Spring/Break Art Fair is always THE most inventive and unique of the art fairs in Los Angeles, and this year is no exception. Charming, eclectic, witty, and strange – that can sum up any number of the different specifically curated cubicles of art at the 2023 edition, held in a former warehouse space at Adams Blvd. and La Cienega. Now in its 12th year, the fair calls itself a “curator driven” art show, and it is: each of the spaces is immersive once you take a step inside.
Take a look:
Emily Silver (below) thinks in pink…
There was also a textural desert from Nina K. Ekman and other artists …
Paintings and Sculptures by Brooke McGowen make up a “Rave Wave” …
Greg Haberny made wooden portraits…
Kathleen Henderson’s “Gummed Reverse” is a fine exhibition of evocative oil stick drawings at Los Angeles-based galleryTrack 16’s space, while curated yby Rokhsane Hovaida, Yasmine K. Kasem creates large scale woven tapestries.
A relatively new art scene is growing in Boston, including the Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, (above) who offers “In Mother’s Arms,” featuring the work of Alex MClay and Cassandra C. Jones.
Brittany Ryan’s lush, classic scultpural works were softly hued; news leadlines were the subject of Max Rippon’s smart “Save the Date.”
Both Dave Alexander and David Bazanova as well as Marianna Peragallow and Thomas Martinez Pilnik offered fresh and amusing, smart, engaging works.
Taylor Lee Nicholson’s “Yard Sale” curated by Jonell Logan and Janet Loren Hill was among my favorite exhibition spaces, fanciful, fun, and of-the-moment all at once.
“The Hidden Influence of a Rebirth” used electrical components to create art that evoked sea life.
Spencer Gilbert took viewers “Far From Home.”
The exhibition space “Simulations of the Sacred” brought outstanding neon figurative work to the fair.
And “Connoissseurs of the Street” created a vibrant environment.
Another of my favorite spaces made me laugh out loud – meet Mark Zuckerberg holding forth, our “Beloved Leader” by artist David Howe, curated by Jac Lahav.
If you want original, reasonably priced art, fanciful settings, and the occasional scatological creation, look no farther than Spring Break. Featuring exhibitors primarily from LA, San Francisco, New York, and even one gallery from a newly burgeoning Boston scene, take a look at the vibrant colors, immersive installations. and clever, entertaining artworks here. It’s an original – and that’s worth taking a break for.
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.
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
Gay Summer Rick
Susan Lizotte
Alexandra Dillon
Richard S. Chow
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.
Climate change has made the idea of leaving Eden, our planet earth, all too real a prospect. What happens to the flora and fauna, the animal life – including the human animal – if we allow the continued environmental apocalypse to continue? Art has often stood in the forefront of calling attention to and presenting an action call for salient issues. It has awakened viewers to the necessity for change, to the beauty of the world around us, and provided a sense of hope for the future. So, too, does Leaving Eden, coming February 11th to Keystone Gallery in Lincoln Heights.
The collaborative exhibition between Samuelle Richardson and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic will fill viewers with the joy of Richardson’s expressive textile animals and Petrovic’s immersive flowers, trees, and glistening waters. Gallery visitors will move – as the flourishing creatures and landscape in this art world do – from their lush, green, and blue Eden to a dry, desert world, where all life must struggle for food and water — with hope that they can return to Eden again.
Divided into two rooms: an Edenic garden and a desert filled with Joshua Trees and cacti, the two artists have combined their gifts to create a vision to cherish and consider, one that expresses the beauty of nature and our vital need to protect it.
Richardson describes the journey viewers will take as a circular one, revealing what it is like to live in and leave our Eden and then try to create a more “pristine world…a circular journey back to square one [where] flora and fauna prevail.”
