Stay On It Never Stays Still

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Stay On It, curated by Heather Lowe at Keystone Art Projects, is awash in motion, kinetic, lenticular, video, neon crackle – and bright with color and light.

Fierce pink feathered leaves hang from Sung-Hee Son’s “Unbearable Lightness,” a towering fantasy tree with a spinning, motorized bust revolving at its heart, making the work at once flora and fauna. Lowe’s own “Silent Fargelli,” “Carousel Animales,” “Water Wheel” and the titular “Stay On It” are joy filled Ferris Wheel, carousel,  sea scape and toddler blocks. They are simply brilliant lenticular works, several featuring collaborative elements from Robert Stevens and Martin Van Diest. Lowe’s work here enchants and meditatively hypnotizes – it is both easy and exciting to watch them as they shift or spin or turn.

Van Diest himself offers programmable LED sculptures, the meditative, brilliantly colored “Chichen Itza” and “Nested Pyramids.” These vivid, involving pieces looked fresh from every angle.

Adele Mills’ untitled mixed media works, as well as her “My Face Is In Your Hands” and “How Soon is Now” are created from mixed media and fabric, and not technically moving. Nonetheless they appear to be, as wavering and transformative, depending on where the viewer casts an eye, as if they were a lenticular works. Nancy Ivanhoe’s mixed media pieces, including the evocative “Moonlight Over Inglewood,” “Ocean Wave,” and three works from her Color Waves series are created from acrylic paint and metal screen mesh, but appear like wind caught in time, ready to start blowing onward.

Ray Chang’s interactive and charming “Into the Night” and “Animated Peephole Cinema,” are both witty and sharp. Neon artist Linda Sue Price’s “Critacy” offers a stunning and surreal form of plant life with its neon crackles in perpetual motion, as if the plant was growing before our eyes. Robert Costanza’s mysterious alchemy pulses from “Dopamine” and “Untitled,” two entirely different pieces aptly paired by Lowe, a mixed media sculpture that involves pump-activated water-flow and an acryllic and graphite painting which indicts commercialism and speaks to magic.

“Kili Vara (bird drawings)” from Sandeep K. Das and Franklin Londin’s “Evermorphs” are video presentations both kaleidoscopic and soaring. Last but not least, Melanie Mandl’s oil on wood “Same Same” evokes a brilliant sense of barely contained, ever evolving movement and sense of peril.

Lowe  reveals herself once again as a compelling curator, as well as creator of some of the most innovative, satisfying art around. For the exhibition’s closing event, she brought the lush, lovely flamenco movements of dance artist Cicely Nelson Tong to create a moving, elegiac performance. Nelson Tong’s grace and fierceness flowed over the gathered audience.

While you may have missed this exceptional exhibition live, it will have future iterations, and for now you can view this treasure-packed art show online here. You must look.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

Amanda Maciel Antunes Reveals a Graceful Ithaca

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Through October 23rd, Luna Anais Gallery at Tin Flats offers a deeply involving exhibit by Amanda Maciel Antunes, Ithaca, the artist’s first solo show in Los Angeles.

Antunes’ mixed media works are, as always, fascinating puzzle pieces, whether she is using acrylic and ink on canvas or faux leather with acrylic to shape a more dimensional work of wall art. There is poetry on handmade paper, held together with safety pins, thread, dye, and ink, and works that utilize cotton and thread, natural dye, and seeds.

One of the most resonant works in this richly rewarding exhibition is a sculpture that takes its place in the center of the gallery. “Her Vessel” is comprised of bamboo, rope, muslin and other fabric, dye, palm tree branches, and Pochote cotton with fiber-fill.

Each of the materials Antunes uses here are either found or foraged. The cotton was harvested by her. Words are written in thread across the garment draping work, “resting, ships, stars, Homer, hero, muse…” among others. They record the first stanza of Antunes’ own poetry, taken from the writing that thematically anchors the exhibition and bears the same title, Ithaca.

