Margaret Lazzari Takes Viewers Along on a Perilous Journey at USC Fisher Gallery

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“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, as least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”   Susan Sontag  – Illness as Metaphor

When Margaret Lazzari received her diagnosis of breast cancer in 2003, she crossed over into the frightening and disorienting kingdom of the sick. A classically trained figurative painter and masterful draftsman, she began a body of work to help her sort her feelings -much like artists Hannah Wilke and Robert Mapplethorpe who also tracked their illnesses with powerful images. Over two years she created over 30 paintings, drawings and videos which traced her internal and external journey towards wellness and recovery with grace, honesty and bravery. These works are paradoxically both raw and highly refined, gorgeous and terrifying, portraying actual physical changes that surgery and chemotherapy created in and on her body: and tracing the unseen changes that reverberated in her soul. The exhibition Margaret Lazzari: The Cancer Series, is at USC Fisher Gallery through May 10th, 2024.

Lazzari, a very private person, noted in her catalog interview with Assistant Curator Danielle Sommer that sharing these personal images of her nude body made her uncomfortable and vulnerable, but she deemed it necessary to document the stages of her perilous journey. Four of the earliest works here are a series of self- portraits that present her before and after pictures as she loses her hair from the effects of chemotherapy. The harrowing 2003 painting “Self-Portrait in Blood Red” has her literally up to her ears in blood like a glass vessel filled with liquid.

Her epic large-scale multi-figure drawing “Being Ill as a Dance” is reminiscent of Old Masters figure studies with the bald and androgynous nude or nearly nude figures twisting and reaching out into the unknown, much like dancers about to execute a turn. But what is this dance Lazzari alludes to: the dance between health and sickness, between spirituality and science, between anxiety and equilibrium, between darkness and light? Lazzari suggests it’s a mélange of all of these wild swings of emotion that one experiences – a rough roller coaster of ups and downs, twists and turns to navigate.

Lazzari further explores this loss of stability in a remarkable animated video that brings her drawings to life, accumulating stroke by stroke as the image reappears and then disappears. The figures literally move as they sink, twist and fall through space. The accompanying soundtrack provides emotional clues to interior thoughts and feelings. The sound of ragged breaths with long pauses suddenly punctuated by loud gasps is powerful, suggesting attempts to control panic with yogic breathing and failing time and again. Images are erased, then redrawn as the bodies tumble from the upper left towards the bottom like the man who fell from earth. But then, magically, colors appear intermittingly shifting from achromatic to color. Images of the iconic Venus De Milo pop up reminding us that she too was found missing parts of her anatomy, though deemed beautiful anyway. The soundtrack turns upbeat and inventive, channeling early radio sound effects that complement the fragmentary flashing imagery. A subliminal image of the artist herself in a blue bathing suit briefly appears and the video which starts in panicky imagery ends on a hopeful note of hard- won recovery.

During her many hospital and doctor visits, Lazzari became fascinated with the color imaging of radiology tests, showing the cancer and the energy in her body which eventually led her to move from figuration to abstraction in her work. In the transitional painting “Tendrils,” 2006, acrylic on canvas, she paints vibrant, robust plants, almost looking like water lilies, with smiling faces, barely visible towards the bottom, maybe reflections in water or ghost-like images shining through the water. Perhaps images of the artist herself as she banishes cancer from her body and celebrates.

Lazzari wrote in the catalog “I want these paintings to speak to a broad audience to address whatever fear and sickness they may have… Whatever you are feeling, may it always include hope.” The artist herself has gone from the kingdom of the sick to the kingdom of the well and expertly documented the perilous but ultimately rewarding journey with her sumptuous and thoughtful paintings, drawings and brave videos. This exhibit and the journey it chronicles is a rich gift to the viewer from the ever generous and talented Margaret Lazzari.

Nancy Kay Turner;  Photos by Nancy Kay Turner

Sigma Shines at Roswell Space

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Nancy Kay Turner and Michael Falzone are expertly paired in two solo shows now at Roswell Space through April 14th.  Sigma features work that touches on memory and the mysterious in an exhibit that utilizes found objects and memorabilia as well as fascinating artistic form.

Turner fully inhabits a world that touches on the illusions of memory – and how time changes all. There’s a current of magical realism in her work as well. Here working primarily earth tones, the artist offers framed mixed media works that include the abandoned antique photographs of strangers with a variety of other media, including gold leaf, collage materials, feathers, fabric, bits of wallpaper, even a pair of antique eyeglasses and a sheet of music.

One image features Teddy Roosevelt, and a message of despair scrawled in years long past.

Viewers are drawn to the mystery and the recognizable as well as the strange; in her work we are all one generation – or ten – away from being reappropriated as the grand ghosts of imagination.

A massive series of Turner’s scrolls descends from one wall as the viewer enters the gallery. Created from ink and coffee dyed rice paper on embossed wallpaper with mixed media, the 89″ by 63″ triptych “Memory Palace Totemic Scroll” descends from a thin bamboo rod and graces us with a sense of quiet remembrance that is both solemn and sweet. It is a glimpse through the curtains of time and a look at the world beyond it.

Falzone’s metal and wood sculptures are primarily long and thin, evocative sentinels standing at the portal, as it were. “Cat Man & Bird” embodies all three forms of being, with wit and understanding. He, too, touches on magical realism and remembrance.

“Woman in Red,” with eyebrows raised on a lustrous metal face, offers a quizzical guidance.

“Cat Man and Snake” presents a vivid reptile and elements reminiscent of Native American figures that are both welcoming and tributory.

