You’re Probably Not Thinking What He Was Thinking.. But See for Yourself

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Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking? is whimsical, witty, experimental and fun. Now in its third iteration at the Muckenthaler Center in Fullerton, this lively exhibition comes from the mind of arts writer Bondo Wyszpolski, curating a massive group show.

Each artist created an original piece for the exhibition, which began by chosen artists being encouraged to think outside their usual brush strokes.

Wyszpolski laid down a challenge to make the work unlike each artist’s usual style or technique, or to use different materials. He provided random, quirky titles for each to work from. Their titles were assigned with the spin of a wheel.

The curator (above, left) was inspired to take this unusual curatorial path after seeing what he felt was one too many shows on his home turf in the beach cities with “sunsets and the beach and the cliffs of Palos Verdes and pets and flowers…”

He worked with artists associated with the Palos Verdes Arts Center, where the show was first mounted, with artists Debbie Giese and Bernard Fallon adding a few more friends.

He relates that “who we thought of and invited to participate was done randomly. Sort of like, ‘Hmm, how about if I ask so-and-so?’ A few people declined, but most people said ‘Yes! It sounds like a fun idea!’”

According to Wyszpolski “What people will see who come to the show is how inventive artists are when you give them an offbeat title, although clearly some titles were much more offbeat than others, like Steve Shriver’s ‘Who’s Whistling at My Antiquities?’ or Ross Moore’s ‘I Could Tell She Was Mad By the Way She Parked Her Car’ or Karen Wharton’s ‘I Woke Up in King Kong’s Body.’ But also what I discovered is that when all the artists with their unusual, whimsical, or surreal pictures are seen together it really is more than the sum of its parts… and I think it is an amusing and intriguing show. Each brick in the wall has added up to quite a lovely mansion.”

He also worked to co-produce musical scoring for the show, writing lyrics to composer and friend Brad Webster’s music to fit some of the pieces in the show.  This unusual adjunct to the artwork occurred because of a certain long pandemic that delayed the opening of the show, originally scheduled for March 2020, significantly.

“Brad proposed the idea of me writing lyrics based on my impression of the pictures, and then he would add music to my lyrics. I was up for the idea, and since we knew the show would be on hold for quite a while, we were able to complete about 22 or 23 songs [now on the show’s website].”

 

There are over 40 works by 35 artists in the show. Among my favorites are a poetic abstract from Hung Viet Nguyen, with a hint of gold in a sea of pink; and a richly textured 3D table-setting featuring an errant crab, created in layered cut canvas  – a style she calls called exsculpainting, from Eileen Oda.

Susan Whiting‘s lush and lovely realism (shown below, first) and Larry Manning‘s charming and graceful acrylic work (shown below, second) are both terrific. Lynn Attig and Drica Lobo also stand out, among many other fine artists.

For a full list of all exhibiting , click here.

And for artworks that are cleverly subversive and sure to elicit smiles, go see the show. It’s a bright summer treat. 

Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave, Fullerton. Closes July 31. Call (714) 738-6595 or visit TheMuck.org for hours.

– Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

10th Annual Spectrum Gestalt Kicks Off Summer at bG Gallery

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It’s the 10th Annual Spectrum Gestalt and we arrive at Bergamot Station and watch as guests spill out of bG Gallery with an energy and crowd that is just as colorful as the exhibition. Many of the attending artists are dressed in their respective color palette and I am no exception.  Joined by my two young boys, I made certain to have a serious talk before entry. You know, the Do Not Touch Anything talk, matched with the No Running in the Gallery talk. My intent eyes linger affirmingly on the littlest, spunkiest of the duo and is followed by a required “Yes, Mom,” before we proceed. We work our way through the crowd and into the gallery and are immediately hit with powerful waves of color. I look to my 10-year-old and find him wide-eyed, jaw ajar. We pause and allow the chromaticity to settle in.

The exhibition is arranged in a classic salon style that flows in the respective sequence of each hue in the rainbow. It’s almost impossible not take a step back and look at the installation in its wholeness. Each band of color is refracted with a range of art styles and media that take the viewer on an electromagnetic & multi-dimensional journey. From visually captivating paintings and detailed drawings to tactile works of embroidery and sculpture to photographic feats that all bode their own greatness, yet meet the viewer’s eye on a level playing field— gestalt indeed.

