Corey Helford Gallery: Something Edgy This Way Comes

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Three new shows opened last Saturday at Corey Helford Gallery:  large scale exhibitions by Japanese artist Kazuki Takamatsu, pop surrealist painter Camilla d’Errico, and Japanese artist Hirabayashi Takahiro.

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Camilla d’Errico’s “Dances with Dreams” is a candy colored trip into the subconscious. Evoking fairy tales and rainbows, these surreal and delicate pieces reveal dreams and the subconscious mind.

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“I wanted to created a relationship about dreams,” d’Errico says. “The girls with eyes open are dreaming. With their eyes closed, that’s a dream the viewer is having, it’s up for interpretation. I want the purpose of those pieces to be that you tell yourself a story. The girls with their eyes covered are waking dreams. That is how we live our lives, in a dream-like state.”

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Inspired as a child by the work of Brian Froud, an English fantasy illustrator,  d’Errico “looked for magic in the real world. It’s more interesting thinking that magic exists.” Certainly her works create their own magic.

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“Decoration Armament,” which spread across the cavernous main gallery at Corey Helford,  is his third solo show for the gallery. Ghostly and ethereal the monochrome images are startling, like x-rays for the soul. But the inspiration for these works is surprising. Kazuki Takamatsu  showed in LA two years ago and was drawn to the fashions worn by visitors to the gallery.

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“It was all so attractive to him,” his translator explained, “that he was inspired to create the figures in this exhibition based on that experience.” Another inspiration, and one more easily observed: “He also thinks about the afterlife. About good and evil. The skull in some works is a symbol of the narrative of evil.”

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Hirabayashi Takahiro’s “Trial of Souls” is lush, hyper-realistic work, dealing with the borders between sky, land and sea, man and nature, childhood and adulthood. The artist chooses young girls as his main subjects, viewing them as guides or guardians for beings in transition.

Corey Helford is often the spot for edgy, interesting, intense, and emotionally consuming exhibitions that defy categorization. This trio of solo shows certainly fits that bill. These experiential exhibitions run until May 21, and the gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday.

Corey Helford Gallery is located at 541 S. Anderson Street in Los Angeles.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Jack Burke

Shag, Baby: Jungle Drums Collection at Corey Helford Gallery

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Shag at Jungle Drums – photo: Jack Burke 

There he is, Shag, a.k.a. Josh Agle, at the opening of his vibrant Jungle Drums collection in the main gallery of the Corey Helford Gallery last Saturday night. Inspired by vintage 1950s era pin-up decals, and adding the spin that women are always in control, diving into the exciting primitive world he evokes is an incredibly fun plunge to take.

But let’s start with a look at the gallery space itself: a cavernous warehouse just across the river from the Arts District, with 12,000 square feet of space. Bright and spacious, there was plenty of room to feel the immersive quality of Shag’s world, as well as view additional collections in Gallery 2 and 3.

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The packed house was “wild” for Shag’s large scale work.

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“Ever since humans tried to civilize themselves, they’re tried to connect with the past as well. The past being the jungle, the beginning. But they do this in an artificial fashion, they pump up the artificial level. I work with these themes, the jungle origin, consumerism, consumption,” the artist relates.

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“But unlike the original jungle environment, I balance male and female interaction.  And everything in this stylized version of our primitive past is artificial. I use nothing natural,” Shag says.

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“Every material used in these pieces is artificial, there are no natural fibers. On the masks, the hair is extruded plastic rubber polymer.”

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In this exhibition, Shag attests,  women are the Amazonian types in charge. They have tamed their jungle environments, their pets, their men. And the artist’s portrayals are, as he puts it, a good excuse “to paint women in sexy tiger fur outfits.”

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These works are all about 60s moderne style, the vivid saturated colors belie a super cool approach. The viewer is reminded of something a revisionist neo-feminist version of Sean Connery’s James Bond might have in his boudoir; something hanging at a hip art museum that the grown-up Flintstone kids might visit.

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Shag’s wonderfully detailed large scale paintings, his towering masks, are pure, unadultrated, imaginative fun. It wasn’t a surprise to find out that Shag was chosen to be the official artist for Disneyland’s 50th back in 2005.

His evocative world now on display at Corey Helford’s new space may not be a fit with Walt’s Magic Kingdom, but he has created a magical kingdom all the same. And for viewers opening night, the exhibition was one of the happiest art scenes on earth.

Meanwhile, in Gallery 2, below, another fine, small exhibition unfolds: Asymmetrical Diptych Party. Here, 20 artists displayed two piece works in a wide range of style, on a wider range of subjects.

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Current exhibitions at Corey Helford Gallery run through February 13 at:

571 S. Anderson Street, Los Angeles.

  • Genie Davis; All Photos: Jack Burke