Like each of the works here, this sculptural work has a visceral textural approach. The work calls to viewers in such a way that physical touch becomes emotional – you can almost feel the work. The fabric draped around it is a section of a larger fabric that Antunes created in a daily practice during the quarantine portion of the pandemic. She would hike to the top of Mount Wilson, where she would sew one line of text each day, unspooling the material in a kind of poetic carpet across the dusty trail she climbed.

In works such as “I Have to Tell You This” and “I Prefer Truths That Carry No Prophecies,” Antunes overlays her canvasses with imitation leather that she has cut into geometric patterns. This technique provides only with the tantalizing ability peer in and glimpse the work beneath this layer, adding complexity that invokes the elliptical quality of understanding and memory, and the difficulty in finding a true map or compass to represent one’s personal journey.

Contained in clear cases, Antunes also exhibits two dimensional Pochote cotton works, the material for which is also hand-harvested, “Specimen I” and “Specimen II,” which appear like artifacts from a lost time.

Along with its intensely tactile quality, Ithaca also unfolds as a kind of song. Her poetry draws viewers into its rhythmic music, but so too does the lacy, thread-like patterns of her largest paintings, such as that of “Restless Spirits” and “Circe’s Island.” In these works, the ink lines serve as a representation for the artist’s use of thread in her paper works and sculpture.

The paper works in this exhibition, “Songs of a Poet I, II, and III” are delicate, almost ephemeral. They are reminiscent of poetic love letters to an alternate reality, to a strange and sweet but distant past. The fact that the works use handmade, roughly held together paper adds to a palpable sense of found treasure, a relic in an attic, a mystery both musty and precious.

Antunes writes “I sat on the edge of something/the grounds beneath my feet dismantle…” setting the viewer up for an experience which has the quality of a dream. In another work, she writes “The myth of us is the hope that we will have to sustain.”

And in the poem Antunes writes to encompass the exhibition, “Ithaca,” she says “What if Ithaca had already been there/But was denied its presence/For a very long time.”

Deny it no longer – Antunes has created a world both fragile and strong, her own epic visual poem as well as a tribute to Homer’s Odyssey, including recent takes on the work such as Emily Wilson’s 2018 translation of the epic poem and C.P. Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka.” Her poetry and visual art are a response to these, and a continuation of the original work. Its name is that of the island that served as Odysseus’ destination, pictured here as a space that is matriarchal in nature, or as Antunes’ writes, “What if Homer was a woman/What if the hero of the tale/was the muse.”

Originally from Brazil, the Los Angeles-based artist often reflects on her own journey in her work, translating it into a universal recognition of everyone’s inward and outward travels, as well as the intersection in which they both merge.

In Ithaca, the two are beautifully fused, encompassing a sense of place, and both a desire of entrenchment and a corresponding but opposite sense of restlessness, the aching need to move on, and the ephemeral quality of finding what could, would, or should be “home.”

Interestingly, Antunes’ epic version of Homer is the second fine exhibition I’ve viewed this year relating to the Odyssey. In June, I viewed Heather Lowe’s spectacular lenticular exhibition at Keystone Gallery, It’s all L.A. to me…ruminations on the Odyssey which envisioned aspects of Los Angeles life through the lens of the epic poem.

Perhaps both profoundly lovely exhibitions are influenced by the journey we have all been on since the pandemic upended – and continues to alter – our lives. And perhaps, as Antunes suggests, we should reinvent ourselves to survive the upheaval, and reconfigure our view of the world, its myths, legends, purpose, and beauty. Certainly, Antunes has done so through the artist’s rivetingly portrayed personal experience and the words of a poet.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

