LA Art Show: First Out of the Gate – A Major Art Show Returns

Posted on by Diversions LA

With wider aisles, more compact, and with fewer opening night noshes, the LA Art Show has nevertheless jubilantly returned, with a compelling and lively mix of the cutting edge and the commercial. This year, the show is under the fine new direction of Kassandra Voyagis and returning curator Marisa Caichiolo. 

Wearing sequined masks and in some cases, performative respirators, art lovers flocked to the first night gala; at the entrance, following a signage reminder to mask up, a lovely, somber tribute of red roses in a flowing art work that represented lives lost to COVID-19.

Several artists new to me presented exciting work that bodes extremely well for a diverse, robust, and multi-media art scene; and some personal favorites, both artists and galleries, revealed bold new work. Welcome back, LA Art Show. It’s been a long 18 months, and we might’ve been wearing our required masks to hug, but it was great to embrace art, both literally and figuratively.

Here are some highlights:

Santa Barbara-based Naomi Brown’s vivid, lush, hyper-realistic Joshua Tree desert landscapes were dazzling, a fresh look at a well-loved SoCal region as expansive as the land itself. Watch for an upcoming exhibit from the artist via Slopoke Gallery in the Solvang area this fall.

Closer to home, Redondo Beach artist Susan Soffer Cohn led attendees through a small curtained passage to view illuminated patterned abstracts, created with ink on Duralar and LED lighting.

Stunning sculptural work by Ariel Vargassal and Scott Riddle played with light and shadow in a beautiful recessed exhibit space from Building Bridges Art Collective, “Bee-careful with our planet.”

The always stunning video art of Luciana Abait spilled from a black curtain illuminating the intense blue waterfall of the artist’s “Agua,” a video projection first viewed at DTLA’s outdoor Luminex exhibition several months back.

A fine installation by the ever-witty John Kilduff recreated a comfortable bar with painted stools, individual small painted “shots” for sale, colorful beer taps, and even a stained glass window at his art “tavern.”

Coagula featured a variety of spaces and artists, among them the glowing golden profile of “Luminous Symmetries” from Nikolas Soren Goodich.

Exciting video installations from DiverseArtLA drew viewers into an alternative universe dancing with dots and light in a poetic, pandemic-inspired series of works from Zeynep Abes representing the Istanbul that was once the artist’s home.

At Fabrik Gallery, standouts included gritty, smart mixed media work from Randi Matushevitz and at LAACP, dreamy gold and blue cyanotypes from photographic artist Cathy Immordino.

Lush black and white LA architectural landscapes from Maureen Van Leeuwen Haldeman cast their own evocative spell, also in the Fabrik booth.

bG Gallery presented small works by a variety of excellent Los Angeles artists, from the small scale, perfect worlds of Glenn Waggner’s circular paintings to the distanced beach-dream of Richard Chow’s photography. Barbara Kolo’s vibrating geometric abstracts, Gay Summer Rick’s lustrous westside landscapes, and Susan Lizotte’s gracious florals were also on view.

Glenn Waggner, above
Richard Chow, above

Other notable exhibitions included an illuminated dazzle from Anne Vieux, NFT from Vellum LA (below), and a live interactive work from Tiffany Trenda, Un/Seen.

At MASH Gallery, above, layered, light-filled works by founder Haleh Mashian alternated with glowing color works from Angela Johal.

Spanish artists Javier Barco and Diego Beneitez exhibited otherworldly abstracts reminiscent of desert and sea.

AiBo Gallery revealed some brilliant sculptural sparkle.

At Arcadia Art, Stephen Fox evoked Edward Hopper.

And throughout the exhibition, large-scale sculptural works dotted the convention hall floor.

LA Art Show is at the Los Angeles Convention Center West Hall through Sunday. Join us in a hearty welcome back – it’s been a long 18 months.

  • Story and photos – Genie Davis

Take a Very Special Travel with Annie Appel: The Mexico Journeys – Carmelita

Posted on by Diversions LA

Opening July 24th at the Palos Verdes Arts Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, the work of San Pedro-based photographic artist Annie Appel is raw and personal, a riveting and deep dive into the lives of a family she encountered in Mexico.

The exhibition, Annie Appel: The Mexico Journeys – Carmelita focuses on just one of a vast cast of family Appel documented. Her work is poignant and gracefully created, with images that pull the viewer into the lives of the family she depicts, much as Appel herself was compelled to be a part of their lives over the years.

The project began in Baja, Mexico in the summer of 1994, when Appel had a chance encounter with Maria, the pregnant mother of two young daughters on her way to take lunch to her husband. Appel offered drawing materials for the children and was invited to lunch; from this meeting grew a more-than-completed promise Appel made to herself to follow and document the family for ten years. This commitment grew to span two decades and 23 visits, over the course of which she created a richly involving story told through her photographic images and a journal she kept describing the visits and her feelings about them.

