Art Fair Season in LA Begins: LA Art Show Marks 25th Year

Posted on by Diversions LA

And so it begins.

Los Angeles’ major art fair season commences this month with the city’s largest and longest-running fair. That would be the LA Art Show celebrating its 25th anniversary, once again at the Los Angeles Convention Center on February 5, 2020.

According to the fair’s founder, Kim Martindale “Twenty-five years ago when I began the LA Art Show, there weren’t any big art fairs here.” Now of course, this major fair serves as the beginning to a wide array of art fairs throughout the city. And it’s still seminal.

There will be over 100 galleries from 18 different countries; the opening night preview and premiere party will donate a portion of ticket revenue to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Actress Sofia Vergara will helm the celebration.

Sogen Chiba

The re-branded Feature Exhibitions area of the show includes the return of INK, the largest presentation of both contemporary and traditional ink painting of any art fair outside of Asia. New this year, the LA Art Show will be hosting a live ink painting demonstration, by Japanese master Sogen Chiba. Chiba is from Japan’s 2011 disaster-hit Ishinomaki district, and has created intensely moving imagery as an outgrowth of this experience that can only be expressed in calligraphy. Walker Fine Art will be presenting a the works of M.C. Escher, including never-before-seen VR experiences, and Oscar-winning artist Kazuhiro Tsuji premieres a brand new Iconoclast portrait sculpture.

Kazuhiro Tsuji

Viewers will also find work the 70s era photographic work of John Wehrheim in his depiction of Taylor Camp: The Edge of Paradise.

Work from the Danubiana Museum

The third edition of the DIVERSEartLA showcase focuses on cultural diversity from Southern California, around the Pacific Rim, and beyond, with over 20,000-square-feet devoted to these works which are not for sale. They include exhibitions from LACMA, The Broad, Japanese American National Museum, La

Neomudejar Museum from Madrid, MOLAA, Art Al Limite, LA Art Association, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and more, such as the Danubiana Museum of Bratislava.

Performance programming for the series includes work by PSJM Collective from Spain and artist Miss Art World, presented by the LA Art Association.  Among the participants in the performance “Diversity Walks & Talks” will be LA sculptural and mixed media artist Chenhung Chen.

Mizuma Art Gallery

For the first time, LA Art Show will be hosting a special programming section named the European Pavilion, highlighting the world-class exhibitors hailing from Western Europe. Patrick Painter Gallery, SM Fine Art, Zeal House, Mizuma Art Gallery and Kamiya Co., LTD are all returning for CORE.

Presented by the Bruce Lurie Gallery, Lorenzo Marini presents his new art-installation ALPHACUBE.

Lorenzo Marini

Curator Sabino Maria Frassà explains that ALPHACUBE turns that paradigm of the the white cube as the best form for conveying contemporary art. The artwork is a large white cube, that immerses guests in a space animated by letters, light and sound.

Along with the LA Art Show’s global cutting-edge programming, a bevy of local artists will be exhibiting at BG Gallery, Coagula, and Wallspace.

Gay Summer Rick
Hung Viet Nguyen

AT bG Gallery, Susan Lizotte will show brand new paintings about LA; her aesthetic provides a visceral look at the city. Artists Barbara Kolo, Fred Tieken, Gay Summer Rick, and Hung Viet Nguyen with his Sacred Landscapes series will also be on display. Photographic artist Richard Chow will be at bG’s Gestalt Projects Wall with an image from his Distant Memories series. Each artist could be described as offering intensely unique work that is rooted in their home in Los Angeles.

