Angels Gate Cultural Center – Notions of Place and Mingle Mangle

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Flora Kao’s large scale rubbing and ceramic vase in Notions of Place

Experiential and involving, both Notions of Place, upstairs at Angels Gate, and Mingle Mangle, in the first floor gallery, provide a wide range of interesting art in separate, smart group shows.

MINGLE MANGLE is a part of SoundPedro, and as such, the Angels Gate studio artists exhibited in this this show are responding to concepts of sound. If you’ve ever walked through a gallery and felt as if you could “hear” the art – well, in this case, you actually do. As curated by FLOOD, works include a terrific video piece by Phoebe Barnum, mixing drawings with photographic images; Beth Elliott’s fascinating “Lifeboat the Wedding,” a mixed media sculpture that floats from ceiling to ground and includes palm leaf, bannana leaf, and a repurposed wedding gown found by Barnum in an alley and given to Elliott. Ann Weber shows a geometric cardboard sculpture as conjoined as a pretzel and reminiscent of coral, Ashton Phillips offers an plastic cushion and suspended skylight installation that glows violet and magenta set to audio of mealworms digesting sytrofoam. Viewers are invited into the space to participate simply by being there. Also terrific are works by Lowell Nickel, Susan Rawcliffe, Ed Maloney, Bill Faecke, and Tim Maxeiner. Maxeiner’s lush “Blue Noise” is both mysterious and captivating. It’s a terrific show that reverberates with sound and color.

Upstairs, Notions of Place, curated by Lauren Kasmer, examines community, societal divisions, and each artist’s views ofwhat makes up a home or pertinent place in their lives. It has a dream-like quality that keeps the viewer moving with a sense of wonder through the exhibition that features works by Kasmer as well as from Hilary Baker, Joyce Dallal, Natalie M. Godinez, Kio Griffith, Flora Kao, LaRissa Rogers, Jenny Yurshansky, and HK Zamani. An ongoing participatory work,  Homesĭtē, from Joyce Dallal and Lauren Kasmer creates a series of open sides apartment-like structures that reflect on the residences and residents of the city. Examining each small cubby-like exposed interior is absorbing and awakening to the diversity and complexities, the frailties, and dreams of our lives.

Each work is quite wonderful, from Griffith’s enigmatic, spiritual video to Kao’s large-scale, gorgeous rubbing of the rocks along White Point Beach in San Pedro. Kasmer’s physically involving living room setting and video art, Zamani’s mix of the painterly and the sculptural form, and Baker’s lovely, intimate small circles depicting flora and fauna and architecture, are each special and unique, as is the sense of poignancy, beauty, and purpose each of the artists create in the space. Shaping home and hope has a different meaning for each artist, and for viewers to carry with them to their own personal points of refuge.

Notions of Place and Mingle Mangle will both be exhibited through June 17th. Don’t miss.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

 

Enrich Your Soul with Potent and Poetic Sculptural and Dimensional Wall Art at Patricia Sweetow Gallery

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Two powerful artists create immersive works that are rich in meaning, texture, and materials at Patricia Sweetow Gallery, now through June 24th.

Amalia Galdona Broche and Demetri Broxton’s individual artworks are both unique, as important as they are beautiful. Combined in one exhibition, their series glow together, visceral and full of life, intimate and universal. They’re meant to be matched: both feature a color palette rich in golds, bronzes, and browns; Broxton’s infused with elements of exciting color. Both create art that resonates spiritually and emotionally.

Broche, in her first exhibition with the gallery, offers two different types of work within her Vestments of Time series. There are five free-standing sculptural works and nine wall works that utilize both resin and textile. The sculptural figures resemble bronzes but are created of resin, textiles, paper, and plaster. While not specifically gendered, they appear to be gestational female forms. Each work features painted circles or dashes on their surfaces, a kind of rhythmic tattoo or non-verbal, coded communication.  While ageless, some of the sculptures have creased faces, depicting the effects of time, others are smoother skinned, straighter of carriage. Some facial expressions are hopeful, as if looking toward an invisible bright horizon in “Vestments of Time #3”, while others, such as “Vestments of Time #5” appear to have more creases and folds on body and face.

