Frieze is Hot on Art

Posted on by Diversions LA

Jam packed with art from galleries that focus primarily on New York and Los Angeles, Frieze Art Fair, now located at two locations within the Barker Hangar Complex at Santa Monica Airport, is an exciting art event.

Shuttles ferry visitors from the “west” to “east” complexes, with the east end being the far larger venue. Along the way there are large-scale sculptures – an airplane, a “loot” bag, and some extremely cool 3-D holograms with fans, “Hologram Phantom Limbs” from Jennifer West that shift and spin differently in person and when photographed. Sculptural forms are in fact everywhere, from fabric to mirrored pieces to neon to resin; booths are extremely well curated, offering the experience of visiting the actual gallery displaying work, just a capsule-sized version.

Doug Aiken

The main building and the largest collection of galleries is located on the east end of the complex; a smaller satellite exhibition is on the west end. Both house a mix of primarily contemporary, cutting-edge art – but make no mistake, this is highly polished work featuring names you’re bound to know, from Damien Hirst to Doug Aiken.

There were many works featuring miniature items, many involving mirrors and other shiny sparkly materials, lots of dimensional works, political works, humorous works, and vibrantly colored abstract and modern expressionist art. So, in short, there is a lot of art from impressive galleries in breathable spaces allowing viewers to take the works in without feeling crowded or rushed – although the fair itself is certainly busy.

It’s a literal cornucopia of art, and while it would be virtually impossible to name every favorite piece and gallery, here are some of the most memorable.

At London-based Maureen Paley Gallery, a terrific series of mini bottles, from Max Hooper Schneider, “Prism Atoll, ” which uses fiberglass and pigmented urethane to shape the delightful work.

At LA’s always inventive Baert Gallery, a series of ceramic lights in colors from light blue to turquoise glow transcendently (above); at Various Small Fires, textile work is highlighted, including a lush piece from Dyani White Hawk, the “Untitled (Purple and Iridescent)” made with glass bugle beads. At the same space, Diedrick Brackens weaves magic with cotton nylon and acrylic yarn in a series of figurative works using a limited palette (below).

Roberts Projects also offers a work featuring glass beads, a sculptural work from Jeffrey Gibson, “One of My Kind,” an elaborate bird. A vibrant work from the gallery’s Kehinde Wiley, and a mixed media work from Betye Saar also stood out.

LA Louver Gallery focused on the political with several large scale mixed-media sculptures from Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, including “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee,” and “Still Dead End Dead II.”

Abstract works also dazzled, including Peybak’s “Abrakan,” a mix of gesso, acrylic, and oil pastel. Mark Handforth’s “Amber Shadows” used a different kind of mix, aluminum, fluorescent and LED light fixtures, Rosco color foils, chromate primer and enamel paint to create a stripped down bouquet. Marwa Abdul-Rahman created a large mixed media wall sculpture with vibrant elements of hot pink, in “Consecrating Earth and Skies.” Doron Langberg merges abstract and impressionist in the vibrant shades of works such as “Lovers at Night,” the latter at the Victoria Miro Gallery.

There were oil on linen works from Yun-Hee Toh at Gallery Hyundai while at Tokyo-based Taro Nasu, charming blue and gold racoons fuse painted images with the electronic, asking “How much was your face?” and black and white cats and pigeons tower over a scale city in another work.

Hauser and Wirth exhibited both wall art and sculptures from a roster of well-known artists; while at Commonwealth and Council crushed-looking shiny silver sculpture reflected the eager crowd. New York’s Paul Cooper Gallery exhibited a work that asked the viewer to consider this advice: “You are alone – Slow Down – There is No One to Please but Your…” Elsewhere, Peter Shire’s circus-colored Living Room Theater vibrated.

There were resin filled martini glasses and mini race cars on silver pedestals; massive black tea pot and scissor sculptures; Anat Egbi went to the butterflies; Tanya Bokadar Gallery provided its own unique shiny, dimensional artworks.

Along with all the art, viewers were invited to visit “Dr. Barbara Sturm” an exhibit space offering no-charge infrared stimulating facials and free orange turmeric bottle drinks among other products.

Here’s a look at a wide range of other artworks as well and one caveat: wear comfortable shoes. Frieze is an art fair as large as it is “hot” in the LA art scene.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

LA Art Show: Stunning Video Art and International Galleries

Posted on by Diversions LA

The LA Art Show is the oldest art fair to occupy Los Angeles’ burgeoning fair season, and it is still a vital presence. This year, the 28th iteration of the fair, produced by Kassandra Voyagis, offers abundant highlights including works from six Japanese galleries, a variety of work from 14 South Korean galleries and artists, and the return of the European Pavilion.