Randi Matushevitz
Todd Westover

Coagula is helming four booths this year, showing six artists with two in each both. The gallery will be showing new work that includes a group show of Chouinard Art Institute alumni featuring Frederick Hammersly, Llyn Foulkes, Robert Irwin, Judith Stabile, Robert Williams, Chaz Bojoroquez and John Van Hammersfeld, including Williams’ limited edition skateboards. Contemporary LA artists Randi Matushevitz, with her expressionist HeadSpace body of work “combines pattern, figuration, and narrative to cultivate humanistic expressions,” she relates.  According to gallerist Mat Gleason, “Todd Westover paints retro floral abstractions, Mark Dutcher is the pre-eminent Los Angeles painter walking the line between dream representations and abstract longing. Lavialle Campbell quilts geometric modernist abstraction that politically nudges issues of race and gender without sacrificing aesthetics. Melinda R. Smith paints the icon of houses… Gabriel Ortiz investigates the many ways in which racial issues have been co-opted and suppressed by imposed religion.”

ViCA, the Venice Institute of Contemporary Art, helmed by artist and curator Juri Koll brings motion pictures to the festival. “We have our own screening space for curated short films from Fine Arts Film Festival 2019 – films from Russia, Australia, the US and Norway.”

Wallspace Art Gallery, which like ViCA also has space in DTLA’s Bendix Building, is also featuring a booth that highlights Los Angeles artists; gallerist Valda Lake says this is the first year at the fair for the gallery. Fabrik Projects hosts two booths, one featuring the innovative richly decorative work of J.T. Burke.

Cathy Immordino

The other booth features a range of artists that include Amadea Bailey,
Linda Stelling, Nancy R. Wise, Helena Hauss, Chris Bakay, Ted VanCleave, Cathy Immordino, Jung Yeon Bae, Jessie Chaney, Go Woon Choi, Jessus Hernandez and “guest artist” Eric Johnson. Immordino’s innovative photographic collage work is focused for 2020 on her Heads series. According to the artist “Heads features local Angelenos in collages with magazine elements conceptually discussing how society views others’ imperfections.”

Eric Johnson

Johnson’s dazzling large scale The Maize Project abstractly represents a lodge pole-like Native American structure, a sculptural gathering place that evokes a section of an ear of maize corn.

In short: art fair season has begun with a major bang from the LA Art Show.

OPENING NIGHT PREMIERE

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Red Card & Patrons Preview 6pm – 11pm

Opening Night Premiere 8pm – 11pm

SHOW HOURS

Thursday, February 6, 2020 | 11am – 7pm

Friday, February 7, 2020 | 11am – 7pm

Saturday, February 8, 2020 | 11am – 7pm

Sunday, February 9, 2020 | 11am – 5pm

LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER – SOUTH HALL

1201 South Figueroa Street Los Angeles, CA 90015

https://www.seetickets.us/event/THE-LA-ART-SHOW/381725

  • Genie Davis; Photos courtesy LA Art Show

LA Art Show: The Feast Begins

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Running through Sunday, the LA Art Show begins tomorrow with a spectacular opening night gala benefitting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Marking its 23rd year at the LA Convention Center, the show features a variety of programming and gallery exhibitions sure to dazzle viewers. The LA Art Show is one of the largest international art fairs in the country, and this art feast allows  an entire weekend of visual consumption, with wide-ranging installations and gallery presentations spreading across the vast exhibition space.

Here’s just a few must-sees.

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DIVERSEartLA programming occupies over 60,000 square feet of exhibit space highlighting work from around the world, including exhibits making their world and US premieres. Presented by MUSA Museum of the Arts of the University of Guadalajara and shown for the first time in the U.S.,  the Metaphysical Orozco recreates Jose Clementé Orozco’s 1930s-era murals using multi-layer mapping projections. Viewers will uncover the history and themes of the murals, and images are accompanied by a musical soundtrack in this vibrant installation.

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Antuen’s “Left or Right,” curated by Marisa Caichiolo is a vast interactive installation depicting world leaders and despots that allows the spectator to hit punching bag images and detoxify.

Berlin’s The Konig Galerie exhibits Jose Dávila’s  large-scale “Untitled” sculpture shaped from San Andrés stone, metal beams, and glass sphere. Merry Karnowsky /KP Projects debuts at the convention center with never before seen works by outsider photographer Vivian Maier.

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Flash Bulb by Pandemonia is the creation of an anonymous London artist,  a multi-media conceptual project involving a plastic female character constructed from symbols and archetypes in the form of a three-dimensional drawing. Pandemonia will pose and perform with various objects that represent her pop-feminist universe and vibrant color palette.

