TAG Gallery: Open Juried Exhibition Made in America

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Made In The USA: Let Freedom Ring, opened last week and runs through August 9th at TAG Gallery in mid-Wilshire. The exhibition will be one of the largest to date and a concept that TAG’s president Bob Chew describes as one of three annual group shows that help promote the gallery to the art community.  “This year, we are honored to have the illustrious art critic and former KCET Arts and Culture Editor and KCRW Commentator, Edward Goldman, as the juror for our largest national juried show. The Artists Gallery has always tried to showcase local artists and emerging talent around the country, with members coming from across the country, from Seattle to Maine, Maui to Florida, and now internationally. Being an art collective, we wanted a way for non-members to experience the terrific space and spirit of TAG.”

For more than 30 years, Edward Goldman has been an art critic and host of Art Talk, a former weekly program that aired prime-time Tuesday evenings during All Things Considered on LA’s largest NPR affiliate, KCRW 89.9 FM. Edward also contributed weekly art reports to the Huffington Post and has  written reviews for numerous art publications and served as a panelist, moderator, and speaker for various museums, arts organizations, and workshops.

Through an anonymous jurying process, Goldman reviewed approximately 550 submissions from around the country to choose 100 for the TAG exhibition. He will also choose Best of Show, three winners for cash awards, and Honorable Mention Awards for Excellence for each medium included. The awards will be presented at a reception and ceremony TODAY Saturday, August 3, from 4:00 -8:00 p.m.

Jurying a show of this size can be a daunting task, but Goldman is a veteran, and says for him, it was not that hard. “For me, the most important thing is that the art must grab my attention. I look for original work that stands out, like a breath of fresh air. The longer it holds my attention, the higher it’s ranking, and that helps create the list of possible winners. I look for something that surprises me, is perhaps somehow challenging, and makes me want to spend more time with it. There are sometimes works I have juried that I want to own, as they hold my attention for a long time.”

Selecting the Best of Show and the other winners often calls for jurors to see and select the award winners in person rather than from a computer screen. Luckily, Goldman has three days to review all the work at the gallery during the installation process. “To choose the winning artworks, I must see the work up close, in real life. Keeping my mind and eyes open, I look forward to meeting each piece of art, to see how they communicate in person. I listen intently, getting very close to the work. That way I can observe the dimension and intensity of each brushstroke, hear it, smell it, and perhaps even touch the work. Art that speaks to me, that has a voice I can sense from the texture or the spirit of the image, that is how I make my decisions.”

Participating artists have been alerted but have not yet been announced to the public on TAG’s website, www.taggallery.net. With a widely diverse collection of art in all mediums, it will certainly be a dynamic, inspiring, and thought-provoking exhibition. The Artists Gallery invites all art lovers to view this exceptionally curated exhibition and attend the awards reception to meet the participating artists and winners.

For Made In The USA, submissions were open to all residents of the US over the age of 18, with all styles and mediums accepted. Artists submitted paintings, drawings, photography, printmaking, mixed media, sculpture, digital, and video art. Each year, the number of submissions grows as the word of the exhibition spreads amongst the art community and is advertised nationally through PR Wire and other media outlets. Formerly named The California Open, this year’s MADE IN THE USA presentation builds on many years of TAG’s experience curating national exhibitions.

Goldman will be walking through the exhibition and speaking at 3:00 pm today prior to the reception which starts at 4 p.m. tonight. An art talk with the winners will be held on the final day, Saturday, August 10, at 1:00 pm.

  • Guest Post by Dale Youngman; photos provided by Youngman and TAG Gallery

Cream of the Crop: Exceptional Modern Art Collection at Ronald H. Silverman Gallery

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Color, color, color. Shape, shape, shape – the glorious combination of vivid palette and extraordinary geometric precision makes Back to Basics: Contemporary Art from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation now at Cal State LA’s Ronald H. Silverman Gallery exceptional viewing. The show features more than 50 artworks, created between 1947 and 2023. The timespan covers a wide range of work that explores a variety of mediums and techniques.

Curated by Billie Milam Weisman, the artists on exhibit collectively and individually pack a powerful punch. You’ll recognize many of the names:  Jason Adkins, Josef Albers, Saradell Ard, Tim Bavington, Charles Biederman, Isaac Brest, Casper Brindle, Tom Burr, S. Byrne, Ronald Davis, Tim Ebner, Ned Evans, Paul Gadegaard, Betty Gold, Daniel Jackson, Donald Judd, Anish Kapoor, Ellsworth Kelly, Melissa Kretschmer, Sol Lewitt, Vladimir Llaguno, Joe Lloyd, Pard Morrison, Andy Moses, Kenneth Noland, John Pearson, Brian Porray, Kevin Reinhardt, Michael Rey, Dorothea Rockburne, David Ryan, Robert Schaberl, Arthur Silverman, Frank Stella, Gary Stephan, Jeremy Thomas, and Victor Vasarely.

