Days of Reverie Entrances at Stuart Haaga Gallery

Posted on by Diversions LA

Days of Reverie, carefully curated by Vojislav Radovanovic, is a compelling exhibit that brings together four visual artists who work in different mediums – drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, along with one composer. All these artists lift the viewer out of the ordinary “here and now” existence into an extraordinary meditative and otherworldly state of mind. The four visual artists – Catherine Ruane, Jill Sykes, Jason Jenn and Debbie Korbel — were tasked with creating new work for the exhibit at Stuart Haaga Gallery at Descanso Gardens using actual materials sourced from the gardens or inspired by the gardens, while musician and composer Joseph Carrillo was asked to create the soundscape that accompanies the exhibition. The results are astounding, and though each room is decidedly different from the next, each artist seems to work at the threshold of the real and the artificial with surprising synchronicity of color and materials.

Debbie Korbel’s two sculptural pieces are the only ones that are outside the gallery and immediately greet the viewer. Outdoors, her bare trees, painted a ghostly, wintry white, stripped bare of their original colors and foliage, speak to a mystical winter’s tale. The two trees in the front are populated with Korbel’s sculpted Lazuli Bunting Songbirds, some caring for their eggs in a nest, others just perched on a branch.

The other trees become wish trees where viewers are encouraged to write their intentions and messages on paper tags and affix them to the branches, thereby repopulating the bare trees with leaves of desire. This concept was popularized by Yoko Ono in 1996. She modernized a Japanese custom started in the 17th century of writing wishes on tanzaku (small strips of paper) and attaching them to bamboo trees.

Debbie Korbel

Visible through the glass window is Korbel’s striking life-like and full -sized mixed-media deer mule, looking alert yet relaxed in a painted nightscape that references natural history dioramas. The flowers and plants entwined around the antlers speak to rejuvenation amid winter’s thaw a theme echoed throughout the exhibition. A beautiful short poem is written on the wall she illustrated behind the deer.

Jill Sykes

Inside we enter the room filled with Jill Sykes’ radiant botanical paintings of roses, poppies, calla lilies and agapanthus which all grow in the gardens here. If Korbel’s work harkens to a wintry thaw, then Sykes work simulates spring with new growth visible on slender branches.

Sykes’ plants and flowers are undifferentiated in color and instead are recognizable by their flattened outlines and their shape. All parts of the plant, leaf, flower and stem are the same color, as if a shadowy presence seen on a wall, ground, scrim or window shade. Paradoxically, her specific yet highly abstracted imagery captures the very essence of the flowers, distilling the image like intimate poetry. In the five large gold leafed works, Sykes delineates flowers with delicate, white lines over a faint grid of gold. Like Byzantine painters who generously used gold leaf to symbolize divinity and otherworldliness, Sykes’s luminous paintings, highlighted against the pale pink wall, glow magically while inviting quiet contemplation.

Catherine Ruane

While Sykes’s luminous paintings are hushed and meditative, Catherine Ruane’s dramatic site-specific installation is operatic in scale and concept. Composed of painstakingly detailed and lovingly rendered Sycamore leaves and branches, Ruane’s achromatic pencil and charcoal drawings are cut out and rearranged to soar around the gallery. Looping and swooping gracefully, their rich robust darks are highlighted against the white of the gallery walls, creating wonderful negative spaces. Included in the installation are clusters of realistic rose drawings – portraits if you will.

Historically, roses are a potent symbol of beauty, divine love and spiritual enlightenment, which is the subtext of all the work on display. Each rose drawing is in a round gold frame that is painted red on the back, casting a surprising pink almost neon aura on the wall. These are grouped close together as they would be in a rose garden. This series of drawings became a sort of unintentional memento mori as the very roses Ruane was drawing were shortly torn out. Unbeknownst to her, they had come to the end of their twenty-five year cycle – once more reminding us that there is a season for all things.

Jason Jenn, left, with author Nancy Kay Turner

Autumn is the time when deciduous trees shed their leaves. Depending on one’s geographic location, the red, orange, yellow colors which the leaves turn are truly spectacular. Jason Jenn began sourcing his materials of fallen leaves at Descanso Gardens for his installation a year before the exhibit opened. The vast collection of organic materials employed is impressive in scale, shape, variety and color, highlighting the infinite visual complexity of nature.

Jenn treats the leaves which he gathers so that they can be handled without becoming brittle, thereby allowing him to paint and gild them transforming the multitude of leaves into glittery, golden-hued mandalas that ring four walls. Mandalas, a Buddhist 4th century tradition, represent dreamers in search of spiritual enlightenment. Mandalas, sacred circles, are thought to transform suffering into joy, healing the world. Jenn’s immersive installation is the most interactive with a large round low table filled with plants that visitors, mostly children can sit around (handmade pillows are provided) and create their own versions of the art. There are pink painted trees at the corners of the room, their branches reaching overhead, creating a cozy, womb-like feeling of protection. Stumps from fallen trees ring the installation covered with festive tree ring pillows stitched by Jenn. This continues Jenn’s longstanding interest in the healing power of art.

Joseph Carrillo provides not only the soundscape that accompanies the exhibition which is his own composition, but also provides the score of the piece. He has artfully arranged the sheets of paper (also called leaves) letting them cascade and slide down like a waterfall of musical notes. Those who read music can engage with the visual notation while also listening to the score that is played by Carrillo himself and a group of musicians he generously acknowledges. This exhibit is a balm for the soul as it addresses universal truths about life, death, resurrection and offers valuable lessons learned from listening to and valuing Mother nature.

  • Nancy Kay Turner; photos by Nancy Kay Turner and Genie Davis 

When Art Is Magic – The Arcade of Hypermodernity

Posted on by Diversions LA

“Oh Sandy, the aurora is risin’ behind us/ This pier lights our carnival life on the water…” – Bruce Springsteen

Now at Studio Channel Islands Art Center in Camarillo through, July 27th, curators Jason Jenn and Vojislav Radovanovic create a new kind of carnival life, one that offers its own bright aurora, an interactive world that morphs technology into magic and the rush of modern life and angst into a spiritual and sensual experience.

Exhibiting artists CARLOS LUNA JAMES,  CHENHUNG CHEN, CHRIS TOWLE, EDWIN VASQUEZ, EUGENE AHN, GIRLACN, GREGORY FRYE, IBUKI KURAMOCHI, ISMAEL DE ANDA III, JASON HEATH, JASON JENN, JEFF FROST, JENNIE E PARK, JODY ZELLEN, JOSEPH CARRILLO, KAREN HOCHMAN BROWN, LESLIE FOSTER, LIBERTY WORTH, MATTHEW PAGOAGA, R SKY PALKOWITZ, and VOJISLAV RADOVANOVIĆ each shape a miraculous exhibition that invites viewers to partake of a literal art arcade, touching, playing, dancing, and yes, even inhaling the scent of the art.

It’s a pure wow of an exhibition, one that vibrates with energy, a passion for perfromance, romance, the ridiculous, and the sublime. Just as I struggled to decide where to start when wandering through this treasure trove of an exhibition, I also struggle now with how best to describe an experience that is meant to be – experienced.

The curators aptly describe the show as a “vibrant playground of ideas, focusing on the intersection of art, technology, and imagination….it explores the limits of human capability and what is now possible and in a state of major change within this new era of life globally connected online, and the evolution of artificial intelligence.”

And does it ever explore. Equal parts fantasy and futuristic window, the show is visually dazzling but also robustly meaningful. What does it mean to be human? To feel, enjoy, experience? What does it mean to think without being told what to think or how to behave? What does it mean to feel one’s humanity without conforming to political or social structures that limit or lie? How will technology change us, how has it already? Where are we going, and where have we been?

It’s a carnival of art, and a circus of ideas.  Some works are sculptural, as are Chenhung Chen’s flowering burst of wire and cable and found objects, “Currents.”

Some are sculptural forms that move, changing in multi-colored lights, mixing a traditional toy that evokes a carnival kiddie ride with fantastical portraiture, as does Vojislav Radovanovic’s take on car culture, “Phantom Traffic I (The Collectors), Phantom Traffic II (Library Girl), and Phantom Traffic III (West Coast Vibes).”

There are steampunk extravaganzas that twist and turn from Chris Towle, whose five elaborate and engaging works here include a silicone film prop, “Kraken,” and a crazy cool clockwork-type piece, “Teatime Movement.”

Edwin Vasquez offers an interactive, mixed media “Shooting Range” that also serves as a trenchant commentary on American gun fetishism.

Gregory Frye’s dazzling fiber optics and mixed media work, a freestanding fortune-telling creature called “Frank Fortune” seems ready to walk out of the gallery, even as it dazzles the eye and the spirit.

Girlacne’s “Body Électrique” wall art is a sinuous mix of LED, wire, and zip ties that undulates with light and shadow.