Spectrum Gestalt was the exhibition that initiated bG’s inception at Bergamot Station Arts Center 10 years ago. Gallerist, Om Bleicher, shares that although they had a location on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica and another in La Brea, when a space at Bergamot presented itself for a one-month pop-up, the opportunity to make a big splash in this creative hub was one not to be missed. Bleicher aimed to activate the space by involving as many talented artists as possible, knowing that the scale of people taking part would amplify and even permeate bG’s presence. The timeline to prep for such a show was short. So much so, that artists were asked to make their own art labels in the color of their work. But it all came together and the scale of people that attended the launch of Spectrum Gestalt energized bG in a new and exciting way, and a sense of place here at Bergamot was born. To be nestled amongst over a dozen fine art galleries that gather both artists and collectors from around the globe was undeniably alluring, and the one-month pop-up subsequently turned into a permanent lease signed & roots were formed. Now, 10 years later, this flagship exhibition serves as an annual reminder of bG’s beginnings at Bergamot.

Chromatecton #5, Sung-Hee Son

This year’s exhibition was heavily reliant on the curatorial direction of Sung-Hee Son, who is an artist her own right. While the unification of impact was achieved, there was a rhythm found in the grounding consistencies presented. Whether through the color wave itself, or the fact that several artists had multiple pieces throughout the exhibition, there was opportunity for the viewer to seek out congruencies that offered an overall fusion.

An Act of Hypnosis, Michelle Kingdom

Established artists such as Michelle Kingdom showcase narrative embroideries in keeping with her recent bodies of work, while emerging and student artists like Trevor Coopersmith shared a handful of playful ceramic wall-hung sculptures sprinkled throughout.

Linkage, Trever Coopersmith

Houlihan, Tamara Tolkin

I found myself absolutely enthralled with both the painted and threaded lips of artist, Tamara Tolkin.  Pretty in pink, the toothy pout of one piece is acrylic on canvas and another is a textile dream of wool, cotton, and linen that speaks to my inner (and let’s be real, outer) appreciation for detailed, yet playful precision.

Laffy Lemon, Isabella

Fig and Water Drop, Paul Art Lee

Windows and Doors 1,  Angela Kent.

No matter what color you find yourself among, the subconscious intuitively stirs. And although my work hangs along the wall of black, I find myself smiling at all the yellow.

Catch your favorite pantones at the closing reception this Saturday,  July 1st 5 – 7 P.M., before all the colors in the rainbow are wrapped up and hauled out until next June.

bG Gallery 2525 Michigan Avenue, #A2, Santa Monica, CA 90404 | Gallery hours Wed-Sun 12 – 5 P.M.

– Written by Aimee Mandala; photos by Aimee Mandala, Paul Art Lee, Zoe Silverman

 

Quick Takes on Hot Art: Mon Dieu Projects Goes Abstract and Shockboxx Heads to Summer Camp

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Two terrific group shows have started the summer season off right in LA.

Mon Dieu Project‘s sophomore exhibition, Absctract Adjacent, is a lovely, lush show that gets its title from being, in many cases, somewhat figurative, or at least elements of the figurative dance through this group show.

Shadowy white figures, both ephemeral and graceful, dance through the vivid red background of lustrous works from Nadege Monchera Baer, created with acrylic and colored pencil on Vellum. Baer’s pointillist style here is new to me as a long-time follower; but like past works, it is poetically perfect.

Lucas Biagini combines wax with oil paint to shape visceral, dimensional images that flow like colored lava.

DL Alvaraz offers surreal and colorful sci-fi shapes; working in graphite and colored pencil the effect of his color and medium is that of a collage. Jaehong Anh is more surreal still, Dali-esque, perhaps and texturally deep.

Eva Blue’s astonishing giclee on glass depictions of the Northern Lights, dazzles with color.

Rick Boling’s vivid crowd scenes, even blurred or dotted with confetti, edge toward the figurative with one eye on abstract wonder.

 

Christopher Kuhn devotes swirls and layers of acrylic and oil paint to creating ropey, fascinatingly complex abstract puzzles.

Jeffrey Nachtigall gives viewers a lavender sky and an alien space craft in his single work in this show, a glossy and absorbing mix of spray paint, latex, and acrylic.

Shadowy, nearly submerged images in more muted shades mark the work of Bernardo Montgomery, who works in mixed media on copper and steel here.

The exhibition just closed, but it will be exciting to see what’s next for the gallery, which is new by a few months to the LA art scene. The light filled space offers inventive, smartly conceptual work that feels bracingly fresh in the DTLA art scene. Abstract Adjacent is available for viewing online, here. 

