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.

It’s a Sign of the Times – the Art of Scott Froschauer

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Scott Froschauer makes signs. But unlike a standard business or road sign, his are art – often meditative, always insightful. According to the artist, “The signs are an intersection of two ideas for me. One is the street art that I’ve been doing for years. The main idea behind that has always been to offset the alienating messages of advertising, and to place constructive and positive messages in our culture where there is a vacuum. The other idea comes from the large-scale public art that I create. Making large public art sculptures requires navigating a lot of bureaucracy.”

Froschauer explains that “If I wanted to put a sculpture of a giant duck in Griffith Park it would take a lot of time and money to make the duck, but it could take much more time and money to get the necessary approvals and engineering to satisfy the red tape involved. The street signs I create are fabricated and installed to Department of Transportation specifications.” In short, the city has already approved the engineering of these types of signs. “Every city already has ‘Stop’ signs in it, so they have a template for how to approve them,” he notes. “I’m hijacking that approval process to streamline the costs and timelines for the installation of my work.”


New this year, Froschauer has added neon work to his repertoire, a large amount of credit for which he gives to his gallerist, Wallspace Gallery’s Valda Lake. The large-scale works dazzle the median of Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, directing viewers to “One Love” and “Relax, UROK.”

“She found the opportunity and we presented the idea together to the City of West Hollywood,” he reports. “She had experience with fabricating neon through an amazing shop named SignographUSA, run by Terry Abrahamian. I have extensive experience in navigating the public art application process, and together we worked with the city to get those pieces in. I am so excited for that installation. I think it has to be the highest visibility work I’ve ever done. More people see those pieces every day than I can even imagine.”


Froschauer also has a large new work in the work-out room of the main student building at University of California, Irvine in Orange County. Resembling a massive green and white freeway sign, the 22-foot-long piece reads “All We Have Is – Now, All We Ever Had Is – Now.”

 “I’ve had that design for a while and done it in several sizes. It’s actually the design of my business card. The words come from a Flaming Lips song. The first time I used those words was on a little card I made for Burning Man years ago. When I met someone new – which happens constantly at Burning Man, if we had a great conversation – which often happens at Burning Man, I would memorialize the meeting by handing the new friend a little card with those words on it. I continued to carry the cards around with me even after Burning Man was over, and I would give them out to people for different reasons. I think of the sign as one of those highway signs that tells you how far it is to a particular city. The name of the piece is ‘How Far to Now?’”


Also new for Froschauer: NFTS, which he terms “complex. I decided to get into them because I like understanding different ideas and I like experimenting with different art forms. One of the elements of my The Word on The Street series of street signs is that I create them in a wide range of formats in a wide range of price points. The huge neon pieces, or the installation at UC Irvine are all pretty expensive and out of reach for most people. Even the [regular] full-scale signs can be a stretch. But I also take the ideas and produce them as smaller signs, which are much more affordable and really a better scale for having in someone’s home.”

These pieces are available as pins, necklaces, shirts and stickers. “I’ve always seen the work as an idea that can be represented in a wide range of mediums. NFTs are an extension of that philosophy. I currently see my NFTs the way I see my stickers and they are priced accordingly. I’m still learning what the art form of NFTs is. It’s something new, not necessarily like anything we’ve seen before. It will evolve,” he says.

Froschauer offers an explanation of the burgeoning phenomena that makes far more sense of the form than any commonly given. “The way I explain it to my artist friends who are trying to figure it out, is that for many of us, it’s like when the first cameras came out. An artist might take the new technology and take a photograph of a painting, because that was something they knew was ‘good art.’ But photography is an art form of its own, and it took time for that to emerge. Right now, I think a lot of NFTs (maybe even my own) are just photographs of paintings. I learn more every day.”


Despite the new technology for Froschauer, from neon to NFTs, the pandemic itself has not made a large impact in the type of work he creates as an artist. “One thing I get from people a lot is that my work is so timely. Things like ‘We really need this, especially now.’ I think that was reinforced by the pandemic. But, to me, we’ve always needed it. I started doing this work a while ago and it was really about my own growth. It was about messages that I needed to hear,” he asserts. “The pandemic certainly gave us all opportunities to dig a little deeper, so that was positive for my work, and there were certainly some public art opportunities that came up because of the move to outdoor events.”

And speaking of outdoor events, he also exhibited in the outdoor High Beams show in the parking lot adjoining the Bendix Building in DTLA. The exhibition contained the work of a number of art collectives and gallery spaces; he showed with 515 Bendix, invited by Chelsea Boxwell. The walk-through/drive-through event was, he notes “a great forum for my street signs. I love getting my art out any way I can and I love working with other artists. I’ll be taking any opportunities I get for those kinds of shows. There’s currently a street art show under the connector from the 5 South to the 110 that is an amazing collection of artists. I was proud to be invited to join them for that.” That exhibition, which has not seen official promotion, Froschauer is happy to offer further details about to those interested in viewing.

Inspired by the art and philosophy of others, and “by the countless people I see doing the work to educate the world about the complex hold our culture has on us,” Froschauer has a wide variety of work in the pipeline and applies to calls for art on an on-going basis. “I try and say yes to everything that comes my way,” he says.