The full project began with the maternal figure of Maria, whom Appel first met, then married to a brick maker and layer, Jaime. The current exhibition at PVAC focuses on one of Maria’s daughter’s, Carmelita, now fully grown into an independent young woman.

Appel says she’d most like viewers of this heartfelt, moving project to “imagine what it would feel like be in a similar situation – from the perspective of the family members, and from the perspective of the documentarian.”

Fully engaged with and respectful of the family she depicts, Appel shares her “slow but steady steps towards completion of The Mexico Journeys. Each trip, I take each family member a package of 5×7 prints — meaning, if I make a classic portrait of María, I include a copy of that portrait in each of the 5 packets for her children, and now for her grandchildren, so they each have their own print of María.”

According to Appel “I learned early on that most of the family is interested in the more traditional formal portraits, and far less interested in a beautifully composed image of María hanging laundry on the line to dry, even if the colors and light and angles are all working together to make a poetic image. ‘Why would you take a photo of me doing laundry?’ María asked [me].”

 Appel’s driving force, one that keeps her working on this on-going, voluminous project is to fulfill the promise she made to herself to reveal this family’s universal humanity and intimate experiences. This in turn ties into an earlier personal promise she made which she reveals was, “to combine whatever gifts or talent I was given with my love of the medium. Photography gives us the past history of the world, the best and worst acts of humanity. It rescues memory from the clutches of mortality.”

Indeed, the exhibition offers a truly experiential series of photographic artworks, which cannot help but affect the viewer – certainly they pull at both the eye with their precise and elegant composition, and the heart, with the richness and touching intimacy of the depictions. Appel notes “The experiences I had shooting the work are still alive in the conscious and subconscious of my oeuvre. The images that I took are alive and continually changing in my mind, because I have the ability to reorder time and events.”

She is working toward completing a book of this massive series of work, writing, editing, scanning film and printing to that end. While she is no longer photographing the family, she’s still in contact with them.

While documentary in intent, her photographic approach goes beyond this, as an evocation of life in all its uneven disparities, joys and messes. “When people ask me what I photograph, I explain to them that I mostly feel driven to pick up my camera to photograph those whom I care for. Most often, the response either deepens the conversation, or ends the conversation,” she says.

In a way, this long-term project is like a visual version of a classic, multi-character novel, one that spans many years, like something from Dickens or Steinbeck. Appel asserts that her images indeed “tell a narrative, and the story moves forward in time. The impact of the images is wholly dependent upon time.”

With other projects that include work on artist Keith Haring, depictions the reveal the topic of gratitude, and covering, in her signature heartfelt way the Occupy Movement through her photo essay “The Occupy Portraits,” Appel creates unique, visceral photographic work that records emotional history as well as its physical embodiment.

With this iteration of The Mexico Journeys, the Palos Verdes Art Center gallery exhibit will feature, along with other works, the installation of three 4 x 6-foot photo murals, and one 10 x 4-foot photo mural, printed at the photo lab Appel has recently opened in San Pedro.

The exhibition coincides with the 90th year of the Palos Verdes Arts Center.

 Annie Appel: The Mexico Journeys – Carmelita opens July 24th 6 – 9 p.m. at PVAC, located at 5504 Crestridge Rd, Rancho Palos Verdes, just off Crenshaw Boulevard; take the 110 freeway south from DTLA.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist

Cultural Undertow Will Pull You In

Posted on by Diversions LA

There is something quite wonderful in the Cultural Undertow, something that allows the viewer to be pulled into the waters of observation willingly, and rebaptized in them. Curated by artist Narsiso Martinez, at Luna Anais Gallery in the Tin Flats exhibition space, Cultural Undertow offers a variety of works by two exciting LA-based artists, Gloria Gem Sánchez and Tidawhitney Lek.

Working in acrylic and oil, Lek’s exquisitely rendered figurative works shape involving depictions of viscerally recognizable moments in time, each filtered through a highly feminine and feminist sensibility. In one painting, a sinewy man, looking away from the viewer, glancing back toward a sunset sky, is carrying a bright pink bucket and one very large koi in Lek’s “Between the Bucket and the Sun.”

In another, a female cat and dog, rear ends directed our way, vibrant sky and brilliant orange and yellow flowers as background, serve as a prescient double entendre in “The Pussy and the Bitch.” In another lovely work, “Encounter,” dark clouds rim an intense patch of blue, and a wall, topped by flowers, separate a woman’s face from the reaching, hands and multi-colored nails of another woman on the other side of the wall. It’s both elliptical short story and mystery – they could be a couple separated but longing to see one another, they could wish each other harm. The dark clouds and that brilliant sky – it portends many things.

Regardless of subject, Lek’s use of startlingly vivid color, floral elements, and an underpinning of longing mark her as fresh and fascinating, a highly original talent taking both the figurative and the feminist to an entirely new and heightened level.