Ibuki Kuramochi’s ” Eggscapes” gives viewers a mystical VR metaverse to plunge inside – and then rehatch from within.

At the June 1st opening, we were also able to view a stunning performance art and dance from Kuramochi, performed outdoors to a rapt audience.

Her sense of visual poetry embodied themes of birth, rebirth, loss, and revival, all relevant to the exhibition itself.

 

Presenting a terrific, riveting series of altnerating images, Ismael de Anda III & Eugene Ahn use video projection, AR, and a vinyl dance floor to spin their “Dancing Wu-Li Masters.”

Jason Jenn’s lush, fecund “Ye Ol’ Factory Station (Homage to Sir Joseph Paxton),” includes elements scented with essential oils that conjur up forests and fantasies.

Karen Hochman Brown’s “Circuitry” offers a geometric display of digital frames and cords that resemble luminous eyes.

SKY Palkowitz’ “ALIEN ARCADE UFP Unidentified Flying Pyramid – Classified: Pleiades Starship 444 – Codename: Elohim,” invites viewers to stand beneath this mysterious shape, and view its black-lit and transportive interior.

There are mysterious and magical video works from Leslie Foster, and the vivid palette of Jeff Frost…

…a motion-activated low-tech piece from Jennie E. Park…

a thought-provoking digital “film strip” from Jodi Zellen.

Viewers also get to explore Joseph Carrillo’s musically driven “The Arcade Fantasy,” as well as Mathew Pagoaga’s exciting video game-centered, multiple installation “Trust.”

Carlos Luna James superb and transformative “OPTIMUS” AR activation,  one of two dynamite pieces the artist has here, is an innovative mind-blower. Take a look below:

And these are by no means every piece on display. Each work and each artist offers something quite wonderful, strange, special, and unique – you will not see these works elsewhere. If you saw the DTLA-recreation of Luna Luna Amusement Park, originally created in Germany by seminal artists of that time,  you could easily imagine The Arcade of Hypermodernity as such a revered classic of the future. It’s spectacular, and just a whole lot of fun.

While this exhibition pays tribute to the idea and reality of arcades and midways, it also serves as an homage to this quintessential moment in time, one in which our creativity, our humanity, our playfulness, are all on the verge of great change. There is the expansive possibility of technology, and conversely the dulling of our capacity for connectivity and intimacy through its remoteness.  Can we embrace great change without it forever changing us? How much have we changed already, and become hybrids of the human and the inhuman as the price of simply staying alive? How can our creativity, the root from which our humanity springs, still define us?

Walk through this arcade and you’ll find hope, happiness, and as many questions as answers. You’ll find the magic that makes art live and the art that makes the magic. Now go wave a wand, or get on the freeway – whatever works for you – and go see this show. “Frank Fortune” is waiting to tell your future.

Studio Channel Islands Art Center is located at 2222 Ventura Blvd, in Camarillo. For hours, schedule of artist’s talks and other activations, as well as directions, click here.  

  • Written by Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

Artist Arezoo Bharthania Welcomes Viewers to A Home in the Inbetween

Posted on by Diversions LA
Arezoo Bharthania’s evocative mixed media solo exhibition, A Home in the In-Between, is both delicate and layered. As skillfully curated by Jason Jenn at LA Art Core in Little Tokyo, the exhibition is divided into three distinct areas: hanging panels, which viewers can walk between, like scrolls that tell the story of both Bharthania’s childhood, early adulthood, and current life; similarly unfolding narrative pieces that flow from ceiling to floor, fringed at the bottom, recalling exquisite Persian rugs; and projected images exhibited in muted twilight, and viewed at least in part, through clear, etched panels. Linking each of these spaces is a section of  nuanced and delicate works of wall art which resemble sections of a quilt or pieces of beautiful wallpaper.
The combination of curated spaces leads the viewer from one room to another, just as you would pass between the rooms of a home. But the home here is a dream-like one, composed of memories and plans, present reality and past sensations.
As the artist leads viewers from her recalled life in Iran to her life here in LA, her personal story reflects a broader one, a uniquely human experience of emotion and sensation, observation and understanding, envirorments both interior and external. It is the unfolding and expansion of roots and the blossoming of the future on the fertile garden of the past.
The exhibition allows the viewer time to take in the full view of her emotional, physical, and remembered home spaces. Viewers are invited not just to see but to explore Bharthania’s carefully explored territory, which she depicts through painted images, photographic depictions, and a range of tactile materials.
This is a graceful show, immersive but delicately so, shaping personal images of home, and with the artist’s projected images, a more urban and global one.  What makes a home? For Bharthania is it is heart and soul, the colors of her world, from lime green to gold and pink, vibrant and personal, and moving into her images of cityscapes, a world that can be more muted and distant, a way to process, perhaps, the urban noise.
Throughout the world and throughout time, home is a place we live, we inhabit, we at least try to make in our own image – a safe refuge. It is a place in which we long for a life outside its walls and equally yearn for the succor of, or at least the hope for, sustenance that we find within them.
There is intimacy and immediacy in Bharthania’s work, and there is also a view out the windows of her metaphorical home so to speak, a look at the broader world, and the passage of time.
The artist shares beauty and wistfulness, the fragile nature of the past, the permanence of personal roots, and the restlessness of urban life, all while acknowledging the constructs of home from beyond the personal to a grander, broader, more social view.
This lovely exhibition closes Sunday, with a curatorial and artist walk through conducted by Jenn and Bharthania at 3 p.m. The gallery is open 12-4 Thursday-Sunday.  LA Art Core is located at 120 Judge John Aiso St,. Los Angeles, CA 90012.
– Genie Davis, Photos: Genie Davis

Prime Territory at MOAH Cedar

Posted on by Diversions LA

Through January 22nd at MOAH Cedar in Lancaster, Dani Dodge holds forth with an installation that soars as widely and wildly as a desert sky. Prime, like many of the artist’s exhibitions, is immersive. So much so here, in fact, that viewers might almost catch a whiff of desert sage andthe fragrance of a Joshua Tree in bloom.

The exhibition, which fills all three galleries at Cedar, is comprised of three parts.  The main room is layered with translucent panels, on which Dodge has created gold leaf and delicately painted acrylic work depicting an ephermeral, mirage-like shimmer of desert images. The experience is a walk-through installation, with viewers able to walk behind and within the panels. Adding to the experiential nature is a soundtrack of cello music the artist created herself and recorded sounds of desert animals at dawn.

Along with the gauzy painted panels, a sculptural form created from a twisted mattress spring hangs in the center of the gallery, with the panels waverying around it. It stands as a kind of monument to how human inhabitants intrude on the quiet grace of the desert, and how the desert itself may banish that habitation in its own good time. 

The artist has provided pencils and slips of paper on which to write what types of places bring them peace – as the desert brings piece to Dodge. Safety pins are also provided so that viewers can pin what they’ve written, adding them to their thoughts to the exhibition itself.

 

Across the hall,  Dodge displays images from three separate bodies of work, as seen above. These include a quite wonderful video installation of desert animals captured during her 2019 artist-in-residence stay at the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve in Lancaster. Here we see animals from jackrabbits to coyotes and desert mice as they come and go during the night.  Also on display is a wonderful, glowing collection of painted gold leaf and photography that was part of an earlier exhibition held at Black Rock Gallery in Joshua Tree.

The artist’s love for the shape, form, and fragility of the Joshua Tree is resurrecting. Dodge is intent on helping to preserve the land, creating a sense of hope that with her passion directed at preserving them, these wonderful living flora can survive man’s worst intentions. There is also a second recovered metal mattress spring displayed in this gallery, its form twisted by nature and time after being discarded in the desert.  

If you love the desert, love immersive finely wrought art, or simply want to experience desert wonder without trudging through the sand, Dodge’s exhibition is a must-see. The fine spiritual sense of her work here is both uplifting and poignant, speaking to the ruthlessness of human contact on the desert, the fragility of the desert itself, and the ways in which we can help to preserve it, if we love those aqua skies and golden sands, those brown hills and small brown creatures that inhabit them, those glorious, uplifted arms of the Joshua, and the land’s spectacular, raw sunrises and sunsets.

Above, Dodge with MOAH’s Robert Benitez (left), and Jason Jenn (right).

Like the artist does herself, we can come visit the desert every  January and pay tribute to it, and this year, we can also head to the Cedar galleries to see how Dodge has done so. The exhibition runs through January 22nd.

It also includes a series of lovely desert images created by children participating in activation classes the artist provided at the Preserve throughout her residency.

MOAH: CEDAR Center for the Arts

44857 Cedar Avenue, Lancaster, CA 93534

Open Tuesday and  Wednesday  |   11 AM  – 6 PM

Open Thursday – Sunday   |    11 AM  –  8  PM

  • Genie Davis; photos, Genie Davis