Landscapes of the Mind – Thresholds at Gallery of Hermosa

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   Landscapes of the Mind – Thresholds at Gallery of Hermosa

                                                                   Nancy Kay Turner 

Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything.
Albert Einstein

The earth has music for those that listen.
William Shakespeare

Thresholds, thoughtfully curated by Genie Davis, brings together five artists, Eileen Oda Leaf, Hung Viet Nguyen, Angelica Sotiriou, Linda Sue Price, and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, whose artworks reference the elements of air, water and earth. Working across different mediums such as oil and acrylic painting, mixed-media drawing, neon and 3-D printed sculpture, these artists create landscapes that take us from the depths of underwater reefs to gently rolling hills, jagged mountains, and aerial views of land both icy and green, moving engagingly from the micro to the macro. These five artists present landscape as a state of mind rather than an actual place by creating romantic dreamscapes that are idealized versions of nature.

Both Hung Viet Nguyen and Eileen Oda Leaf invent inviting scenarios, jam-packed with flowers, trees and plants with highly textured surfaces. While Nguyen literally sculpts and incises thickly applied oil paint, creating ridges and crevasses that illuminate his forms in his Sacred Landscape series, Oda Leaf adds actual painted materials to her pieces, as in “Desert Plateau,” laying them out in a regular simplified pattern that recall embroidered Folk Art hangings. Both painters present bucolic unspoiled scenes where the sun always shines, the grass is green, the water is pure and there are rarely people visible. While Nguyen’s paintings focus on the majestic and mysterious, bringing the viewer on a spiritual journey, Oda Leaf’s work focuses on recognizable spots such as piers, desert and forests which she transforms with her lavish color palette. Nguyen and Oda leaf are masterful colorists whose palette and paint handling echo both the Impressionists and the Symbolists.

The sculptors Linda Sue Price and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic use industrial and technological materials such as neon, 3-D printing and augmented reality to create compelling works that challenge our perceptions of the environment. Price’s jaunty neon works evoke both the down to earth world of plants in “Snake Beans” and “Kapeeno,” and aerial views of cities and freeways in “The Other Side of the Story. ” The festive colors and the surprising movement of the neon itself suggests cars moving on a freeway or even the gurgling equipment of a mad scientist, making these works especially lively.

Petrovic’s tiny, jewel-like 3-D printed “Pas De Deux” and “Coral Song” are poetic recreations of coral reefs that the artist not only imagines or re-imagines but ones that she has seen on her many dives. Each delicate translucent piece looks lit from within glowing, lace-like, and seeming to sway. Petrovic, whose works are conceptual, continues her use of 3-D printer technology along with augmented reality in her Sprawling LA series. These two pieces paradoxically look both macro (aerial view) and macro (view of the ocean floor). If one downloads the ARTIVIVE app on one’s smartphone, one can view the AR image that appears over the physical 3-D digital print. A frenetic Los Angeles freeway appears over one landscape and a serene ocean view with a seagull flying in the sky appears over the other. Petrovic alludes here to man’s destruction of the ecosystem and what is being destroyed.

 

Angelica Sotiriou’s works on paper and canvas are highly abstracted and poetic. Her large- scale mixed media painting “Scala, Divine Ascent,” highlights striations between earth and the heavens that are delineated, moving from earth tones to blue sky and to a glowing beyond. A simplified gold leaf tree reaches upwards towards the stars, perhaps a symbol of growth and transcendence.

Nature is clearly the star in Thresholds – bountiful, fecund, benevolent, a treasure to behold. Humans rarely appear and when they do, they are tiny specks in the immense universe – small and insignificant. They seem newly formed and not yet dangerous to the planet. There are no cars, planes, buses, cruise ships or tourism. This earth is still a paradise, unspoiled and pristine. Clearly a balm for a troubled soul.