Sanchez’s work is entirely different, and yet Martinez’ thoughtful, conversational curation binds the two artists’ works into a cohesive and immersive experience. Sanchez offers a variety of lush mediums here. Her richly blue cyanotypes are haunting, some, as in the otherworldly figure revealed in “Twin Spirit” (far left), literally seem so; others are more abstract. Her archival photographs, like Lek’s paintings, revel in original portrayals of floral elements that celebrate personal heritage.

Perhaps most involving are her mixed media works, from woven, vividly colored wall work such as the tapestry that is “Nocturne Before Dawn” to her more sculptural work, each evoking something of the mystical and ritualistic, like “Araw (Sun),” consisting of a mix of shed snakeskin, bamboo, hojas de maiz, and faux hair. There is a strong element of the spiritual, even mystical, in each of these works.

Both artists’ work arises in part from their family’s cultural roots; for Sanchez it is a Xicana-Filipina heritage and for Lek, it is Cambodian. Martinez, having celebrated his own heritage through art, including a profound sense of respect and honor revealed in paintings of Mexican farmworkers in America, is no stranger to introducing intelligent cultural references and encouraging a broadening of viewer understanding and experience through art. His attention to intimate detail and his passionate respect for often under-represented communities is fully evident in this gracious, 18-work show.

And while representing those outside the standard artistic mainstream, Cultural Undertow also serves as a galvanizing focal point for the diversity, beauty, and electrifying wonder that celebrates a variety of family backgrounds as well as an intensely feminine point of view. Perhaps most profoundly of all, the art allows us to see all of these elements as part of a beautiful, universally relatable and recognizable whole.

The exhibition is on view at Luna Anais at Tin Flats, located at 1989 Blake Avenue, Los Angeles,  through July 24th.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

Entwined Roots: Symbiotic Relationships – Magical Art from Gary Brewer & Aline Mare

Posted on by Diversions LA
Works of Mare, left, Brewer, right

Originally scheduled to open when COVID-19 hit in 2020, through June 4th this lustrous collection of works is now viewable at Wonzimer Gallery in DTLA. The article and most of the photos are taken from its earlier frozen-in-time incarnation, but it is expertly curated at Wonzimer.

The radiantly lovely works of Gary Brewer and Aline Mare are a fine collection by married artists enmeshed in a beautiful dance of passionate art and companionship.

Aline Mare

Entwined Roots: Symbiotic Relationships is a tribute to both artists’ works, individually and viewed together.

Aline Mare

Mare works in hypnotically dense, fabulously fecund mixed media; Brewer in oil on canvas. Both are abstract artists, each non-figuative piece here is nonetheless rooted with recognizable elements from their artistic pasts that are sublimely figurative images of nature.

Gary Brewer

Their palettes are rich, their sense of beauty sublime. There is a wildness in both artists’ works that defies categorization, that welcomes the subversive and the sweet in equal measures.

One can view the cosmos or the untamed sensuality of nature in both artists’ works. Mare gives us a universe in a forest floor; a galaxy within a rain soaked garden. Brewer gives us twined cells, seeds and flowers, twisted cords of natural beauty that are larger than life. Both create works that flow in a fine and fanastical series of perfectly calibrated colors and patterns that are almost hypnotic.

Mare’s “Green Seeded” combines a delicate, evocative painted background with photographic images of seeds and images from space. Layers of paint shift the image so that the viewer is both above, beyond, and within the it; we are seeing the vast and infinite in the small and perfect.

Brewer’s works here feel more decidely floral, but what a fierce and marvelous series of blooms these are. In his “Constellation,” or in “Seeds of Life,” we see orchids that seem to burst from the canvas with a muscular life-force. These flowers are no swoony, scented bouquet, but rather vital, living entities.

Brewer, above; Mare, below

Where Brewer works in vastly large canvases depicting what could be minute objects – petals, seeds, flowers – writ large, Mare’s smaller works depict a strange and tumultous vastness contained in a smaller space. Both artists seem to work in a kind of synchronistic counterpoint, creating a sense of unseen wonder and hidden, intertwined gestural relationships.

And speaking of relationships, their own – to each other, to their art, to the way in which they seem to play off one another both in life and in this exhibition, is intrinsic to this exhibition. It is a great ritual alchemy celebrating the “other” within all of us.

Both artists invite the viewer – or perhaps the correct word here is compel – to go beyond surface perceptions and into a deeper, stranger, more wonderous realm: that of intertwined roots of life and love and into the celestial, where words may be inchoate but beauty falls like a welcoming, luminous light.

Now that this exhibition is no longer in COVID limbo, the life force it brings to the viewer cannot be constrained. Drink it in deeply, in the heart of downtown.

Wonzimer is located at 621 S Olive St, Los Angeles, CA 90014 – no appointment is necessary; check open hours; through June 4th.

  • Genie Davis; Photos at Wonzimer by Genie Davis; photos provided by the artists of individual works.