Also fresh in the summer heat, Shockboxx Gallery‘s group show, Summer Camp delights with a wild array of artists in full seasonal splendor. From the campy (yes, pun intended) to the haunting, from stunningly detailed landscapes to fuzzy textile sculptures, this exhibition is as welcome as a cold glass of lemonade (spike it if you’d like) on a hot day.

Eileen Oda’s large-scale “Spring Flowers” is a jaw-droppingly detailed field of poppies in a quintessentially Californian landscape that draws the viewer straight into the sunny meadow.

Aimee Mandala’s wonderfully mysterious glowing blue house in a dark wood, created in charcoal, is both elegaic and grand, a slice of summer memory.

Debbie Korbel delights with a hilarious Barbie narrative.

Emily Wallerstein’s perfectly detailed sunset pink desert sky and Joshua Tree in “Full Moon Covid Camping, Mojave Desert” is all ethereal light. From Amrta’s golden textural swirls to gallerist Mike Collins’ wittily subversive “The Buzzards Left, so it wasn’t me they were after,” there is something for everyone here.

Viewers will find an embroidered “Homeless Man’s Skewer” by Priscilla Vincent; a sensual oil painting from Celina Bernstein;  a whimsical yet fraught paper bag enclosed figure from Isabella Fernanda and Lori Markman’s equally fraught ballpoint pen on paper monster in “I’ve Got My Eye On You.”



You better check in to this summer camp, no tent required, as the show ends July 2nd. You can also view many, but not all of the 39+ works on exhibit here.

Mon Dieu Projects is located at 720 E. 18th Street in DTLA, open 12-4 Tuesday-Saturday.

Shockboxx is located at 636 Cypress in Hermosa Beach and is open on weekends or by appointment.

  • Genie Davis, Photos: Genie Davis

 

 

 

Artist Arezoo Bharthania Welcomes Viewers to A Home in the Inbetween

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Arezoo Bharthania’s evocative mixed media solo exhibition, A Home in the In-Between, is both delicate and layered. As skillfully curated by Jason Jenn at LA Art Core in Little Tokyo, the exhibition is divided into three distinct areas: hanging panels, which viewers can walk between, like scrolls that tell the story of both Bharthania’s childhood, early adulthood, and current life; similarly unfolding narrative pieces that flow from ceiling to floor, fringed at the bottom, recalling exquisite Persian rugs; and projected images exhibited in muted twilight, and viewed at least in part, through clear, etched panels. Linking each of these spaces is a section of  nuanced and delicate works of wall art which resemble sections of a quilt or pieces of beautiful wallpaper.
The combination of curated spaces leads the viewer from one room to another, just as you would pass between the rooms of a home. But the home here is a dream-like one, composed of memories and plans, present reality and past sensations.
As the artist leads viewers from her recalled life in Iran to her life here in LA, her personal story reflects a broader one, a uniquely human experience of emotion and sensation, observation and understanding, envirorments both interior and external. It is the unfolding and expansion of roots and the blossoming of the future on the fertile garden of the past.
The exhibition allows the viewer time to take in the full view of her emotional, physical, and remembered home spaces. Viewers are invited not just to see but to explore Bharthania’s carefully explored territory, which she depicts through painted images, photographic depictions, and a range of tactile materials.
This is a graceful show, immersive but delicately so, shaping personal images of home, and with the artist’s projected images, a more urban and global one.  What makes a home? For Bharthania is it is heart and soul, the colors of her world, from lime green to gold and pink, vibrant and personal, and moving into her images of cityscapes, a world that can be more muted and distant, a way to process, perhaps, the urban noise.
Throughout the world and throughout time, home is a place we live, we inhabit, we at least try to make in our own image – a safe refuge. It is a place in which we long for a life outside its walls and equally yearn for the succor of, or at least the hope for, sustenance that we find within them.
There is intimacy and immediacy in Bharthania’s work, and there is also a view out the windows of her metaphorical home so to speak, a look at the broader world, and the passage of time.
The artist shares beauty and wistfulness, the fragile nature of the past, the permanence of personal roots, and the restlessness of urban life, all while acknowledging the constructs of home from beyond the personal to a grander, broader, more social view.
This lovely exhibition closes Sunday, with a curatorial and artist walk through conducted by Jenn and Bharthania at 3 p.m. The gallery is open 12-4 Thursday-Sunday.  LA Art Core is located at 120 Judge John Aiso St,. Los Angeles, CA 90012.
– Genie Davis, Photos: Genie Davis