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The creator of the largest graffiti art along the LA River, SABER, a.k.a. Ryan Weston Shook, creates an original work opening night which will be displayed throughout the show. 

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BG Gallery presents artist Matt Elson’s The Infinity Boxes, a series of boxes that allow intimate groups of people to interact via elaborately constructed infinity mirrors set up to illuminate a perceptual “other world” when the box is inhabited by two individuals. Also at BG gallery: new works by LA artist Robyn Alatorre, Susan Lizotte, Gay Summer Rick (also exhibiting at Gallery Steiner), Heather Lowe, and Dwora Fried. Below,  Fried’s trenchant work, “Troll Box.”

dwora troll box

The Los Angeles Art Association presents “Ping Pong,” a collaboration between artists from Los Angeles, Miami and Basel. Exploring the art of each city, the exhibition includes works by Chung-Ping Cheng, Sharon Hardy, Sue Irion, Gershon Kreimer, Samuelle Richardson, and Mette Tommerup.

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Curated by Launch Gallery’s James Panozzo and the California African American Museum, Eyes Forward is a dynamic survey of works by ten contemporary artists of color in LA: (April Bey, Chukes, June Edmonds, Loren Holland, Duane Paul, Miles Regis, Ana Rodrigues, Nano Rubio, Holly Tempo, and Tim Washington. 

Sergott Contemporary Art Gallery offers modern and contemporary artists including the textured landscapes of LA-based Hung Viet Nguyen.

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At the Los Angeles Center for Photography booth, take in work from a wide range of photographers including exciting work from Jane Szabo, and the ethereal work of Aline Mare, below.

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Design LA Art is a brand new area of the LA Art Show designated for exhibition areas of modern furniture, decor, and jewelry and displayed in circular, open spaces within the fair.

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Littletopia is back, an exhibit space that includes 16 galleries and a 22 foot long magic space boat by Bunnie Reiss. Exhibiting galleries include  701, Art du Marche, BoxHeart Gallery, Copro Gallery, Cordesa Fine Art, Gersten Fine Art, John Natsoulas Gallery, Johnathan LeVine Projects, Josh Tiessen Studio Gallery, Keane Eyes Gallery, Mirus Gallery, Paradigm Gallery + Studio, Red Truck Gallery, Superchief Gallery and a tribute to Greg Escalante, co-founder of Juxtapoz Magazine. A Lifetime Achievement Award for Margaret Keane will be presented here.

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Matt Gleason, gallerist at Coagula Curatorial in DTLA will be broadcasting his Modern Art Blitz talk show from the VIP booth in the Southeast Corner of the hall opening night.

From a presentation of photography on the anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket to the Argentinian artist Nuna Mangiante’s multi-media installation Aporías Moviles there are so many installations, exhibitions, and amazing examples of art and artistic wonder that the spending the entire weekend at the LA Art Show will hardly be an anomaly.

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See you there!

  • Genie Davis; photos courtesy of Hijinx Artist Management, participating galleries, and the LA Art Show

 

Memory Magic at the LA Art Show with Susan Lizotte

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Above, Susan Lizotte’s “Beginnings,” aerosol and oil on canvas, offers vibrant color contrasts with human figures literally popping out of a serene, floral background.

With the LA Art Show rapidly approaching, the time has come to preview the show itself and several specific artists.  Lizotte’s works will be included for the second year at BG Gallery’s booth.

The six works she’s exhibiting are all related pieces, she says “They deal with issues of memory, loss and obfuscation. They deal with loss as a means to celebrate the past, present, and future simultaneously,” she says, adding that love, loss, pain and rebirth and regeneration of hope for the future are specifically the thematic meaning behind her three newest Untitled paintings.

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Above, thick paint and rich brush strokes and paint application define her visual motif in her 8 x 6 “Untitled” work above.

