Nomad and Tryst — The Ultimate Art Shows

Posted on by Diversions LA

Fantastically diverse, filled with amazing original art, brilliant in concept, and packed with simply cool stuff to experience – that’s the alternative art fair/pop-up art exhibit extravaganza of Nomad and Tryst, presented under the auspices of the Torrance Art Museum and the City of Torrance,  held at the mostly-empty space of Del Amo Crossing in Torrance, Calif. in mid-August.

Always a phenomenal experience, NOMAD was back for the third year, and TRYST for its second.

NOMAD (images above) took over all of the 5th floor and half the second this year, celebrating exhibits by Southern California Artists in a vast array of mediums from neon to sculpture to paintings and photography, as well as installations and even live slight of hand. Thes non-commercial exhibition showcased work from over 150 artists from Southern California and beyond, in an environment of creativity and collaboration.

TRYST, which packed the entire third floor of Del Amo Crossing with inventive and experiential art, is an international alternative art fair for artist-run spaces and initiatives, and as such, provides global exposure and fosters artistic exchange. Over the course of a week, participants exhibit their artists, share ideas, and explore Southern California’s art scene. On view was performance art,  painting, sculpture, photography, video art, installation, and immersive spaces.

Among my favorites was this fabulous performance art work, which encompassed two floors and provided a gold painted and preserved “baguette” souvenir as part of its recreation of a Romanian bread-line experience in the 1980s. The creators represented ETAJ Gallery, above.

Another favorite was closer to home: for Wonzimer Gallery, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic and Alison Woods created a massive installation of box cut-out peep shows featuring a wide range of Southern California artists with a dazzling range of miniature works.

Also memorable were cool gallery spaces from Durden and Ray, celebrating the City of Angels; from Tiger Strikes Astroid turning everything golden yellow; immersive and exciting paranormal-infused performance art from Noysky Projects; an hilarious public swimming pool from Hyperlink Gallery in Denver; a recreation of life at the Poor Farm by the nHnT Collective.

TRYST participants overall included:
Visiting Collectives: AAC Platform (Italy), After Time (Portland, OR), Art Center of Social Studies (Armenia), ARTSPACEMEXICO (Mexico), Available Art Space Projects (Las Vegas, NV), DE BOUWPUT (The Netherlands), Dinghy Rig (Fort Collins, CO), Eitoeiko (Japan), El Quinto Piso (Mexico), ETAJ (Romania), Gallery 70 (Albania), Hyperlink (Colorado), iBiennaleX (Hawaii), INSTYTUT AVTOMATYKY (Ukraine), ISG (Norway), MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture (Switzerland), nHnT (Chicago, IL), Open O’pen$ (Ukraine), Our Neon Foe (Australia), Proyectos Raul Zamudio (New York, NY), PRP Project Space (Dallas, TX), SFAA (Chicago, IL), Small Projects (Norway), The Black Piglet (Mexico), Utopian Mega Project (Midwest), Vorderzimmer (Brooklyn, NY).
California-based Collectives: 515, 3C Gallery Collective, A&T Gallery, Art in Room, Artbug, Artdrop, AWOL, Crear Studio Gallery, DMST Atelier, Dorado 806 Projects, Durden and Ray, Erect Walls, Flux Art Space, IDOLWILD, JAUS, Junior High LA, Korean American Artist Collective, Landmarks of Art (LOA), MAARLA, Mercury 20 Gallery, The Middle Room, Monte Vista Projects, Nous Ance, Noysky Projects, OCCCA (Orange County Center for Contemporary Art), OFFUS, Portuguese Bend Projects, Prospect Art, Proxy Gallery, Quiet Please, Ruth Gallery, S-Gallery, Shockboxx, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Toy Bin Art, UOOORS, ViCA (Venice Institute of Contemporary Art), Winslow Garage, Wonzimer, Young Projects.

Enjoy the photographic chronicle of this grand, three-day art exhibition, and find yourself if you were there. If you were not – don’t miss partaking in this gift of art the next time it’s presented. And yes, there are hundreds of other images, already shared on Facebook and Instagram that uploading simply couldn’t handle this time around!

  • Genie Davis; Photos by Genie Davis

Thresholds Are Opening

Posted on by Diversions LA

Hung Viet Nguyen, Angelica Sotiriou, Eileen Oda, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic,  Linda Sue Price each create their own unique Thresholds – visionary points of entering or beginning in a new exhibition opening September 20th in Hermosa Beach.

From lush oil and acrylic landscapes and portals to potent abstract neon art and other worldly 3D printed sculptures of flora and fauna, each artist’s vision shapes a lush new world, one that speaks to the beauty of the earth, the sea, the spiritual, joy and loss.

While the artists themselves did not collaborate, the exhibition is very much collaborative, allowing visitors to view a range of special and secret worlds, from stunning clifftop waterfalls to lush green and gold oceans, astonishing skies and sunsets, the corals of a watery world, and hypnotic neon.

Each of the five exhibiting artists have combined their gifts to create transcendent gateways to places that shape visions to cherish and contemplate, expressing the beauty of nature and the wonder of the unknown, creating beautiful and visceral works of the earth, sea, and heavens, shaping mysterious and magical landscapes to enjoy, explore, and contemplate.

Nguyen’s compelling, labor intensive investigations of oil paint reveal a methodical mastery of textures., suggesting the influence traditional art forms such as woodblock prints, East Asian scroll paintings, ceramic art, mosaic, and stained glass, with his ultimate expression entirely and inventively contemporary. He offers a series of small works and three larger canvasses, some of which incorporate humans into his rich and intricate paintings.

Oda focuses here on breathtaking landscapes that express her lifelong love of nature, a spiritual and passionate love both sweepingly impressionistic and realistic. From entirely original desert vistas to dazzling sea cliffs and brilliantly colored forests, her works entirely befit her belief that art is an expession of the soul itself, exuding an exciting depth.

Sotiriou works with layered, contemplative abstact images that serve as portals of light and spirit. From small scale, mystical and dream-like images to a fast, dazzling work riven with gold light, she says that work express expresses the feeling that she is a witness to conversations between heart, hand, and mind. Resonant and deep, these works are astonishingly contemplative.

Price works in neon, creating entirely unique abstract shapes that she bends without a pattern, free form.  Brilliant with color and light, she expresses thew ays in which people make sense of the world around them, with change as the only constant and our response to that change shaping our personal thresholds and lives both external and internal – always driven by light.

Petrovic’s work is both stunning and intimate, flora and fauna of the sea are shaped from incredible 3D, recycled plastic and bioplastic. Here she offers radiant corals, augmented reality images, and even a full table display of her work, treasures of sea and earth shaped by her imagination, based on both her personal observations of nature and her research of symbolic meanings.

Inviting viewers into this immersive and lustrous world is my great pleasure as its curator. The exhibition’s festive opening reception is September 20th from 5-8 p.m. at the Gallery of Hermosa, located at 138 Pier Ave. in Hermosa Beach.

An artist’s talk will take place in person and online October 9th at 6 p.m. Regular gallery hours are 11-4 Thursday-Sunday; with a closing event TBA on October 17th.

Go ahead, come and cross these thresholds!

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the exhibiting artists