Bridget Riley at Spruth Magers Gallery: Painting Now

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riley window

The following is an exciting, in-depth guest post from artist Heather Lowe

“Look at it. Just look at it!”, Bridget Riley exclaims as the light “grew brighter and stronger every minute.” This comes from an introduction to a catalogue of Bridget Riley’s paintings that traveled to the Albers Museum, written by Robert Kudielka. Kudielka, one writer among many great writers who enjoy writing about Riley’s paintings, describes Riley’s intimate and lasting relationship with nature.  Bridget Riley grew up in Cornwall where the sea sparkles and the soft lichen and grass cover the hillsides. At eighteen, she entered Goldsmith’s College School of Art. From 1952-1955 she attended the Royal College of Art in London. In the summer of 1960 she traveled to Italy with Maurice de Sausmarez. At this time, she began her color field studies and we are privileged to see one here in Los Angeles: “Pink Landscape” which was influenced primarily by Seurat. Here we see dots and dashes of color interaction soon to evolve into Riley’s “units” of composition. Riley had already meticulously copied Seurat’s work. She was also moved by the futurists in Italy, including Balla and Boccioni.  Fleeting movement and the element of surprise are also evident in her work.

The exhibit Painting Now at Sprüth Magers is thoughtfully curated and brings Bridget Riley’s paintings to Los Angeles for the first time since the 1970s. The gallery’s press release states that the title comes from a lecture Riley gave at Slade School of Fine Art in 1996. Oh, there have been a few Bridget Riley’s here and there. Cirrus always had a few, MOCA exhibited a painting a while ago (Green and Magenta Diagonal, 1968) and Santa Barbara had one of her black and white artworks from 1960’s last I checked. But we have not seen Riley in L.A. like this ever before. LACMA recognized the importance of this event and held a panel discussion wonderfully moderated by Lynne Cooke. The brilliant Michael Bracewell generously shared his knowledge of Riley’s practice and purpose. Toward the end he mentioned Riley’s element of “joy” and let us know she is currently looking at Constable: his clouds. Her painter assistants were in attendance.

This show has 23 artworks from the 1960s and then hurtles into 2014-2018, with the exception of “Vapour 2.” The show elucidates strong parallels in Riley’s work. As you enter, to the right you see her masterpiece, “Late Morning 1,” 1967. Riley does series of works, as you will find, in all her investigations. This painting is composed of vertical stripes, alternating and varying reds and blues, which compress and relax the white areas so that a kind of morning light emanates from the center through color interaction and after-image. The painting breathes.

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Also, in this room are three of her “Memories of Horizons.” The stripes are horizontal, painted in primarily warm, hot colors and some cools but overall warm/ hot sensations and they appear to undulate upward and downward. It’s wonderful to have three of these together to compare color movement and rhythm. Memories of Horizons is from a poem by Mallarmé, says Riley, “in which a long stream of consciousness tries to answer the question: what is the world?” These paintings are horizontal and so “Horizontal Vibration,” done in 1961, is placed on the opposite wall and is reflected in the “Memories.” In this very early work, Riley was first discovering how black and white could be modulated, shifted, and displaced to release energy from the painting surface. It recalls the afterglow of a sea surface or desert plain.

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Moving into the next room we get the full reward of her years of intense painting in black and white. The surprise for me was “Quiver 3,” 2014, graphite and acrylic on the wall, about 150 inches in length (above).  In this and “Divertimento,” 2016, acrylic on canvas, reminiscent of her beautiful early painting, “Tremor,” 1962, Riley paints what appear to be very simple units of triangles on a triangular grid but with slight dips and curves carved or added to the sides. In her drawings during this period, one can see the myriad ways she labors to shift the pacing between the units by turning and varying the individual shapes. Levels rise and fall, movement sparkles throughout the surface activating our senses. It’s important to her that the units do not stand out on their own but complete a harmonious unity.

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“Descending,” 1965, 36” x 36” (above) absolutely cracks and warps the surface and has many other wonderful color sensations. It was her early black and white painting that shot her name to fame rather violently, as some of you may know, when at the Responsive Eye Exhibition in New York, someone copied her painting “Current” on fabric and put it in a window display.