And one of the things he always says yes to is the idea of gifting which is another outgrowth of his experience at Burning Man, which he has attended since 2004. “The idea is that everything is Gifted. When you barter there is an expectation of a return, but when you Gift there’s no expectation of a return, you just give and enjoy the process of giving…I always carry around things to gift, stickers, little cards anything that I think might bring some joy to someone. It’s funny when someone demands to pay me for gifting them something, they don’t realize that what I’m getting from the gifting process is better than the money.”

And one of the artist’s gifts that keep on giving are his signs – just right for these and all times.

  • Genie Davis; most images provided by Scott Froschauer; West Hollywood Neon shots, Darren Stone

Sanctuary of the Aftermath – A Dazzling Exhibition of Land, Sea, and Spirit

Posted on by Diversions LA

Now through June 12th, both virtually and in person by appointment, Sanctuary of the Aftermath at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro brings viewers to the ocean, the earth, and heavenward. It’s a beautiful exhibition featuring the work of ten visual and one audio artist: David Hollen, Ibuki Kuramochi, Jason Jenn, Rosalyn Myles, Vojislav Radovanovic, Allison Ragguette, Kayla Tange, Nica Aquino, Jeff Frost Anita Getzler, and an audio work by Joseph Carrillo.

Color palettes are muted, natural materials are featured, and motion-filled images predominate – whether a mutable, participatory Zen garden, an astoundingly lovely video, or the dream-like sense of floating induced by audio soundscape. Within that motion is a sense of connection – between earth, ocean, heaven; between humans and the environment; between the living and the dead. It powerfully evokes the senes of connectedness long missing during the preceding year, and as the title implies, what sanctuary and relief we are now able to find. Art itself seems key to provide both.

Raguette’s large scale sculptural wall art, “Cross Section Eclipse” is glorious and eerie, a magical view of an underwater kingdom, a fragile yet fierce connected ecosystem.

Tange’s interactive Zen garden and woven “The Rise and Fall of Decadence” have an equally sea-centric appearance, meditative and peaceful, with the woven work reminiscent of fishermen’s nets.

It is an island of family that forms Aquino’s “A 2020 Reflection,” shaped from a window of video, flickering LED candles, flowers, and fruit – all creating a personal altar of healing, but one that seems rooted in the culture of an island home.

Hollen’s “Indra’s Net” reminds the viewer of sea-grass or driftwood, revealing the viewer examining the work, the reflective glass balls placed within the piece add to the sense of finding a cluster of objects washed up from the sea.

Partially hidden behind blackened branches from a recent wildfire, a speaker plays Carrillo’s hypnotic auditory composition. As the music trembles, rises, and falls, the listener is reminded of the tidal pulse of the sea and the rush of a flaring fire; it seems to speak of the transitory nature of time, change, and life itself.

Fully rooted in the earth but offering an almost hallucinogenic and soaring vision is the large screen video that pulls viewers into the gallery space behind it. Jeff Frost’s “Circle of Abstract Ritual,” takes viewers on a journey through 300,000 still photos which shift and spin through a 12-minute work that leads from the Slabs beyond the Salton Sea and desert ruins to the city and back again.

The works unfolding beyond the film include pieces by curators Radovanovic and Jenn. Radovanovic’s “Descent of the Holy Spirit,” takes us from our own temporal realm to heaven, with a ladder serving as a sense of passage from the heap of Angel’s Gate park soil in which it is rooted past glittering stars hung on the gallery wall, and up a ladder past rungs tied with jewel-like glass jars bearing flames on a transcendent journey.

Likewise site-specific is Jenn’s “Angel’s Gate Leaf Mandala” which uses dried leaves plucked from the grounds of Angel’s Gate Park to form a meticulous, spiritual spiral transformed by the use of gold and copper leaf and a sparkling royal purple.

Myles’ “Pieces of Us,” rejoices in an abundance of harvest with careful compositional placement of collecting baskets and dried peas. But above these hang ghostly, lacy shapes that that recall the passing of those who gathered past harvests.

Getzler’s work ties land and sea, the living and the dead, with a series of works, “Evocation 1, 2, and 3.”

Dried rose petals are kept in bottles, stored in a drawer, and the central focus of a video elegy filmed by Radovanovic and Jenn.

In the video work, filmed with the glow of Magic Hour sunset around her, the artist honors the dead by tossing handfuls of petals into the ocean, as the Jewish prayer for the dead is performed on the soundtrack.

Kuramochi’s “The Memory of Physicality” (above) links viewers fully back to the vicissitudes and the tenuousness of life with a galvanizing video work essentially framed by rivulets and drifts of human hair that speak to loss and growth and an essential, soul-healing shearing.

Speaking to both the spirit and the strength of sea, earth, and human survival, of this life and the afterlife, Sanctuary of the Aftermath is an exceptional show, one that dances with passion while remarkably exuding a sense of welcoming peace. Don’t miss.

Ann Weber, above

And while you’re at Angel’s Gate, definitely take in the exhibition of studio artists’ work, re-adaptations, which also explores connection, reinvention, and relationship. Exhibiting in this lovely show, in a variety of mediums, are Phoebe Barnum, Delora Bertsch, Lynn Doran, Beth Elliott, Henry Krusoe, Vanessa Madrid, Tim Maxeiner, W.S. Milner, Lowell Nickel, Michelle Seo, Nancy Voegeli-Curran, and Ann Weber.

The exhibition is located at Angels Gate Cultural Center,
3601 S Gaffey St, San Pedro.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis