Just in time for Thanksgiving, running through November 28th is the perfect exhibition to be thankful for – Remains. This group show offers abstract painting “against the tide of mortality,” according to exhibition notes. Artists showing include: Ingrid Calame, Tomory Dodge, Scott Everingham, Jenny Hager, Alex Kroll, Susan Lizotte, Clive McCarthy, Max Presneill, Bryan Ricci, Kimberly Rowe, David Spanbock, Britton Tolliver, Steven Wolkoff.
The exhibition deals with mortality, what exists, what is, what is mortal, what – like art – lives on beyond our own plane of existence. Pretty weighty stuff, with no easy answers, and a bountiful visual feast as well. We were able to discuss a number of the provocative pieces with their creators.
Artist Scott Everingham says “I see myself as part painter, part architect. I build spaces in which nothing is planned beforehand. I try to reveal elements that build a constructive space.” Here his works have an ethereal floating quality in which nothing is quite grounded. Everingham explains “There’s a deconstructed life guard tower floating, and it feels like the beach, but it’s all color palette, and I built on that.” In short: a vision that could be memory, could be Heaven, could be fragments of a forgotten past.
Steven Wolkoff literally created a thousand “names” out of solid paint, as an homage to Anish Kapoor. Vibrant, filled with motion, what’s in a name, anyway? The substance we give it.
Bryan Ricci’s created his Fringe through a layering process that ties in with the many layers of perception the exhibition itself seeks to express. “For me, the layering of stains and paint and the application is more important than even the image the work creates,” Ricci says.
Jenny Hager’s Forked Tongues refers to the techno music she listens to when she works. “When I struggle on a title, I’ll pick up on something repetitious that I heard in a song. When I heard this phrase, I felt it dealt with the binary nature of beauty and darkness, so I used paints that glow like the sunset and warning signs.” Hager says she was interested in moving into something that “talked about the darkness or things we keep hidden, but the color palette and singularity is pretty consistent with all my current work.”
Kimberly Rowe’s Happiness Calls for a Party gets its name from the effect that the black, velvety oil paint center has on the periphery of this otherwise acrylic painting. “It allows the rhythm, and the music, and the cheer of the flourishes, and brush marks, and bold color that surround it, to shine. The result is an embodiment of one of the tenets of my life: to increase happiness, decrease unhappiness,” she says. “That isn’t to say I believe in burying my problems. But if I focus on joy, I see more of it. In other words, if I want it, I set out to create it. What better way to drum up at least a handful of happiness is there than to throw a party and dance?! Just thinking of it brings a smile to my face.” Her painting will bring a smile to viewers, too.
Max Presneill, who curated this exhibition and has a work in it, describes the show as a lead-in to a bigger exhibition planned for the Torrance Museum of Art next June. Presneill is TAM’s director, and the upcoming show will be titled Grafferists. Presneill notes “In the context of this exhibition, my piece is concerned with the act of art making itself.”
So if you’re looking for something to put a little profundity in your Thanksgiving weekend, hit Durden and Ray’s Project Space at 1950 S. Sante Fe, unit # 207, Los Angeles, CA 90021
Hours: Saturdays 11:30-5:30, or by appointment.
dandrart@gmail.com
- Genie Davis; all photos: Jack Burke