And what is the threshold suggested by the title? Is it the precipice we find ourselves on? The tipping point or moving from the now to the point of no return? Is it the portal one steps through from the present into the future, from the known into the unknown? From what could be into what is? Uncertainty swirls about us daily but in this exhibition, Davis offers us beauty, serenity and abundance. Perhaps this is also a gentle call to action – a reminder of what might be lost if we don’t preserve what we have while we still have it.

– Nancy Kay Turner; photos: Nancy Kay Turner, Genie Davis, Dani Dodge 
Pasadena, CA.

Heidi Duckler Dances Into 39th Year in the Light of the Harvest Moon

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With immersive magic, Heidi Duckler Dance celebrated its 39th year with a site specific dance perfomance and gala last Saturday with signature impressive original style.

The excitingly innovative dance company is known for site-specific perfromances, and this one, held the the Frank Gehry-designed outdoor space of the Loyola Law School Campus, was stunning. The performance, Dance in the Light of the Harvest Moon was an hour long extravaganza of swirling and galvanizing dance.

 

Featuring live saxophone and cello, dancers in stunning fish head costumes wove from plaza area to ascending stairwells, parking garage ramps, and beside a spectacularly lit purple and green tree. Why fish? Renowned architecht Gehry was known to love fish, and the campus was designed, Gehry himself as said, as a kind of stage set,  “…a little village of buildings around a main plaza…with character and diverse structures.” The buildings served here as a contained aquarium of sorts, aswim with lights, music, and dancers who moved, literally and figuratively “upstream” and circled vibrantly hued buildings.

Along with Duckler’s innovative hand overseeing all,  Madison Olandt, and Aleks Perez choreographed and directed. The
original collaborative piece School of Fish, created by transdisciplinary choreographer Shoji Yamasaki, was a highlight. Skilled visual artist and costume designer Snezana Saraswatic Petrovic created stunning costumes for the event, creating fish heads from plastic zip ties for the dancers, and dressing them in shiny, supple scaly-gloves, fabrics, and sparkly shoes. Costumes, music, and sinuous, ecstatic dance moves all combined with super views of the DTLA skyline for an ecstatic night of dance.

Audience members were treated to charcuterie platters and cocktails, a gala awards ceremony at which Duckler introduced her successsor as artistic director for coming years, Raymond Ejiofor, preceding the dance performance.

The performance moved from plaza to outdoor stairs, from ghostly figures in a kind of underworld to fish-head shimmring swimmers, goddess Diana-like huntresses under illuminated trees, and a final multi-level work that had audience members following the fish-head-wearing dancers up five levels of the school’s parking garage, with costumed saxophonist and bubble machines a part of the delightful finale.

That final piece ended on the rooftop amid the shimmering downtown lights with a silent auction, live band, and buffet tables.  With audience members makng their way home at last to dream of dancing fish and moonlight seranades.

 

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and Jack Burke

 

Thresholds Are Opening

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Hung Viet Nguyen, Angelica Sotiriou, Eileen Oda, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic,  Linda Sue Price each create their own unique Thresholds – visionary points of entering or beginning in a new exhibition opening September 20th in Hermosa Beach.

From lush oil and acrylic landscapes and portals to potent abstract neon art and other worldly 3D printed sculptures of flora and fauna, each artist’s vision shapes a lush new world, one that speaks to the beauty of the earth, the sea, the spiritual, joy and loss.

While the artists themselves did not collaborate, the exhibition is very much collaborative, allowing visitors to view a range of special and secret worlds, from stunning clifftop waterfalls to lush green and gold oceans, astonishing skies and sunsets, the corals of a watery world, and hypnotic neon.

Each of the five exhibiting artists have combined their gifts to create transcendent gateways to places that shape visions to cherish and contemplate, expressing the beauty of nature and the wonder of the unknown, creating beautiful and visceral works of the earth, sea, and heavens, shaping mysterious and magical landscapes to enjoy, explore, and contemplate.

Nguyen’s compelling, labor intensive investigations of oil paint reveal a methodical mastery of textures., suggesting the influence traditional art forms such as woodblock prints, East Asian scroll paintings, ceramic art, mosaic, and stained glass, with his ultimate expression entirely and inventively contemporary. He offers a series of small works and three larger canvasses, some of which incorporate humans into his rich and intricate paintings.

