Mammoth Lakes Film Festival Opening Night Begins Powerfully and Provocatively

Posted on by Diversions LA

 

The setting is galvanizing from the moment the film begins. Queendom, set in the heart of Russia, is a compelling documentary from Agniia Galdanova.  The film profiles transgender artist Gena, as she navigates her life – in which she becomes a living art form and activist, wrapped in fabric, repurposed trash, and painted tape.

The artist moves in a snowy small-town landscape, navigating troughs of predjudice, and the confining love of her grandparents, who cannot accept her art or her rebellious nature, much less her gender transformation. There are conversations with friends, the abandonment of a school of cosmetic study in Moscow due to Gena’s acts of protest, and most of all the growing awareness – as she moves from the village of Magadan to Moscow, and by film’s end, Paris, that she can shine her artistic light on the brutality and cruelty of the Russian regime and its war with Ukraine, exposing both.

The imagery of the film – Gena’s amazingly created costuming, the icy and bleak backdrop of her home village, the harsh lines of Moscow, and the almost palpable sense of relief the viewer and the subject feel as she moves through the more gracious architecture of Paris, is deeply engaging.

If Gena begins the film as a misunderstood misfit in the unyielding winter of Communist Russian culture and politics, viewers watch as her work grows to embrace the power of artists. Artists, after all, are something of the canary in the coal mine, pointing out danger and distress. Artists like Gena can effectively call attention to brutality, inequity, and violent injustice.

The film starts with her building an Instagram following, creating set pieces with her fabulous, sculptural costuming for views, and follows along quietly and decisively as she turns her art into a potent weapon for political activism, at great risk to her own well-being – by birth gender, she might very well be drafted to fight in the war.

Over the course of the film, she moves from a somewhat self-serving personal view to one of force, bravery, and action; discovering that to use her art and truly be herself, she can become the focal point of an important movement that radiates beyond her personal desires.

Visually stunning and yet intimate and quiet in approach, the film makes an excellent opening night salvo in what is sure to be another exciting year at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival.

  • Genie Davis; images provided by the festival 

John Bankston and His Animal Friends at Walter Maciel

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John Bankston, in The Companion, his 8th exhibition at Walter Maciel Gallery, offers a view of man and his best friends – animals who are perhaps his dopelgangers, or his spirit creatures; animals with which he is establishing a tentative relationship. Evoking the colors of Gauguin and the innocence of Rousseau, Bankston captivates with his series of brightly hued, narrative art.

The series is playful, and follows the meetings between the protagonist, a neatly coiffed and attired black man dressed in simple, colorful shirt and pants, and the animal creatures he meets, from lions to brightly spotted leopards, sometimes multi-colored in their spotting, sometimes blue or red. Regardless of coloration, the spotted animal is referred to as “the beast” by Bankston. Vibrant birds land on his hand, other creatures peer through the underbrush. In other works, the protagonist stands alone, as if searching for a friend.

There is a sense of trust, tentative friendship, and longing for relationship in these works, which began with an oil stick image of a man leaning comfortably against a lion. The underlying basis for this series is the artist’s thoughtful take on race relations: his genuine concern about safety, in a world where black men are all too often forced to endure police profiling and apprehension, as well as with a broader view of inequality and inequity.

In some works the message is somewhat ambiguous – is the man a figure caring for these animals or is he scared of them. In past series, Bankston has had his protagonist interact with other humans, but here in this colorful, exotic forest setting, the man is sought out by these would-be animal friends.

There are many works in this series, and throughout, the man’s relationship with these often somewhat fantastical creatures, evolves. From an ambiguous pose to one of closeness. These works fill the main galleries at Maciel; in the second space, earlier evocations of the protagonist, either by himself or meeting up with other humans, some costumed, are on display.

Just as exploratory as the evolution of the animal relationships is Bankston’s use of mediums: he ranged from acrylic to oil based paints and oil stick, creating on canvas, paper, and linen. Mixing mediums creates both a sense of the magical setting and a layered quality to the work, pulling the viewer into the dynamic  of children’s fairy tales and adult dreams.

The meticulously simple drawings, call backs to a world of coloring books and primers, serves as a lure of both accessability and safety, creating a comfortable space in an alchemic world, allowing the viewer to examine a wide range of experiences and messages.

There is a message of caring for creatures beyond humankind, of finding friends outside our own small “comfort circles,” and a strong environmental message, too – if our protagonist’s relationship with these animals is fragile, so too is humankind’s relationship with the rest of the natural world. If friendships are to be carefully explored, if racial inequities are to be examined, these, too, are topics that should be handled in a comfortable space, defenses down, understanding expanding.

Viewing this exhibition is to enter a lovely, lustrous, world, with a brilliant, jeweled palette within which lies a precious but tenuous web of connection.  To make that connection is to appreciate the feelings of those beyond our own, to care for the physical environment, its inhabitants, and relationships with all.

