Closing, Closing, Quick Go See About a Box at Shoebox Projects and Phantom Lim at TAM

Posted on by Diversions LA

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At Shoebox Projects through the 25th – when the gallery will hold a closing recepetion – are whimsical, wonderful, moving, and evocative – wait for it – shoeboxes. Using the shoebox itself in a very meta fashion given the gallery’s name, 29 artists contributed a variety of vibrant dioramas within the format of the shoebox. Some artists turned the boxes inside out, or used sections of shoeboxes to expand on the format, but the majority of the art works reside inside these perfect, minute spaces.

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There are works political and profound, tiny portals to peer inside, neon to shine. Cosmic, brooding, hilarious, and always prescient, the works here are a dazzling display of ingenuity. If the ‘tiny house’ movement offers an alternative living space for want-to-be homeowners, then About a Box offers a compact alternative to a gallery wall.

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Participating artists include: Debby Kline and Larry Kline, Nancy Larrew, Diane Williams, Susan J Osborn, Nancy Kay Turner, Emily Wiseman, Dani Dodge, Jennifer Gunlock, Kayla Cloonan, Chenhung Chen, Debbie Korbel, Elizabeth Tinglof, Lorraine Heitzman, Susan T. Kurland, Frederika Beesemyer Roede,r Karen Hochman Brown, Cathy Immordino, Steve Seleska, Colin Roberts, Pranay Reddy, Randi Matushevitz, Maya Kabat, Katya Usvitsky, Catherine Ruane, Bibi Davidson, Dwora Fried, Linda Sue Price, Ashley Hagen, Vincent Tomczyk, and Don Porcella.

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Shoebox Projects is located in The Brewery Arts Complex just east of DTLA.

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Then head south through September 1st for Phantom Lim at Torrance Art Museum, a mind bending and material morphing exhibition about perception, liminal boundaries, and physical space.

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Curated by Benjamin Tippin and Max Presneill, mixed media works spill from the edges of their mediums and into the sublime and surreal in the main gallery. The works alter the perception of their form – air filters become a robot-like creature, wire and metal a dragon, wood wall sculptures are a tribute to stained glass, a tumbleweed becomes a red flaming bush.

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Artists include: Coleen Sterritt, Jessica Stockholder, Joan Tanner, Valerie Wilcox, Steve DeGroodt, Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, David Gilbert, Julia Haft-Candell, and Gedi Sibony.

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A fitting adjunct to the main gallery exhibition is in Gallery 2: Nascent Love features large scale and lyrical mixed media art works by Erika Ostrander and Christian Tedeschi. Contemplative and somewhat haunting, the works seem to transcend time, as if artifacts from another era.

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The Torrance Art Museum is located in the heart of Torrance – which we promise is less than 30 minutes from the heart of downtown.

There’s no reason not to make it a double header.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and gallery overviews provided by TAM

Randi Matushevitz Rocks Her World

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Randi Matushevitz’ recent residency at Shoebox Projects invited viewers into an installation that was it’s own world. Like many of the artist’s recent works, her images here were layered, socio-political, filled with the energy of our times. “My images explore the psychological dichotomies of dark and light, the tension of anxiety and fear, and the quietude of contentedness and assurance,” Matushevitz remarks.

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Her work is designed to immerse her viewers in a reality they may usually refuse to acknowledge, to draw them into a visceral conversation about “the fact that many of us live in a state of illusion, where entitlement, safety and security are only a barrier to hide the disparity and inhumanity that others live.”

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The haves, the have nots. How many of us have what we really want? How many of us appreciate what we have? How many of us walk in the shoes, sleep in the bed, see through the eyes of those who have little or who tread a thin line between the comforts of home and hearth and the cold of the streets.

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“The goal of my Shoebox Projects Residency was to find the thread that runs through all of my art projects. I connected this residency to my previous installation Conundrum, thinking about cultural fear,” she relates.  “I began with the horrors of homelessness and looked deeper into the darkness of the other, the invisible, and illusions of safety to find that I am interested in pointing to the connective tissue of being human, without race, gender or culture.”

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As she worked, however, she says her sense of purpose and the strong linear poetry that suffuses her work, both shifted.

“My ideas evolved as I had real and hard conversations, the tent, my shelter, became a space where all thoughts co-exist. I realized the crux of my artwork is, and has been, to point to human equity. ”

So rather than depicting a habitation that was outside many viewers experience, she dug deeper into something more inclusive, yet riven with intense hope and dread.

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“I created this space, where the coexistence of all thought exists, contrarian and temporary, to reflect the nature of life itself.  This space is fragile yet strong. It has been constructed, deconstructed and re-organized from cardboard, wallpaper, string, clamps, personal ephemera and phrases that represent the emotional and contrary inner workings of our minds.”

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Matushevitz’ process in creating it  was dynamic and highly visceral. “I cut, punctured, tore, only to tie and clamp the fragments back together.  The divisions mimic the physical, social and psychological walls that often divide and separate community and individuals; only to counter these barriers with ideas of commonality, safety, love and joy.”

The most overriding sensation in viewing this installation was of being deeply involved in the world she created.

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“This work is my first to focus on viewer engagement. The viewer is prompted to walk through, sit in, add images or phrases to the whole, to recognize shared human experience.”

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Matushevitz succeeded entirely, and this is just the beginning of this particular body of her work.
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“I am continuing to build upon the experiences of this residency, by creating more spaces for human engagement,  make objects that point to complicated space and contrary experience,” she explains.
While Matushevitz’ next project is a group show in Berlin scheduled for the Fall of 2018  – in conjunction with Enter Art Foundation in Berlin – expect to see more of her work in LA, and to live the viewing experience.
– Genie Davis; Photos: Genie Davis

Get in the Huddle at Shoebox Projects

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You won’t want to miss Huddle #2.