The work in DIVERSEartLA, curated by Marisa Caichiolo provides a variety of haunting video installations that are as lush and captivating as they are prescient social commentary on global climate change. In conjunction, the Mueum of Latin American Art offers work from Judy Baca; AMA showcases the work of Mexican photographic artist Alfredo De Stefano.

Baca’s double-sided triptych “Thirteen Women in the Volcanic Eruption” (Side 1) created on acyrlic on wood panels, a part of MOLAA’s permanent collection explores the worship of a female goddess. The second side, on display as we visited, is a visionary look at Mother Earth, “The Birth of the Vision of the Heart,” above.

Immigration policies and the heartbreak of border crossings is the topic of an exhibition that combines video images with the clothes worn by immigrants in “Uninhabited,” an installation from Carmen Isasi.

With a sand covered floor and gorgeous images and sound, De Stefano’s “The Pulse of Silence (El Pulso del silencio)” is an absolute must-see exploring our planet, its future, and the terrible poetry of its possible demise.

Davis Birk’s work is equally fascinating, nature through a surveillance camera in “Project: Rendevous: Esta tierra es Mi Tierra.”

Petro Eiko’s riveting 3D sculptures are also rooted in an exploration of climate change and fragile state of water; she uses six 3D sculptures and video to create a mysterious and involving installation.

Curated by Beate Dusterberg, viewers can walk through a series of cylindrical metal sculptures containing images of eyes and bodies, illuminated by an eerie, glowing white light. Both futuristic and cautionary, the experience is otherworldly.

Artist Robert Vargas created a mural on site opening night, expressing the plight of missing indigenous women.

“IL GIARDINO PLANETARIO (The Planetary Garden)” from artist Pietro Rufflo collaborating with Noruwei, provides a prescient look at earth as a garden with haunting visual images.

At Building Bridges Art Exchange, an amazing cocoon of softly falling fabric provides a walk-in experience that evokes memories of a visit to Antelope Canyon. Other sculptural pieces are also on exhibit from the miraculous hand of artist Carmen Mardónez.

At the Rebecca Hossack Gallery, hauntingly luminous paintings by Laurence Jones were standouts, evocative of Los Angeles life both remote and glamorous. Luminous in an entirely different way, the works at Taguchi Fine Art by artist Regine Schumann utilize glowing flurorescent acrylic glass. Hayoon Jay Lee offers fascinatingly textile work that looks like feathers but is actually crated using rice, modeling paste, and acrylic on wood panel. The works were featured at Artego Gallery. More locally, Melissa Morgan shows off the futuristic glass, LED, and steel work of Anthony James among its sculptural offerings.

At the Los Angeles Center for Photography space, a bevy of fine work shines, including poignant, hauntingly delicate cynotypes from artist Cathy Immordino; works by Carolee Friday and Sarah Hadley were also lovely.

Hung Viet Nguyen at bG, above

At bG Gallery, a series of lush works with a lavendar edged palette from Susan Lizotte were joined by a wide variety of works including the charming dog sculptures from Alessandra Pierelli, witty ceramic cats and dogs from Linda Smith, and masterful California seascapes and skyscapes from Gay Summer Rick. Hung Viet Nguyen’s splendid, deeply textural Sacred Landscape series was also included in the exhibition space, along with abstract cyanotypes from Richard S. Chow, among many other outstanding works.

Over at Fabrik Projects, Nancy’s Wise’s oil on aluminum flowers bloomed vividly; the gallery is also showing works from actor and artist Val Kilmer. Fabrik is also behind the massive sculptural work, “Launch Intention” a mega metal paper airplane in design, from  artist Griffin Loop, seen above. Thematically, the work stands as a call to action; visually it is an inventive geometric stunner.

At Art in Bloom, astonishing works from Britney Penouilh and Angela Izzo include the Mystical Creatures Tarot Deck,  Penoullh’s exceptional clay sculpture cast in resin, “Gothic Altarpiece,” (above) and more.

EK Gallery, features the work of Chuni Park, (above) with perfect and precise images of nature.Ukrainian artist Denis Sarazhin offers beautifully crafted work at Arcadia Contemporary, whose gallerist, Steve Diamant, was able to secure the artist a safe place to work in the U.S. as the war wages between Ukraine and Russia.

The Maria Elena Kravitz gallery shone with bright and gorgeous images from Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja, Peter Zelle, and Mark Davis among the artworks that compel with textures and patterns. Touchon Gallery’s evocative underwater photographic works from Alex Sher were a rewarding deep dive.

