is somehow timeless: it is of this place and era and yet it could also easily be  from a distant world.

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There’s a sculptural quality to each piece, and their monochromatic use of color adds to that. Rich in depth, they remind the viewer of the  past, somehow transported to our time and space through the conduit of Street’s artistry.

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To some extent, these fascinating faces remind the viewer of a daguerreotype, as if created on a silver-covered copper plate.

If Street’s work offers an elegant, restrained use of palette, Branaman’s work provides the exact opposite: imposing color, the delight of a hippie kingdom, a tie-dyed world, rainbows.

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There is a fierceness to his colors, to his stained-glass-like patterns; an impulsive, vibrant quality that leaps at the viewer and catches one up in its powerful exuberance. Below, Branaman stands with Gay Summer Rick.

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So – which of the four is the most fantastic? It’s a tough call – you’ll have to go see for yourselves.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

Gabba Gallery is Filled With Great Art – Through This Weekend

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It would be hard to find a gallery that exhibits more consistently interesting art in a more convivial setting that Gabba Gallery in Fillipinotown. The current four solo shows on exhibit are no exception.

If you haven’t seen the shows yet, you must. The gallery features exhibitions by four LA-based artists: Anyes Galleani, Kate Carvellas, Patrick Haemmerlein, and Henry Niller, and is as always beautifully and conversationally curated by Jason Ostro and Elena Jacobson.

Female icons are the subject of Galleani’s Strong, which features richly layered mixed media works that depict resilliant well-known women such as Marilyn Monroe, and Angelina Jolie, below in “Angelina & the Dripping Pink Skyline.” There’s a futuristic aspect to her work, which combines photo montage, paste, and paint.  Her color palette is as LA as a winter sunset; her subjects as well-known as they are ripe for a more personal evocation.

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Haemmerlein is presenting his second solo show at Gabba. Working in mixed media on panel, he combines watercolor images with collages of sheet music and written materials; other images reflect Native American symbols and animal photography. Measuring Memories has an ephermeral and elegaic quality that deserves a careful look at each element of his work.

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Niller’s Anomalies encompasses two years of work in pen and ink drawings and mixed media works that build upon the concepts of the drawings. His reinvention of rock artists and bands also on exhibit make a terrific contrast with the drawings; both make powerful use of line and curve, and have a compelling tension in the images, which are fresh and filled with motion.

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Carvellas, with Time, Space, and Place used found objects and assemblage incorporating a wide-range of items while creating richly rewarding, delicately assembled works that honestly vibrate with meaning. Carvellas is creating astonishing sculptural forms out of discards and ordinary objects; she uses each in almost mosaic-like approach. 

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In her work above, “Branching Out,” she utilizes the natural beauty of a found branch, aligning it to a location through map. A mysterious shape in the frame and in the top upper right remind the viewer of a compass, perhaps an emotional one; while her use of colored toy squares beneath them are both perfect geometric compositions and haunting reminders of past memories and future dreams.

The title of her exhibition refers to philosopher Edward Casey as well of the study of archeology. She notes “Time and space come together in place, resulting in change that celebrates or disrupts cyclical time and leads to rituals that recreate the universe.” 

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However, she explains “Instead of rituals, I gather disparate objects from different places and times, unifying them to create my own new and unique ‘universes.'” These are universes indeed, astonishing small worlds that expand the mind and eye just from viewing them. She percieves and reveals patterns and meanings in the objects she uses, shaping, structuring, and altering our own recognition of them.

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With her piece “A Powerful Alliance,” above, Carvellas uses stencils, blocks, and a sundial-like configuration of small washers and hinges to create a piece that seems mystical, akin to a ouija board, a hierglyphic interpretation ready to transport viewers to another time or realm.

Many of her pieces here have the same effect: there’s something mysterious and magical to them, a heft that both her use of material and juxtaposition of images creates.

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Hurry on in to see each of these artist’s works, and take in the exhibiting artists in the gallery’s rear salon space as well, including the photographic noir of LA in the work of Stephen Levey, who recently had his own solo show at the gallery.

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  • Genie Davis; images provided by artists and gallery