Opening March 17th, the 2nd postcard art show at Shoebox Projects at the Brewery Art Lofts is the #equalityforall #resist postcard art show. Hosted by Shoebox Projects and Art and Cake and curated
by Kristine Schomaker, all work is donated to the show and sold for $25 each. 100% of proceeds will be donated equally to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the Trevor Project. Payable by check, cahs, or card at the reception, you’ll get incredibly reasonably priced art, political action, and a warm and welcoming group of like-minded folks all rolled into one.

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According to Schomaker, “After the first Women’s March, they had a list of ten things you could do in a hundred days to support others and get the word out. One of the things was called a huddle. You get together with your community, invite people over and have a kind of get together to discuss other ways you can get your voices heard.  It is kind of like a weight being lifted off your shoulder. Just knowing you are not alone is huge.”

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From there, Schomaker decided that she without much time to volunteer – she is running several businesses and creating her own art – she decided to do a huddle that involved art. “It’s in my wheel house, it’s what do. And I thought about a post card show. Why not put the word out and far and wide, and have people all over the world send in post cards that have to do with equality. ”

With her first Huddle, Schomaker received 200 post cards with sales benefitting Planned Parenthood, the Trevor Project, and ACLU.

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“And it was just amazing to see these voices speaking out, it brought tears to my eyes to see we weren’t alone. So I had leftovers and I just found an opening in my schedule for the project space, and put out a call for more postcards. Now I have a couple hundred more and I am still waiting for more to come in the mail.”

Why choose mailing the postcards uncovered, and receiving postmarks on the work? “I wanted it to go through the USPO, I wanted the eyes of those government workers to see them.” However, she notes with a laugh, people still sent the cards in envelopes, ignoring her instructions.

Along with new works and more expanded origin points – including Texas, Madrid, Canada, and New York; the new show with a call for art which was promoted solely through social media, has one other change. Rather than a hard and fast payment, Schomaker decided “I’m saying a suggested donation of $25, I wanted anyone who wanted to buy one to buy one. That way we could sell more. Hopefully that will get people to buy them,” she explains.

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To have a handle on truth in the face of cultural gas-lighting, and to experience true community and know you’re not alone in these highly charged, polarized political times, head to Shoebox Projects on Saturday from 3-5 and go home with an inexpensive yet supremely valuable work of art and sense of belonging.

Shoebox Projects is located at 660 South Avenue 21 #3 in the Brewery in DTLA near Lincoln Heights.

Go.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Kristine Schomaker

Dani Dodge: Then/Now – Always

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D9Then/Now, the just-ended residency by Dani Dodge at Shoebox Projects, held its closing reception on the 17th, but like the ringing echoes of the car crash the installation depicted, the aftermath of the exhibition lingers in the mind and heart.

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Above, the artist with the soft-sculptural portion of her exhibition.

The room-sized installation Dodge created in her month-long residency took the incident of a pile-up the artist was caught in, and used that as a springboard to depict survival – and the choices one makes after having survived.

There is an almost lighthearted feeling to some of the installation, which really makes sense when you consider Dodge’s approach to the situation: the seriousness of the accident, the jolt of realizing she had emerged from it more or less physically unscathed, her vulnerability and her strength, all coalesced to form a recognition of our fragility and, more importantly, of our resilience.

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Viewers entered through a soft, spinning mobile gauntlet, velvety fabric sculptures resembling a steering wheel here, a tail-pipe, a hubcap there.

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Dodge, center; video projection behind her. Left to right, artists Hung Viet Nguyen, Chenhung Chen, Dodge, Shoebox Projects’ founder Kristine Schomaker, artist Francisco Alvarado.

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Photo above by Mark A. Dodge Medlin

Ducking through this somewhat random collection, an experience of the tumult of the very-LA morning commute, we were then presented with video footage of driving Los Angeles freeways, childhood photographs, and LA scenery. The full-wall projection incorporated music by The Proclaimers, terrific driving music — I used to drive to it all the time, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”

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Suddenly the music stops, the projection goes black, and viewers are compelled to turn to a small analog TV on the opposite wall, which comes to staticky life with a shadowy image.

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Photo above by Mark A. Dodge Medlin

Surrounding the TV are broken windshields, painted and decorated windshields, and what speaking personally were the most affecting images: a series of ghostly white and grey cars caught in a web of traffic, a shattered car windshield in front of them, and a painting of an orange vehicle with the license plate reading “Then/Now.”

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Dodge seems to be positing the question: can everything change in a moment? Well, yes, of course it can. Can that moment, however dark, be shaped into something quite wonderful by the sheer strength of our own humanity? When it comes to this exhibition, the answer again is affirmative.

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Photo above by Mark A. Dodge Medlin

Dodge’s 101 Freeway smash-up was surreal in the moment, and all too real in the aftermath when she checked on her own injuries and those of others, and surveyed her broken vehicle. But ultimately, the crash led to something like understanding: having survived, she examined her own sense of purpose. She made a conscious decision to turn the event into a work of art, one that has a visceral impact on viewers.

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Dodge with Schomaker.

We are indeed fragile and vulnerable beings, despite the crunchy shell of the metal and fiberglass wheeled boxes in which we spend so much of our lives.

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Photo above by Mark A. Dodge Medlin – author at the exhibition

Emerging from that cocoon, what exactly is our destination? Dodge posits that life is short, driving LA’s freeways can make it shorter still. Carpe Diem. Seize the day and that car insurance policy.

There’s no insurance against the vicissitudes of life – except living. And art.

Genie Davis; Photos: Genie Davis, and by Mark A. Dodge Medlin