A towering headdress is a part of each figure and appears to contain hair, adornment, and a second or in some cases a third, set of eyes. Like the varied folds on body and face, the hairstyles of these figures also differ – some are more formal, towering, others have copious arches and hoops. Some figures exude the exuberance of youth and some the cares and maturity of age. The multiple eyes convey a sense of looking out, looking in, of past, future, psychic prowess, and possibility. Layered, lush, and gorgeous, one waits for these sculptures to come alive and move their long, trailing arms to embrace the viewer.

The wall works, also part of Broche’s numbered Vestments of Time series, resemble flowers or suns, a kind of celestial flora to the free-standing human fauna of the sculptural works. The wall works also resemble the embryonic stage of the sculptural figures. There are clearly faces embedded “Vestments of Time #11.” A single profile may be discerned in “Vestments of Time #9.” In #10, however, with long rope-like braids hanging from the center, there are no such human elements.

Living in both Cuba and the U.S., Broche describes these pieces as depicting the “fluid nature of identity, faith, memory of identity, transculturation and immigration” referencing both her upbringing during the Cuban Revolution Special Period and both Spanish and West African imagery. There is strength, sadness, and boldness in her work, made more potent by the realization of the hardships and grace they embody.

Broxton’s work is his second for the gallery, and it dazzles. From a ceremonial boxing robe studded with powerful and protective amulets to beaded song lyrics depicted on boxing gloves, the Oakland-based artist creates alchemic art that feels equal parts mystic and mythic, yet thoroughly grounded. The gem work and bead sculptural flight of lyrical words is beautifully contained in the reality of the boxing ring. The gloves have special meaning for Broxton’s art and for Black Americans. The early fame of Black boxer Jack Johnson was the beginning of a path to the ring, where during the WWII era, Broxton’s own grandfather boxed in mixed-race fights. As gallery notes relate, this was the only environment in which such a fight could take place without risk to the life of a Black fighter.

While the ceremonial boxing robe, with amulets and objects relating to both the Nigerian Yoruba people and the artist’s Louisiana Creole heritage, and the headress accompanying it are certainly a focal point, the beaded gloves that shape the majority of the exhibition serve as passionate punctuation throughout the gallery space. From cultural diaspora to the preservation of tradition and the creation of new traditions that hold deep connection, Broxton’s art serves to shape its own safe space, a sacred ring of sorts, a place of expression filled with emotional gut punches as deeply felt as physical contact in the boxing ring.

For “So Ambitious (I’m on a Mission)” the artist uses amazingly intricate hand cut Cypraea mauritiana cowrie shells, glass beads, red coral, tourmaline, and cotton on boxing gloves connected by steel chains. The title and words on the gloves refer to a chorus by Pharrell on a Jay-Z track. They serve, as the artist says, as a “battle cry” to push on despite adversity, fighting for success, while acknowledging “centuries of trauma and struggle.” Equally elaborate and stunning, is “Bombs Over Baghdad,” which references lyrics by OutKast.

The careful, perfect precision of beading, labradorite, and red coral are not the only materials used for this piece – it also includes inert rifle bullets. “Don’t pull the thang out…unless you plan to go bang,” the gloves read.  “Count Me Out,” based on a Kendrick Lamar lyric, uses green quartz and cowrie shells among its materials, and as with each of these pieces, the combination of perfectly rendered text into visual art and the artist’s use of exciting mediums is exhilarating.

The impressive detail, the mixed use of natural gemstone materials, shells, and glass beading, is exceptional. The gloves serve as a perfectly encompassing frame, embracing words used to “fight back” and defend.

Patricia Sweetow Gallery is located at 1700 S. Santa Fe Ave., Suite 351; hours are 11-6 Tuesday – Saturday through June 24th. There will be a conversation between Demetri Broxton and gallerist Patricia Sweetow June 17th at 1 p.m. The gallery relocated from San Francisco last fall. If it’s not on your viewing radar yet, it certainly should be.

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

Mammoth Lakes Film Festival Opening Night Begins Powerfully and Provocatively

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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