Oda focuses here on breathtaking landscapes that express her lifelong love of nature, a spiritual and passionate love both sweepingly impressionistic and realistic. From entirely original desert vistas to dazzling sea cliffs and brilliantly colored forests, her works entirely befit her belief that art is an expession of the soul itself, exuding an exciting depth.

Sotiriou works with layered, contemplative abstact images that serve as portals of light and spirit. From small scale, mystical and dream-like images to a fast, dazzling work riven with gold light, she says that work express expresses the feeling that she is a witness to conversations between heart, hand, and mind. Resonant and deep, these works are astonishingly contemplative.

Price works in neon, creating entirely unique abstract shapes that she bends without a pattern, free form.  Brilliant with color and light, she expresses thew ays in which people make sense of the world around them, with change as the only constant and our response to that change shaping our personal thresholds and lives both external and internal – always driven by light.

Petrovic’s work is both stunning and intimate, flora and fauna of the sea are shaped from incredible 3D, recycled plastic and bioplastic. Here she offers radiant corals, augmented reality images, and even a full table display of her work, treasures of sea and earth shaped by her imagination, based on both her personal observations of nature and her research of symbolic meanings.

Inviting viewers into this immersive and lustrous world is my great pleasure as its curator. The exhibition’s festive opening reception is September 20th from 5-8 p.m. at the Gallery of Hermosa, located at 138 Pier Ave. in Hermosa Beach.

An artist’s talk will take place in person and online October 9th at 6 p.m. Regular gallery hours are 11-4 Thursday-Sunday; with a closing event TBA on October 17th.

Go ahead, come and cross these thresholds!

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the exhibiting artists

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earth Day Always for Artist Snezana Saraswati Petrovic

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In Snezana Saraswati Petrovic’s exhibition Bionic Garden – The Fossils of the Future, environmental activism meets profoundly beautiful visual art. The inclusive, immersive exhibition blossoms with dazzling and delightful sculpture and innovative technology, shaping a garden that takes root in both the mind and the soul.

Inspired by the artist’s own personal experience of escaping civil war in the former Yugoslavia, an impactful dream, and her commitment to ecological advocacy, Bionic Garden – The Fossils of the Future examines the possible dystopian end of the Anthropocene era, but it is not a eulogy; instead, it serves as a call to action.

“I have dedicated myself to continuously learning about new scientific developments and incorporating this knowledge into my art. My goal is to foster a dialogue, to challenge, educate, and inspire others about the necessity of protecting our future and healing our world. This mission is not just a choice; it feels like a responsibility woven into the very fabric of my being, driven by the desire to ensure that Earth remains a home not just for us, but for generations to come,” Petrovic says.

On display June 6th to July 21st, 2024, at Kahilu Gallery in the Kahilu Performance Art Center on Hawaii’s Big Island, the show embodies Petrovic’s continued commitment to, and passion for, saving our planet from potential catastrophe.

The exhibition depicts a future post-human environment containing the remnants of flora and fauna on both land and sea. Inviting viewers into the physical space of her installations and using interactive elements, Petrovic seeks to instill a deep appreciation for the earth and an understanding of the potential loss we face. “What I most want viewers to take away from the exhibition is a deep appreciation for the beauty of our world and an understanding of the potential loss we face. If the viewers leave with a sense of wonder and an awareness of our power to effect change, that would be truly amazing!” she enthuses.

Her work pulls viewers into a mesmerizing world that incorporates fresh flowers and dried plants along with eco-friendly plastics. It is a head mix, a practice of mingling natural and artificial elements which began with last year’s Leaving Eden, curated by myself at Keystone Art Projects in Los Angeles. There she integrated dry palm leaves into installations that created both a fecund Edenic landscape and a lost one. In subsequent installations, she mixed fresh orchids with fanciful plastic vines, inviting viewers into a lush jungle. In Bionic Garden – The Fossils of the Future, she incorporates native flower leis as well as selections of immersive soundscapes that can be chosen by viewers and range from those of bucolic nature to the rush of a Los Angeles freeway.