Explore Bankston’s world through July 1st; the gallery is open from 11-6 Tuesday-Saturday.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

SEiS Gallery Features Innovative Three Artist Show

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Heather Lowe, above

Innovative and experiential are a good descriptive match for the visual and mental mind twists of Shape Shift at SEiS Gallery in mid-city.

The exhibition offers work from Heather Lowe, Mike Savage, and Chalavie. Lowe presents a potent mix of geometric loveliness in her acrylic on canvas and bristol works, and takes these shapes into depths that resemble an alternate reality with her lenticulars. Dazzling lenticulars like “Pinna Bouquet,” in lime green and oranges, look terrific before you even notice that they are awash in motion; the painted works, such as the spiral twist of “Seashell,” are equally exciting, here a combination of stereo and single images which form a kind of gymanstic puzzle for the mind.  Lowe is an alchemist of art and the art of science.

Savage, in one instance collaborating with Lowe, also has a variety of geometric images, including a glowing mild steel and automotive paint sculpture “New Order Portland,” an impressively monochrome shape that turns up in one of his painted works, “New Order PNW,” and a variant in “New Order Pico,” both acrylic and gesso on canvas. Of his color-rich works, “LCW Red Blue Yellow Black” appears to be a chair, if a chair vibated with variants of primary shades to the extent that the fabric radiated off the form.

Chalavie has a mix of perfect, beautifully wrought wood work such as “Tool Kit for the End of the World,” and “Totem” as well as intricately detailed images of construction equipment, and in “Stack,” a pile of boards that look as if the painted work could be as dimensional as her sculptures.

Lowe offered a fun, short workshop along with an artist talk on the making of lenticulars, this past weekend (see below); Savage also hosted a special art event. Closing is the 20th so hurry in!

SEiS is located at 1910 6th Ave. in the heart of LA.

 

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

Bryan Ida – New Exhibition at Billis Williams Gallery Goes Visually and Emotionally Deep

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Bryan Ida, left, with galleriest Tressa M. Williams, right

Bryan Ida creates art that sings with meaning. It comes as no surprise that he once majored in music composition before turning to fine visual art.

His astonishing use of minute and meaningful words to shape fascinating, rewarding images of people – such as several such works recently exhibited in the group exhibition Bridging the Pacific at Torrance Art Museum, is just one way in which the artist expresses rich feeling and creates compelling work. Ida’s intensely detailed, powerful, and meticulous ink on panel works there depicted a very personal story, that of his mother and father, being forcibly “evacuated” from the San Francisco area in 1942, when Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods due to World War II-fueled, race-driven paranoia. The delicate and precise nature of that work is that of an artist both empath and activist.

In his new exhibition, his fifth solo show at Billis WIlliams, Ida’s exhibition DEEP is entirely different, yet equally suffused with understanding, compassion, and purpose. Here, he goes to the heart of the human relationship with the natural world. Works are from two separate series,  one of which is filled with vivid color and geometric lines, the other is muted in palette, yet glowing, in  intimate, moving depictions of animals in a twilight sky.

The work takes on the complex beauty of the natural world,  and how human existence – as currently exercised – direly effects it.  Ida’s landscapes feature sliced images, as if viewed through slatted blinds, or seen through the limited vision that humans are presently capable of viewing the natural world. Vivid orange leaves are dissected by slats, as are startling emerald and chartreuse grasses and trees. Some images include intensely touching depictions of animals, such as the orangutan above or tiger below. The colors are vibrant, blunted only by their dissection.

The “broken” images spell out the dichotomy between how humans view and treat the natural world, as well as the earth’s innate lovliness.

With the artist’s Fading Light series, above, depicted animals emerge gradually to the viewer, as if transcending a twilight fog or thick, moonless dusk. The lack of illumination speaks to endangered species, extinction, and man’s disregard for other creatures. Yet, within each image, within each sensitive and almost angelic animal face, there is a glow, as if a facet of light had permeated a black diamond. There is still a ray of hope, if we will catch it.

 

Both series are not only masterfully beautiful but brimming with both sorrow and the ecstatic. Nature stands at the brink of a cataclysm caused by human carelessness and greed. As Ida says  “In the name of human advancement and expansion the cost to animal species and the environment is deep and irreversible. The true measure of a civilization is in its compassion and empathy, not in its ability to consume.”

In the face of loss and adversity, the flora and fauna, the creatures that share our world, are waiting for us to act and end the destruction our relentless quest for conquest has wrought. Ida presents the message without prosthelitizing, creating lush and poetic works that give viewers both thoughtful pause and thrilling beauty.

Experience the empathy and ecology and the consummate wonder in this exhibition – and let its meaning resonate.

Also at Billis Williams, see Stephen Wright’s liquid luminosity, in Beach Break in Gallery 2, all euphoric mid-sea sunshine and light in motion.

Both DEEP and Beach Break are on display through June 3rd; the gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday 10 a.m. -5 p.m.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and provided by the gallery