Previously, Lizotte had exhibited works in her map series. These works are an outgrowth of and a change from that series, in which maps of the world followed both symbolic and literal interpretations in an unique way. “My adopted father fell ill and passed away last fall. Watching him slowly leave his body was an intense experience, I felt as though I was moving from life to death and back to life again,” she explains. “The introspective period I went through inspired these paintings, especially the newest ones. I’ve used flowers as symbols of loss and also as emblems of regeneration and rebirth. I feel it’s a new level for me.”

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Above,  “Untitled,” 32 x 20″.

Each of these works, in a different way, has an inner glow. Her careful working and reworking of each piece has led to that visual power.

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Above, Lizotte’s “Untitled” work depicting flowers.

She says that with this chance to exhibit she “wanted to have a field of color seen altogether so each piece was worked to complement the others, so that when seen together they all glow. It’s kind of trial and error, happy mistakes, too. The aerosol backgrounds are sprayed until I feel happy with that, especially if it’s hard to take a photo of it, then I know what I paint on top will stand out. Focusing on the colors and hand-mixing each color gives them a unique look. ”

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Above “Lost Crown,”  a haunting dream of the past, perhaps.

Lizotte wants viewers to know that these paintings are very personal. “They are about life and death, mortality, like love and loss, the tentative balance between opposites – color vs no color, light vs dark,  implied narrative versus complete abstraction. I hope the viewer can read-in their own stories and desires.”

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  • Genie Davis; photos courtesy of the artist

LA Art Show – Can You Take it All in?

Posted on by Diversions LA

LA Art Show

Beginning with a gala opening tonight, and running through the weekend, one of the biggest art shows around revs up at the Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles. There’s so much to see, from performances and panels to stellar exhibitions, that it’s going to be difficult to decide exactly what to see – but here are a few suggestions to make it the most art-tastic weekend ever – and naturally, we’ll have plenty more coverage from the event floor.

CBS Art Show Cruder

The Way of Modern Man is an evocative, participatory look at cell phone use by artist Jana Cruder. Observing crowds in Hong Kong staring at their cell phones, hunched over and Neanderthal like, Cruder created an art experiment:  30 minute live performance sessions and a photography exhibition, which begins in an isolation booth. Stripped down participants spend 30 minutes in a private session with the artist, bringing their mobile devices into an enclosed space and allowed to communicate only through text. Images of these encounters are shown as a series of panels, backlit, manifesting the surreal glow of a smartphone.

CBS art show Coan

 

 

Assemblage artist Catherine Coan combines sculpture and assemblage with taxidermy, placing taxidermied critters in surreal settings. Is it possible? Is it what life in another world reveals to these creatures? No Natural History museum display has ever looked like this!

CBS Art Show Tanaka

 

One of Japan’s leading calligraphy artists, Issai Tanaka of Gallery Kitai, performs Beyond Kaisho, Sumi-ism. Daily throughout the show, he’ll writes in the large printed calligraphy style known as KAISHO, creating ten foot words one word at a time. His participation is one aspect of a large curated selection of Japanese galleries.

CBS Art Show Littletopia

What if Disneyland was post-apocalyptic? Or if cookies and cakes were non-edible art? Let your imagination wander through Littletopia, a collection of related but diverse art featuring work from the Daniel Rolnik Gallery, Coagula Curatorial, Red Truck Gallery, and Gregorio Escalante Gallery, among many others. Enter through Banksy collaborator Jeff Gillette’s  Desert Debris Dismaland Castle, and leave your preconceptions behind.

CBS Art Show Virtues and Vice

 

 

 

 

Street Art is burgeoning art scene niche in LA culture, and the Virtues and Vice exhibition looks at the path of seven boundary pushing LA artists whose urban landscapes, abstracts, and patterns create a whole new world right out in the street.

This is the smallest taste of a very broad canvas – pun intended – so get on down to the LA Art Show.

And remember – art will be everywhere this weekend! Art exhibits such as Fabrik Expo and the LA Contemporary Art Show are joined by stART Up art fair, and on Saturday night only, Night on Broadway in the Spring Arcade Building in DTLA.