Petrovic says “As an immigrant, I am in search for an idyllic version of the home that I have lost due to war. My realization was that the real home for all of us is the Earth, and for me, it represents Eden, the most diverse and idyllic garden of all.” To prepare for the exhibition, she began to draw studies of plants in Huntington Gardens, Joshua Tree, the Salton Sea, and Oahu, Hawaii. She adds that mythologically the “idea of Eden is connected to the human need for a place of immortality, an ideal place for human habitation with lush beauty, and it exists not just in Christianity but… is [expressed as] Jannāt ʿAdni in the Quran or [as] Pure Lands in Buddhism…in all of these gardens, there are always references to infinity and transformation.”
Both artists express that sense of transformation in their work. For Richardson, “New work begins with a mental picture of the subject, then I research pictures that express the type of character I want. I build up each figure in stages to achieve gesture and expression, working with the pictures as a bridge to discovery.” Here you will see lions, birds, wild dogs, and even a few humans created by the artist.
Petrovic was in part inspired to create her mixed media sculptures of zip ties and dry natural plants from references to the Byzantine traditional blue depictions of Eden, with video installation elements culled from her Oahu and Big Island residencies, while the desert installation was inspired by the Salton Sea and it’s “white shore with fish skeletons turned into mineral dust,” and uses a white, orange, and blue palette – skeletons, sun and sky – in her work in the Desert room.
Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to interact with some of Petrovic’s work through AR and the use of iPads in the exhibition or through their own smart phones. The AR depictions reveal dry dirt transforming with a live, growing seedling, what she calls a “symbolic shift of the wheel of fortune from global catastrophe to renewal and healing.”
Richardson and Petrovic greatly enjoyed working together on this project. “It’s uncanny how much Snezana and I have in common regarding our worldview and how we have advanced as artists. Our collaboration also included outings to Huntington Gardens to observe and compare our impressions on nature,” Richardson says.
Petrovic relates that “We would immerse ourselves in different parts of the gardens, and have conversations related to the nature of different environments, desert versus rain forest. We were looking at the shapes and relationships between flora and negative spaces…we shared some images of our previous works and investigated the works of Henri Rousseau and Hieronymus Bosch.”
She adds that “Sam’s dogs, tigers and birds are bringing my environments and sculptural installations to life. I cannot wait to see all of them being brought together into this unique project!”
Richardson brought to the exhibition new ideas inspired from a recent residency in Rome, and a fascination with the Etruscan culture, which Petrovic also finds compelling. “We both agree that our creations are coming from the ‘same world’ of connectedness to feminine history as well as our own past design experiences. Sam’s fashion industry experiences brought a deep understanding of patterning, fabric and thread use into her sculptures. My interest in the relationship between space versus object is from professional experience as a production/set and costume designer,” Petrovic relates.
Richardson has added to her wire, foam, and fabric sculptures – with the “fabric covering my work emulating glaze on ceramic” with a new artistic expression – in woodwork. “I am building shapes that resemble boats, joining and cutting pine lumber [for the exhibition.]”
Petrovic has included her latest experiments in organic bioplastic, also using dry plants and palm leaves in the exhibition. She says taht she has long been driven toward reimagining the future, beginning with a residency at the Pomona Art Colony under Judy Chicago examining the “current and future scientific predicament of global ecological catastrophe…if we do not protect our home, there will be nowhere to go. Leaving Eden was a natural progression of my exploration of gardens and homes within the looming danger of climate change and plastic overuse. It added another layer to my imagined world of the future. I see this whole experience as a love poem to the Earth, our own impermanence and existence that might have a chance for a replay.”
Richardson, Petrovic, and I, as conceptualizing curator, all encourage you to visit our Eden and its aftermath and look toward that replay, one which our world all too dearly needs.
Leaving Eden holds its opening Saturday, February 11th from 6 to 9 p.m.; an artist’s talk and closing event will be held Saturday, February 25th at 4 p.m. Additional gallery hours Thursday-Sunday by appointment.
Keystone Gallery is located at 338 S Avenue 16, Los Angeles, CA 90031
Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and Samuelle Richardson