 

The show’s vibrancy percolates from the moment the viewer enters the gallery space, presenting stellar examples of works that range from the minimalist to the conceptual. Overall, one word comes to mind to describe the exhibition: radiant. The works emanate light, they pull, revel, and reveal in it. Some works are layered, others deceptively simple. The emphasis throughout is on geometric constructs such as circles, squares, lines, spheres, angles. Color jumps from the art, whether created in eye-popping primary shades or lush jeweled patinas. The works dance with light and change upon approach – viewed in extreme close up, the images differ in appearance from a longer-range view due to the way in which their geometric patterns shape how the eye perceives each work.

Anish Kapoor’s astonishing, ruby rose red “Blood Mirror III” is an intensely reflective example of the use of both light and color. The circular bowl-like mirrored surface contains reflective meaning within meaning and serves as a beautiful example of a work’s appearance altering based on the viewer’s proximity to it.

Jeremy Thomas’s “Iseki Yellow” is an indefinable layered shape, a flower, a collection of sun bubbles, a collection of cells about to take shape and metamorphosize. Both works exude their singular color as if it were a halo around the piece.

 

Joe Lloyd’s “Incline” is a very different work, a large-scale canvas with a varied color palette that traverses a literal and figurative ascent of light and shadow in angles bisected by colors from a dominant rich gold to a sky blue and violet. It is both structure and stairwell, handrails leading to a rooftop or along a path to a mountain peak. Each level is both platform and angle.

A more diminutive work, Pard Morrison’s “So Nice to Be Here With You,” packs a multi-colored series of striped lines into a rectangular canvas, color gradients that draw the eye forward and back with their precision and shifts.

Ned Evans’ color field painting “Got Red” is a large work that stripes a range of oranges, reds, golds, and yellows vertically across the vast canvas, colors that resemble the shades of a burnished summer sunset. Cooler shades prevail in the blues and aquas of Evans’ “Quarter,” which uses a variety of square and rectangular shapes within one canvas to create a lush vision of shadow and light that at once resemble the shape of buildings, the patterns on ocean waves, and leaf shadows in a forest. It is a quietly poetic vision.

While some works are simply beautiful to look at, others contain a visual experiment.

Such is the case with Josef Albers’ “Homage to the Square: Upon Arrival,”  in which three squares are utilized to reveal the subjectivity of color.  Painted using varied light conditions, Albers’ work is both art and alchemy, as it tests the way in which the alignment of different colors side by side create different visual experiences.

Beautifully curated with color the dominant criteria for grouping in each gallery space, the exhibit fully reveals the absolute poetry in the geometric form, the passion of color, and the compelling visual spectrum that makes up the way in which artists – and all humans – view the world.

As multi-faceted as a diamond, the works in Back to Basics dazzle. The closing reception takes place on Saturday,  July 27 from 12 – 5 p.m. The gallery is open 12-5 Monday-Friday only. It is located on the campus of California State University Los Angeles.

  • Genie Davis; exhibition images provided by LA Art Documents; additional opening day images by Genie Davis

Quick Takes and Art Fireworks: Track 16, Durden and Ray, TSLA, Monte Vista, 515 Gallery, Persons Unknown All at the Bendix

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If you’d like to experience some explosively beautiful art this weekend along with your fireworks and BBQ,  there’s six stellar exhibitions all in one stop at the Bendix Building in DTLA’s fashion district.

Track 16 was our first stop, and it’s a good place to begin.

In the 10th floor space, vast, immersive, beautiful works evoke life in LA itself, from movie theater to subway car to LA’s iconic 2nd street tunnel, awash in silver light. Frank Ryan‘s lustrous Lived Perspective features large-scale oil paintings and smaller works on paper, each of which offers a window into the lovely soul contained inside familiar representational scenes.

The powerful, even spectacular, images shimmer with dreamy intensity. Works such as “Pitch Perfect,” his rapt audience of theatergoers, are thrilling, awash in both beauty and an almost subliminal danger. It’s a gorgeous show, and an important one, evoking both LA life, and the human condition, both with a touch of the ethereal. The show runs through July 13.

Downstairs at Track 16, you’ll find Lenny Silverberg’s monochromatic richness in Streets and Borders. Bleak but beautiful ink washes on paper depict those displaced, whether homeless, forgoten or lost due to politics, wars, or mental health. Devastating but involving, delicately rendered, and haunting, these are memorable, meaningful works.  Closes July 13, with an artist’s talk.

 

On the 8th floor, Durden and Ray invites viewers to join artists in their Bed.