Over the years, Petrovic’s ecologically themed artworks have evolved from her initial concepts of upcycling and recycling found objects to the use of sustainable alternative materials. Her focus has shifted along with her medium. She’s created installations that encompass issues of ocean acidity and coral reef bleaching, the growing destruction of plastic pollution, and the detrimental effects of rapid industrial and technological development, as well as the effects of overpopulation.

As her subjects have broadened and become more urgent, the artist continues to utilize materials that are increasingly interactive as she urges collective acknowledgment and action toward environmental crises.

“Initially, my ecologically themed artworks were centered around the concepts of upcycling and recycling found objects. I created weaving installations using recycled newspaper ropes that I made by hand. This process was both time-consuming and meditative, providing a direct engagement with the materials. However, as newspapers became increasingly scarce and less relevant, my art practice began to evolve…During a period of self-directed study in Japan, I delved into the potential of alternative materials derived from nature, such as mugwort and felt. This exploration was aimed at developing projects that were not only ecologically aware but also sustainable. The pivotal moment in my artistic journey came while participating in the Kipaipai professional development program on the Big Island. It was there that my focus shifted towards the issues of ocean acidity and coral reef bleaching. This shift was influenced not only by the publicly available data on the Great Barrier Reef but also by my son’s PhD research on coral reefs, which provided me with a wealth of scientific evidence from Hawaii.”

She now brings viewers into a new role as active co-creators, utilizing video and augmented reality to create an infinitely visceral experience that goes far beyond the boundaries of traditional art. Her transformational ability to weave vibrant digital and natural elements together facilitates a dialog with her audience that is resonant both emotionally and spiritually.

Bionic Garden – The Fossils of the Future features four installations: Haiku Envelopes, The Migration Series, Artificial Reality Series, and the central set piece, Rain Forest Whisperers.

Haiku Envelopes is inspired by the idea of temporal bridges which connect us between our present selves and who we might become in the future. Here, Petrovic invites viewers to write notes to their future selves, encouraging a deeply personal form of reflection and introspection that reaches across time to construct an evolving narrative.

In the Artificial Reality Series, Petrovic seamlessly integrates technology with art, providing viewers with a free smartphone app that allows the dynamic animation of static images, bringing her sculptures and settings dancing into motion-filled life.
Rain Forest Whisperers takes viewers directly into a fantastical world hung with eco-friendly plastic vines, dried kelp, and fresh plumeria flowers, the scent of which perfumes the environment. QR codes encourage participation and inform viewers about ecological themes. At the heart of the installation is a “petrified” plastic rain forest built from the artist’s intricately linked signature plastic zip ties and here intertwined with real flowers and plants. These conjoined materials invite viewers to decipher natural versus human-made elements.

“In essence, my pull towards video and AR reflects my broader artistic ambition: to weave together digital and human elements in a manner that prompts introspection about our place in a technology-infused world. My development as an artist in this realm has been nurtured by a combination of innovative experimentation and a personal commitment to exploring the new frontiers of digital art,” she reports.

Petrovic’s abundant use of plastic is designed to provoke questions about our daily contribution to the overuse of the material, while at the same time, her delightful, playful sculptures encourage touch and connection.

The Migration Series further extends viewer interaction, allowing physical alteration to the composition of her artwork. Viewers can both rearrange and document the changes they create to reshape landscape and ocean-scape. It is a participatory experience, in which one may participate in the artist’s deep dive into themes of change, transition, and impermanence. Petrovic asserts that whether voluntary or involuntary, migration is the narrative of our planet, inextricably weaving movement, belonging, and transformation.

Thematically, migration and its impact on the planet and its people is key to Petrovic’s full body of work at the gallery. She depicts a shared global narrative of compassionate closeness to nature, and emphasizes our adaptability, resilience, and collective responsibility toward our planet. Her belief is that all cultures share the fundamental desires to communicate, to love and be loved, and to breathe fresh air, and that these desires need only to be turned toward our relationship with Earth.