Throughout the exhibition, viewers will find a variety of awesome surprises such as whimsical and delightful plexiglass image-shaped letters hanging from the ceiling in the wonderful “Raintype: Lorenzo Marini” (above) presented by Bruce Lurie Gallery, which also exhibits the work of painter Michael Gorman.

Around one corner, “Shai Kremer: The Edge of Knowledge, ” a photographic lightbox; around another, hyperrealistic scultpural works from Carole A. Feuerman startle and delight at Markowicz Fin Arts; in other spots, viewers will find sinuous metalic figures prance while brightly colored strongmen and super heroes flex their muscles.  Red aliens, sardine can sculptures with video installations, Chagall reinterpreted on fabric, a deconstructed typewriter: it’s all there, and it’s all well worth seeing.

Tickets to the event, running Thursday through Sunday are available for purchase here. Don’t miss. LA Art Show is the longest running art fair in the region for a reason – it’s good.

  • Genie Davis; photos – Genie Davis

 

Photographic Artist Safi Alia Shabaik Opens Highly Personal Exhibition in Partnership with the Parkinson’s Foundation

Posted on by Diversions LA

Safi Alia Shabaik’s photographic series, Personality Crash: Portraits of My Father Who Suffered from Advanced Stages of Parkinson’s Disease, Dementia, and Sundowner’s Syndrome opens February 18th at Open Mind Art Space in Los Angeles.

It’s a compelling and intimately collaborative body of work that explores the human condition in a series of intense, beautiful black and white images. Shabaik describes her work as being about identity and the humanity of all people, but this visual story is a deeply personal one.

What began as a series on her father’s immigration from Egypt and life as an educator became instead images based around his survival with Parkinson’s. They decided to embark on the project together, knowing it could help not just themselves as they struggled to cope with this situation, but could help others as well.

The Los Angeles-based Shabaik reveals the difficulty of her father’s struggle and the growing constraints of deterioration in his mind and body. The images are filled with compassion and love, as well as a collaborative exploration of his disease, and his loss of health both physically and mentally.

Throughout the collaboration, she reveals that she gained new understanding about the disease itself and mental illness; viewing the ongoing project her father hoped most of all that others could learn from his experience, a hope that Shabaik herself is honoring.

Presented in Partnership with the Parkinson’s Foundation and made possible with a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, along with the exhibition of these powerful photographs, an afternoon of special programming will take place February 25th, Personality Crash: The Intersection of Art and Science in Parkinson’s Disease. Along with a presentation by the artist, there will also be a moderated conversation covering topics such as Parkinson’s and Creativity, Family Caregiving, Patient Advocacy, End-of-Life Care, and Dying with Dignity.

Serving both as caregiver and confidante to her father created profound artistic work. The images in this exhibition focus on the last year of her father’s life, on a journey she began documenting in 2014. The title comes from her father himself, who remained intensely aware of what was happening to him, and even used the phrase “personality crashes” to his daughter, providing the title for their collaboration.

Shabaik says that she is honored to partner with the Parkinson’s Foundation on this exhibition, and knows that her father would be “proud to know that his struggle with the disease will now become something life-affirming.”

The artist discovered art and photography itself at a young age, and has worked as a photographic documentarian, a fashion stylist, has work in performer Grace Jones’ book I’ll Never Write my Memoirs, as well as in Artillery, CameraCraft, and on Upworthy.com. An interdisciplinary artist, her work continues to focus on identity and transformation as well as daily life, and the humanity of all. She’s worked in photography, mixed-media collage, assemblage, printmaking, sculpture, and experimental video, has exhibited nationally, and and has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Black+White Photography, Lenscratch, Alta Journal, Catalyst: Interviews, CameraCraft and The Advocate, as well.

The exhibition opening takes place February 18 from 3-8 p.m.; the special programming presentation on the 25th will be live-streamed as a webinar starting at 1 p.m., with the gallery open to the public from 4-7:30 that evening for a meet and greet with the artist. The exhibition runs until March 4th.  Registration for the event on the 25th is required; to do so, visit Parkinson.org/ArtandScience or call (312) 786-4653.

  • Genie Davis; photography provided by the artist

 

Playground of Art – Vojislav Radovanović at Walter Maciel Gallery

Posted on by Diversions LA

Playful, provocative, grand, and just plain fun – that’s Playground at the Abandoned Chapel. This is his first solo exhibition at Walter Maciel Gallery. Serbian born/Southern Californiabased artist Vojislav Radovanović previously exhibited a variety of works at the gallery’s fine Future Patchwork, a group exhibition curated by Annie Seaton last summer.