Curated by David Leapman, Richard Davey, and Jenny Hager,  this fresh, intriguing exhibition features artists from LA as well as from the U.K. and Ireland. Artists Jorin Bossen, Steph Goodger, Jenny Hager, Susie Hamilton, David Leapman, Lee Maelzer, Andy Parsons, Sarah Sparkes, and Lorraine Wake masterfully present beds both realistic and more obscurely representational. We see bedrooms that confined the artist during the “shelter in place” Covid-19 restrictions,  hospital beds, sensually rumpled beds, abstract beds, and even, in Bossen’s western scene, the bed of earth, a final resting place.  A terrific concept and vibrant execution shape this diverse, standout group exhibition. Exploring the idea of the bed as a place in which we are often born and die and everything in between, these beds are made to dream in. But hurry — the exhibition closs this weekend, July 6th.

 

On the 5th floor, at Monte Vista Projects, Daniel Tovar‘s Anti-Frontier,  takes on the much glorified concept of the American frontier, as well as the environmental impact of disparate manmade incursions on that landscape. Comprised of a two-channel video installation that fills the largest walls in the gallery, and a series of concrete-and-steel sculptures presenting modern artifacts as ancient ruins, viewers explore two distinct areas of the Mojave region. Video and sound were recorded at California City, an attempt at a planned community in an isolated and arid region, and a wind farm located in the Tehachapi Pass.  There is the sense of barely avoided environmental catastrophe hanging over every lovely, lush frame of video footage,  along with the question of what precisely man has wrought in our fragile eco-landscape. The exhibition closes July 7th.

 

 

A part of the Share-A-Wall initiative, Push and Pull at Gallery 515, also located on the 5th floor, utilizes a gorgeous mix of mediums from woven woods and fabric to ceramics and thickly painted images. Abstract and exciting, artists Elana Kundell, Janet Neuwalder and Carol Shaw-Sutton presented deep and dreamy work as varied in imagination as material. Curated by Fatemah Burnes, the work evokes delicate beauty in Shaw-Sutton’s sculptural wall works, pulsating color and depths in Kundell’s, and a dreamy asethetic in Neuwalder’s impossibly lovely ceramics. The exhibition just closed, but you can view more images here. 

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In The Eyes Come First,  at Persons Unknown on the Bendix Building’s 6th floor, alien, gorgeous, and ominous sculptures rivet with their fluid movements and mysterious shapes. Carved in stone by Joshua Pelletier, the sinuous and strange beings here are  viscerally exciting, and surprise the eye while compelling repeat viewing. The exhibition closes July 20th.

Talk about aliens! Back on the 5th floor, Tiger Strikes Asteroid exhibits a cool mix of the sculptural and the photographic. Encounters, created by artists Makenzie Goodman & Adam Stacey, serves up fascinating images of the desert, UFOs, the starlit sky,  and strange objects from space, taking viewers on a visionary trip to another world. The subject encompasses Mojave Desert residents who have claimd contact with UFOs. This exhibition is part of an ongoing collaboration that began at the Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency in 2019.

Among the many highlights are an 8mm film depicting experiences in the Mojave Desert, eerie and lovely black and white photos, and beautiful ceramic sculptures all focused on the idea of interplanetary lifeforms. This transportive exhibition closes July 7.

With work this fine in so many innovative spaces, all in one location, it’s easy to enjoy art that transcends the pyrotechnic residue hanging over LA. Boom!

Written by Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

 

 

Mixed Media Magic from Artist Nancy Ward

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Mixed media artist Nancy Jo Ward creates rich, emotionally resonant figurative art using a hybrid approach that includes digital drawing, painting, and the use of gold and silver foils. The approach is an intimate and evocative one that blurs the lines between pixels, paint, and algorithm, she shapes unique images that dive deep within the minds and hearts of her subjects.

Working in a lush color palette, the artist offers archival prints on aluminum which are each hand-finished using acrylics, oils, and pastels. The dreamy, vibrant result is alchemic and graceful. Ward manifests poignant, vivid portraits that speak powerfully to the inner depths of her subjects’ spirit while inviting viewers to partake in an intimate and profound dialog with her subjects. Her passion for color, texture, and movement mesh with a fusion of digital and analog techniques that push beyond conventional artistic boundaries.

Her robust intersection of mediums results in hauntingly lovely work, whose delicacy and depth shape a profound, light-filled grace, one which encourages exploration and transformation within subject and viewer alike. Her images form compelling visual narratives based on contemporary female identities that express emotions ranging from loss and grief to comfort and contemplation.

Frequently working in a rainbow-like palette, she often uses female subjects to create her fluid, lustrous works. Ward has appeared innumerous exhibitions internationally and within the U.S.  Her experimental video Aura won an award at the 13th Concorso d’Arte Donne in Rinascita in Milan, Italy in March of this year. Most recently, she’s joined 57 other talented artist in an exhibition held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan, which ran June 15-20th.

Watch for more from this artist who successfully merges the human spirit with technologically driven as well as analog processes to create a fresh new world of portraiture and personal exploration.

  • Written by Genie Davis; images provided by the artist