Her installations here also reflect her deep affinity to the Hawaiian Islands. Both the concept of the “aloha” spirit and her commitment to advocacy for the preservation of ocean ecosystems are intrinsically at home in this site-specific work for Kahilu Gallery.

The exhibition will include an opening reception that will welcome attendees to the exhibition in a communal atmosphere, a July artist walk through, and a panel discussion also set to take place in July, aiming to foster a dialogue between artists, curators, and the public. This reflective interaction encourages diverse perspectives, offering a multi-dimensional understanding of the art and its societal, cultural, and personal implications.  There will also be Special Visitation Days targeting collectors, interior designers, and students. These curated experiences are designed to cater to specific interests, providing an enriched context for viewing and appreciating the art.

Additionally, a portion of these interactive experiences will be documented and shared online, extending the reach of the exhibition beyond physical boundaries and allowing a global audience to partake in the immersive aspects of the show.

Online engagement for the exhibition will also be key. As Petrovic notes, “With continuous interactions planned both within the gallery space and online, the exhibition aims to create an ever-evolving dialogue around the art. This dynamic approach ensures that the experience is not static but grows and changes, reflecting the gallery’s commitment to fostering a living, breathing cultural exchange.”

Her goal is to fully support Kahilu Gallery in a way that goes beyond just purchasing artworks. “One way that readers and visiting audiences can contribute to the success of the gallery and its exhibitions is by spreading awareness about the gallery and its events. By sharing information about upcoming exhibitions, artist talks, and other events on social media or with friends and family, individuals can help attract more visitors and interest in the gallery, and on a larger scale, continuing a conversation outside of the gallery about the topics that concern us all would be a great help and support for the cause.” To that end, visit the exhibitions website at Kahilu.org/exhibits, and follow them on Instagram at @kahiluexhibits.

Serving as a call to action and awareness, Bionic Garden – The Fossils of the Future is a powerful tool for change and the greater understanding of environmental sustainability. It is also an astonishing and virtuoso series of installations growing, above all else, a vision of alchemic art.

But it is hardly the artist’s final vision on environmental subjects.

“This exhibition marks the culmination of a six-year journey of exploration that began on the Big Island, closing a significant circle in my career. My project on understanding the nine planetary boundaries is an ongoing effort, reflecting my commitment to environmental sustainability and awareness. During my upcoming artist residency at the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, Calif., this summer, I plan to continue my experiments with mediums and further explore the integration of nature into manmade objects.” Visit Petrovic at TAM starting in June.

“Currently, I’m delving into the possibilities of Styrofoam upcycling and experimenting with homemade bioplastic. These endeavors represent my response to the urgent call for action in addressing environmental concerns. By exploring these materials, I hope to find sustainable solutions and inspire others in the art community to consider upcycling in their work,” she says, describing the work visitors will see her engaged in there.

“My new works, along with my current 3D printed coral reefs, will also be showcased in September at The Loft at Liz’s in Los Angeles for the exhibition “Diverted Destruction 17,” curated by Liz Gordon. Additionally, they will be featured at Wonzimer Gallery also located in Los Angeles,  for the show “Echoes of Voynich,” curated by Marcie Begleiter which will open this fall. These upcoming exhibitions are vital platforms for presenting my latest research and creations, demonstrating my continuous exploration into sustainability and upcycling within art.”

Exploring and experimenting with these materials not only serves as a cornerstone of Petrovic’s artistic expression but also embodies her response to the global need for sustainability. As the artist herself says, “My work might serve as an example of how art can contribute to environmental awareness and action, highlighting the potential of upcycling and sustainable practices in creating meaningful and impactful art. Through this journey, I continue to seek answers and solutions that align with my commitment to protecting our planet and promoting a more sustainable future.”

  • Genie Davis; images provided by the artist and by Genie Davis