Before describing the wonders of this Playground, it’s more than worth noting that it is a big departure from the artist’s delicate, spiritual, almost ethereal work in a solo exhibition at Diana Berger Gallery, ORNITHOMANCY, with its almost-holy references to nature, the universe, and the spiritual. In that exhibition, color palette often focused on silver, blue, grey, black, and mirrored or liquid surfaces. But it, too, like this exhibition, featured a mixed media exploration of both human light and darkness.

Playground at the Abandonded Chapel offers a wild circus ride of color and desolation combined, one that reflects Radovanovic’s recent year-long desert residency at the Museum of Art & History in Lancaster. His love for both the dusty landscape and broken or abandoned structures — so many dreams come to the desert and fade away – shows in these works. So, too does his fascination with a specific old gym, the remains of a burnt-out school, it’s arches chapel-like, but covered with vivid graffiti, discards, and trash.

That specific setting is used in a site specific video projected in the back gallery, with scattered toys and discarded objects like computer parts and safety cones strewn on the floor in front of the projection. The viewer is invited to watch both the projection unfold and how its images look when viewed through or around these objects, adding a vibrant textural and sculptural element to the video.

The video itself stars playright and performing poet Robert Patrick, in a tour de force performance singing and reciting his own poems and excerpts from an unpublished play.  Whether viewers start with this experience or conclude their visit to the gallery with a view, it serves as a perfect background to the acrylic paintings in the main room.

The main gallery also includes site-specific elements, such as the pink arches painted on the gallery’s white walls, reflecting the form of the abandonded gymnasium depicted in the video. The acrylic paintings themselves are fantasy personified, but grounded in themes of redemption, the kind that can only be achieved by reconciling losses and finding new meaning through them. It is a glorious vision, filled with both whimsical elements and darkness.

There are strong references to the war-torn backdrop of his Serbian childhood in the former Yugoslavia, as well as to consumerism, political anger, personal anguish, and the relentless march of history. How do we reconcile the childhood innocence of toys and play with the detritus of war? How do we reshape our own destiny after loss, after childhood innocence is forced to end?

Referencing the often harsh reality of the Southern California landscape – from wildfires to climate change, as well as the rubble of war, and the personification of ourselves, our battles, and our hopes and fears, the visual subject may be toys, but the themes are much deeper. Godzilla,  clear plastic robots, an accordian-playing monkey clown, and more fill canvasses as intricate, ominous and absorbing as any dark fairy story. The brilliant pinks, greens, oranges, and blues belie clouds of smoke and broken buildings.

“…and That’s How it Happened,” is a truly wonderful work, in which a grinning clear robot toy looks on at a simply, thickly painted depiction of money going down a housefront that also features a fast-food burger, and a camera. The “end” of this visual story is this: a house broken asunder, a rainbow of dark smoke issuing from it, a bird escaping from it, a small rainbow horse looking on. This disaster may have begun on a child’s playground, but it concluded in real loss and corporate greed.

“And now a word from our new spokesperson, Richard, with breaking news” features a two headed red T-Rex monster with a post-it note reading “Breaking News.” Another post-it reads “Only philosophy can save you now.”  It’s funny and horrible and true – likely coming soon to TMZ.

Some of my favorite works are perhaps the softest: in the large-scale triptych “Europa,” a blonde cherub in circus garb rides a blue rocking-horse-like pony through a sky filled with stars.  She is the central figure in the triptych, the two sides of which feature silhouettes of a helicopter and an airplane, both toys and ominous fellow residents of the sky in which she rides.

“Everyday Balancing Act” gives us a muscular strong man riding a white horse balanced on a striped ball across a golden wire. Clouds rise in ghostly puffs around a foggy grey mountain backdrop. This may be a very brave man, playfully conquoring a desolate landscape, or it is simply the way we all live, day in and day out, on the precarious edge of getting by.  “Star Wrangler” is just that – a lavendar-clad cowboy lassoing stars, gracious, happy, riding his horse with aplomb. Be the star wrangler.

This is exciting, resonant, fascinating work, an exhibition one can breeze through and simply enjoy for the colors, the toys, the embedded collage elements; or one in which you can consider its implications, the fears for humanity, the hope for the future, the joy and the terror that happens on playgrounds, in war, and in life on this planet, in this city, in its lost desert dreamscapes, today.

Go see it and consider how this world plays. The exhibition runs through February 25th. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 11-6.

  • Genie Davis, photos provided by the artist, and Genie Davis