 

Later, in an interview with Andrew-Graham-Dixon, Riley describes the opening: “It was astonishing, about half the people there were wearing clothes based on my paintings and I tried to avoid having to talk to the people who were the most completely covered in me. There was one member of the MOMA council who was so furious that he said, ‘So you don’t like it? We’ll have you on the back of every matchbox in Japan!’…” She goes on to say that being in America was wonderful and the artists gave her much support, but it was tough for her to be taken seriously during this time. Since then, of course, she has received many accolades including the first woman to receive the Venice Biennale Major Painting Prize in 1968. Riley has also influenced so many painters through the decades. She and other Op painters working with perception and optical sequences changed the activity of picture plane. It was truly a new way to treat the planer surface. The paintings are visceral in this room so take them in slowly or at a glance.  I believe gallery lights are a tad too bright for artwork in this room and are unnecessary. They are splendid on their own!

Upstairs we are greeted with some of her most recent work: “Measure for Measure.” We have number 23, 24 and 25, square 62-inch compositions and their accompanying smaller studies 25-inch squares. (Yes, there are numbers 1-22 somewhere). She painted a lot of these disc paintings. Also, in this room are two wall paintings with the disc units titled “Cosmos 2,” 2017 and “Untitled 2,” 2017-18. Her Measure for Measure painting series has been exhibited as early as 2016. Using lavender, green and orange at a very light saturation and mid-value, circles are painted in a grid in different compressions, sometimes tight, sometimes loose, sometimes discs go missing and the color sequences vary as well. They are calm and quite a contrast from the black and white paintings. The key to these it seems is what happens to the white areas which the colors live in: color irradiation. The white areas surrounding the discs have color after-effects, to be sure. There is also a kind of inner light that the discs seem to throw upon one another due to color contrast and interaction. I found these soothing but unpredictable. The “Untitled 2” is more minimal and daring. Very beautiful vector after-images set up and the open field is there. Riley has made use of discs in her early work when she started to introduce greys into her paintings. Riley has stated in several interviews that she is not concerned with the shape as signifying something.  Also, she is interested in color-form, not colored forms. Two treasures from this early work are in the show: “Black to White Discs,” 70” square and “Study for Black to White Discs,” 35” square. In these paintings one can see Riley’s exquisite workmanship. The orientation of the composition is diamond shaped and the graduated tonal sequence of the discs move slowly across picture plane. I had to convince a gentleman that, yes, indeed they are painted. They are not prints.

Bridget-Riley-Pink-Landscape

And we come full circle to her “Pink Landscape” painted in 1960 beside a really lovely “Vapour 2,” a striped painting done in 2009 which, coincidentally, has the same color combination as the disc paintings. Alas, we do not have any paintings from the late 80s and 90s: her Egyptian palette. I love those. But it’s an excellent show. Bridget Riley works toward nature. She paints intuitively. Her compositions have developed through her experienced and responsive eye. In her own words: “As a child one plays by lying on one’s back and filling one’s sight with the blue of the sky only to find the blue goes slowly towards grey. Your own eye produced the after-image of yellow-orange to compensate for the intensity of the blue. Color relationships in painting depend on the interactive character of colour; this is its essential nature.”

Go see it! Learn something.

The exhibition will be up Nov. 16, 2018 – Jan 26, 2019

Bridget Riley: Flashback, Hayward Publishing, 2009

Bridget Riley, Paintings 1982-1992, Introduction by Robert Kudielka, Printed in Germany, 1992

Bridget Riley by Maurice de Sausmarez, Studio Vista Limited, Great Britain, 1970

Bridget Riley, Dialogues on Art, Philip Wilson Publishers, London, 1995

Bridget Riley, Financial Times, Nov. 8, 2018

  •    Feature by Heather Lowe, Photos:  Jennifer Faist Hill