Whether freestanding floor pieces or geared to a tabletop pedestal, each piece is a uniquely engrossing sculpture that compel with their narrative quality. Falzone also offers several wood on panel wall works, as well.

Both Falzone and Turner draw the eye and engage the spirit, evoking other places than this, realms both fantastical and just out of reach, possessing a fierce attraction that can only be called the magic of original art and its complex juncture with the storytelling of dreams.

Curated by gallerist Jonna Lee, Sigma will host a closing on April 14 from 2-4 p.m. and is open any time by appointment.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Charles Derenne Inhabits Uncharted Territory

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Green and lush, fecund and fabulous, artist Charles Derenne claims territory that is dream-like and wistful in a magical space. Using landscape paintings and photographic collage, as well as a brilliant conception of a leafy vending machine selling Poloroid images of fictional land, Derenne invites viewers into unclaimed spaces of both self and environmental exploration.

In his just-closed exhibition at Wonzimer Gallery, Uncharted, Derenne offers an immersive exhibition about humanity’s impact on wilderness landscapes, emotional and spiritual landscapes, and the wonder of the earth itself.

Whether traditional paintings or encompassing draped canvas as in his “Desert de Coronel,” a backdrop with a social-media-perfect chair placed in front of it, the artist invites viewers to inhabit his radiant world.

He shapes that world from a variety of real-life and imagined spaces, from Pasadena’s Colorado Bridge to Echo Park, but perhaps the centerpiece of this exhibition is his large scale “From the courtyard,” in which a pyramid of white takes central focus, lined with palms, an entirely uninhabited yet human-made space.  In the prominent right foreground, there is one creature astir – a fly.

Representing the solitude of the artist’s studio as well as the welcoming branches of a tangled forest, the theme most uncharted here is that of sanctuary, a place still being searched for, in an urban park or mysterious jungle. Along with the rich greenery on land, Derenne offers a series of wistful cloudscapes, in pale blues and white.  There is also a billboard of sorts, advertising “Land & Air for Sale – Cash Only.” One can sense such a time coming.

Parisian-born, the Los Angeles-based Derenne’s first LA solo show is impressionistic and dreamy, with a green and blue palette that soothes and surrounds the viewer. There are two notable exceptions in the exhibition: one is the diorama of “Picnic at Hermit Falls,” a miniature free-standing landscape that along the hilly green space it shapes, also includes the detritus of a tossed beer can. The pristine can never remain quite perfect once humankind is involved.

The other exception is a series of silver gelatin print photographs within large segments of torn paper, through the holes of which the darkness of humanity’s effect on natural life is revealed, such as graffiti carved into the trunks of trees.

Infused with a sense of longing and poetry, Derenne’s work delves deep into the wonders of nature, the pending loss of our ability to connect with same, and the sense of isolation and loneliness that disconnection shapes in our lives. Entering the exhibition and encountering Derenne’s delicious weaving of place and personhood, his sensitive yet humorous view of nature vs. human nature, is an experience to be savored, perhaps pressed in the book of memory in the same way in which we might save a fragile leaf or flower between pages long unread.

We had the pleasure of taking in the artist’s world after dark, with a candlelit dinner at the gallery. It’s exciting to see that along with the environment the artist created, Wonzimer is continuing to create its own world for artists and viewers to contemplate as well.

Missed Derenne’s work in person? Check out the 3D virtual exhibition here. 

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

Quick Take – Santa Ana’s OCCCA Offers An Exciting Urban Closing Tonight

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URBAN EXPRESSION is a vibrant, exciting mix of photography, installation, video, painted, and collage works. As such it successfully explores a wide range of themes from urban spaces to culture and social issues and the personal. This is fresh and fine work.

Both intimate and experimental – as well as experiential – the show was juried by Kelly RISK Graval. Artists include:  Orell Anderson, Timothy Armstrong, Audineh Asaf, Aaron Bernard, Leslie Brown, Diane Cockerill, Gianne de Genevraye, Voytek Glinkowski, Tanner Goldbeck, Rob Grad, Kara Greenwell, Brian Hernandez E.E. Jacks, Nicola Katsikis, Jason Leith, Kathe Madrigal, Don Manderson, Debra Manville, Stuart McCall, Maidy Morhous, Veru Narula, Robin Repp, Gareth Seigel, Stephanie Sydney, Randy Wheeler, and Elyse Wyman.

Among the standouts were Jason Leith‘s moving charcoal and acrylic on tent fly “Andy and Ozzy: Grieving and Blessing,” among other powerful, central work in the exhibition by this artist…

and Elyse Wyman’s merging of photography with plastic and acrylic and collage, with the human torso presenting a landscape and an admonishment to “Watch Downhill Speed.”

Diane Cockerill’s evocative, involving street photography includes her breathtaking full color “Eye Catching,” a capture of a street mural with a homeless man passing grey and unseen in the foreground; her black and white “Lost Angeles” also uses a wonderful combination of street scene with street art.

Stephanie Sydney’s “Triple Exposure two” is a wild splash of color in an entirely urban sea that vibrates with intensity;  terrific images from Rob Grad and Tanner Goldbeck were also espeically memorable.

Can’t make in person? Visit a 3D view of the exhibition here. 

Elsewhere in Santa Ana, the Grand Central Art Center is currently showing, through May 12th, a riveting video essay by Coco Fusco “Your Eyes Will Be An Empty Word,” and Hings Lim’s fierce “Specter at the Gate,”  evoking an often forgotten event on the 1906 burning of Santa Ana’s Chinatown.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis