Hardly a Bit of Blah in “bLAh bLAh bLAh” at Launch Gallery

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Snezana Saraswati Petrovic and Chenhung Chen both weave. They weave artistic magic. They weave respectively using recyclable plastics and recycled metals and wire.

The result is something fascinating and fabulous in their paired solo exhibitions at Launch Gallery in mid-city. From paintings created from silvery staples to mesh wire basket and bell shapes from Chen to 3D-printed plastic corals from Petrovic, this work is lush and lovely, while also speaking to climate change, lost legacies, recyled materials, and reshaped hopes.

What do we envision for ourselves? Can we recreate the world and make it new again? These artists believe the answer is yes. Petrovic gives us dying and healthy corals in a variety of shapes and sizes, AR viewable images of sealife; Chen provides floral and fauna that are as delicate and sweet as any flower, but are shaped from metal and mesh and copper wire.

This immersive exhibition looks at our realities and issues,  crocheting, weaving, binding, shaping, and forming the new from the old; envisioning the interconnectedness of human beings, our planet, and social constructs that divide and unite us, sometimes paradoxically at the same time.

It is gorgeous art; it is also meaningful, looking at both who we are as a species and what we might be, and what our world may become. Can we shape it more gracefully and wonderfully, as these artists have done?

Dream-like and elegant, this is an exhibition that thrills with its creativity and understated beauty. Using unique materials, both artists shape classically brilliant work that resonates visually and emotionally.

Exhibition runs through March 2nd, so be sure to step inside the terrific web of unique sculptural forms these artists wove.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Zimmer Frei at Wonzimer: Journey to Home

Posted on by Diversions LA

Can an exhibition offer something warm, welcoming, and cutting-edge immersive? Well, yes it can. Curated by Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, Zimmer Frei, now at Wonzimer Gallery brings together a cohesive, fascinating group of artists who explore what home means to them, as well as expressing a rich panoply of the experience of emigrating to the U.S. from a different country.

The word diversity has been too often misused, twisted to mean divisive. Here, its expression is just the opposite: the sum of our many different parts, of the blending of cultures and the unique individuality of each, forms the springboard for relationships, art, love, and hope.

The international creators on display have made Los Angeles their home, but still managed to maintain their sharp, insightful voices as they explore the country and city in which they now live, form connections, retain roots in their heritage, and find a place to set those roots down in the new culture of our polyglot country. There are sculptures and dimensional experiential works, paintings and video art,  and performances.  Every piece is tactile and resonant. The curation also makes good use of Wonzimer’s cavernous new space, including it’s towering ceilings.

Exhibiting artists and their original homelands include:

Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja, Nigeria
Alaia Parhizi, Switzerland
Amanda Maciel Antunes, Brazil
Arezoo Bharthania, Iran
Carsten Bund, Germany
Chenhung Chen, Taiwan
Kalpana Vadnagara, India
Katya Usvitsky, Belarus
Marisa Caichiolo, Argentina
Max Presneill, United Kingdom
Nadir G Gergis, Egypt
Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, Yugoslavia
Tom Dunn, Australia

 

Dunn’s black and white video art pulses with energy, humor, and joy; Presneil’s vivid abstract canvas exudes power and light.

Petrovic’s own vine enclosed haven – replete with a “magic” AI mirror that also forms a terrific selfie spot, is rich and green, while Usvitsky’s fabric sculptures are presented here partially suspended, soft and fecund, like a nest on a cloud.

Gergis offers a dark and deep riff on the Coptic icon that speaks to the inner workings of the soul. Parhizi provides richly colored narrative painting that pairs beautifully next to Gergis work.

Vadnagara, working in a variety of mediums including fabric, gives viewers a vibrant palette and involving textures. On opening night, the artist also gracefully demonstrated the creation of nan bread with the gestures of a potter at a wheel.

Chen’s delicate hanging mesh sculptures contrast beautifully to her more solid metal and parts floor sculpture that recalls the shape of a volcano in form.

Bund’s video work is a resonant, shifting piece that moves, flower like, between face and abstract form.

In the foreground, above, is a scroll, hand embroidered by Antunes.

Caicholo creates a grass and earth miniature landscape along with a video installation that interacts nicely with Petrovic’s Edenic recylable plastic zip tie and fresh hanging orchid garden across the room. Also on view from Caicholo is a collection of silver, an assemblage provocatively filled with and using hair, Caicholo’s commentary on heritage, borders, and their transitory, arbitrary nature.

Antune’s textile sculpture and hanging wall scroll both lend an air of profound mystery and magic to her own travelers story. Antunes also created a tour-de-force performance piece, Memoryhouse, which she presented this past weekend.

Davies-Aiyeloja gives us a haunting, purple-hued image of women travelers in a lustrous painting.

Bharthania has a floor to ceiling stunner as delicate and intricate as the wings of a butterfly or a space kite, seen above.

There is also a singular “collage” of sorts in Zimmer Frei, with objects of signficance to each artist laid out in a mandala-like circle around a robe once worn by Usvitsky’s grandmother.

The exhibition title referes to a German phrase for vacancy, evoking that “welcome” or “vacancy” sign and fond memories of travels during Petrovic’s childhood with stays at private homes or B&Bs. This collection of works allows viewers to explore and move similarly with nomadic joy, being equally welcomed as we recall what we have, had, and want in a home, both physically and metaphorically, through art.

The exhibition runs through April 7th, with an artist dinner March 31st from 5:30 to 7:30 at the gallery, followed by short film screenings of works never before seen in the U.S. by Petrovic, Vojislav Radovanovic, and Neša Paripović.

Go get yourself welcomed!

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

Leaving Eden: Samuelle Richardson and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic

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Climate change has made the idea of leaving Eden, our planet earth, all too real a prospect.  What happens to the flora and fauna, the animal life – including the human animal – if we allow the continued environmental apocalypse to continue? Art has often stood in the forefront of calling attention to and presenting an action call for salient issues. It has awakened viewers to the necessity for change, to the beauty of the world around us, and provided a sense of hope for the future. So, too, does Leaving Eden, coming February 11th to Keystone Gallery in Lincoln Heights.

The collaborative exhibition between Samuelle Richardson and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic will fill viewers with the joy of Richardson’s expressive textile animals and Petrovic’s immersive flowers, trees, and glistening waters. Gallery visitors will move – as the flourishing creatures and landscape in this art world do – from their lush, green, and blue Eden to a dry, desert world, where all life must struggle for food and water — with hope that they can return to Eden again.

Divided into two rooms: an Edenic garden and a desert filled with Joshua Trees and cacti, the two artists have combined their gifts to create a vision to cherish and consider, one that expresses the beauty of nature and our vital need to protect it.

Richardson describes the journey viewers will take as a circular one, revealing what it is like to live in and leave our Eden and then try to create a more “pristine world…a circular journey back to square one [where] flora and fauna prevail.”

Petrovic says “As an immigrant, I am in search for an idyllic version of the home that I have lost due to war. My realization was that the real home for all of us is the Earth, and for me, it represents Eden, the most diverse and idyllic garden of all.” To prepare for the exhibition, she began to draw studies of plants in Huntington Gardens, Joshua Tree, the Salton Sea, and Oahu, Hawaii. She adds that mythologically the “idea of Eden is connected to the human need for a place of immortality,  an ideal place for human habitation with lush beauty, and it exists not just in Christianity but… is [expressed as] Jannāt ʿAdni in the Quran or [as] Pure Lands in Buddhism…in all of these gardens, there are always references to infinity and transformation.”

Both artists express that sense of transformation in their work. For Richardson, “New work begins with a mental picture of the subject, then I research pictures that express the type of character I want.  I build up each figure in stages to achieve gesture and expression, working with the pictures as a bridge to discovery.”  Here you will see lions, birds, wild dogs, and even a few humans created by the artist.

Petrovic was in part inspired to create her mixed media sculptures of zip ties and dry natural plants from references to the Byzantine traditional blue depictions of Eden, with video installation elements culled from her Oahu and Big Island residencies, while the desert installation was inspired by the Salton Sea and it’s “white shore with fish skeletons turned into mineral dust,” and uses a white, orange, and blue palette – skeletons, sun and sky – in her work in the Desert room.

Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to interact with some of Petrovic’s work through AR and the use of iPads in the exhibition or through their own smart phones. The AR depictions reveal dry dirt transforming with a live, growing seedling, what she calls a “symbolic shift of the wheel of fortune from global catastrophe to renewal and healing.”

Richardson and Petrovic greatly enjoyed working together on this project. “It’s uncanny how much Snezana and I have in common regarding our worldview and how we have advanced as artists.  Our collaboration also included outings to Huntington Gardens to observe and compare our impressions on nature,” Richardson says.

Petrovic relates that “We would immerse ourselves in different parts of the gardens, and have conversations related to the nature of different environments, desert versus rain forest. We were looking at the shapes and relationships between flora and negative spaces…we shared some images of our previous works and investigated the works of Henri Rousseau and Hieronymus Bosch.”

She adds that “Sam’s dogs, tigers and birds are bringing my environments and sculptural installations to life. I cannot wait to see all of them being brought together into this unique project!”

Richardson brought to the exhibition new ideas inspired from a recent residency in Rome, and a fascination with the Etruscan culture, which Petrovic also finds compelling.  “We both agree that our creations are coming from the ‘same world’ of connectedness to feminine history as well as our own past design experiences. Sam’s fashion industry experiences brought a deep understanding of patterning, fabric and thread use into her sculptures. My interest in the relationship between space versus object is from professional experience as a production/set and costume designer,” Petrovic relates.

Richardson has added to her wire, foam, and fabric sculptures – with the “fabric covering my work emulating glaze on ceramic” with a new artistic expression – in woodwork. “I am building shapes that resemble boats, joining and cutting pine lumber [for the exhibition.]”

Petrovic has included her latest experiments in organic bioplastic, also using dry plants and palm leaves in the exhibition. She says taht she has long been driven toward reimagining the future, beginning with a residency at the Pomona Art Colony under Judy Chicago examining the “current and future scientific predicament of global ecological catastrophe…if we do not protect our home, there will be nowhere to go. Leaving Eden was a natural progression of my exploration of gardens and homes within the looming danger of climate change and plastic overuse.  It added another layer to my imagined world of the future. I see this whole experience as a love poem to the Earth, our own impermanence and existence that might have a chance for a replay.”

Richardson, Petrovic, and I, as conceptualizing curator, all encourage you to visit our Eden and its aftermath and look toward that replay, one which our world all too dearly needs.

Leaving Eden holds its opening Saturday, February 11th from 6 to 9 p.m.; an artist’s talk and closing event will be held Saturday, February 25th at 4 p.m. Additional gallery hours Thursday-Sunday by appointment.

Keystone Gallery is located at 338 S Avenue 16, Los Angeles, CA 90031

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and Samuelle Richardson

LAAA – Powerful Environmentally Focused Solo Shows

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An environmental focus forms the theme of three of the four fine exhibitions currently on the Los Angeles Art Association’s Gallery 825.

Awash in the rich blue of the sea, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic’s impressive and immersive installation Collateral Damage Recall serves to compel viewers to act against our consumer madness – the use of plastic, plastic everywhere. The exhibition is thoroughly entertaining, even exuberant, as it brings viewers awareness toward climate change, and the terrible destruction mankind has wreaked upon ocean, coral reefs, and other water resources. The artist has created both a wondrous immersive world in her futuristic living room and bedroom, while also leading viewers to contemplate the ongoing nightmare of plastic. The installation is an outgrowth of a room-size exhibition held at MOAH Cedar four years ago.

Along with its immersive nature, the exhibition now features video and audio components and interactive capabilities for viewers. There are 3D printed corals, a waterbed for viewers to incline upon while experiencing underwater video images, a suspended blue marlin which emanates with sounds of the natural world from speakers contained within the great fish. Images of augmented reality, accessed through the ARTIVIVE app add an extra dimension to the exhibition.  A sculptural tour de force for Petrovic, the exhibition will haunt viewers with its beauty and challenge them to take action in the name of the Earth.

With her own images of nature, including strong visions of sea and sky, the large-scale painted images of Frederika Roeder in her exhibition, Scapes, are equally captivating. Roeder illuminates the walls with her glowing abstract landscapes describing  geography, place, new horizons, and the majesty of the natural world, through the lens of biological narrative.

Depicting both the Southern California environment to which Roeder is native, but also cooler images inspired by a recent residency in the Italian Alps, Roeder, like Petrovic, stresses the importance of protecting our fragile earth, specifically its coastal areas, and at the same time expresses the vibrant beauty of the sea. Her eight acrylic works shimmer with images of water and sun, wild waves and pristine clear bays. Her geometrically abstract use of vertical bands, bars, and narrow lines are hypnotizing, but it is her palette, shimmeringly poetic, that aches with the beauty of the natural world.

S.P. Harper’s Natural Force contains images of nature, both painted and sculptural, vibrant in color and precisely structures. Unlike Roeder and Petrovic, Harper focuses on land rather than sea, specifically the jeweled wonder of nature’s crystals. Employing found-art objects in her sculptural style and a sleek modernist approach to opaque oil paintings, Harper’s work offers its own jeweled dazzle. Her Gods of Fire series of small paintings represent birthstones of singular luster and depth; her use of geometric imaging includes reforming and upcycling of diverse discarded mediums from fabric to her use of an appropriately diamond-blade circular saw.

Gallery 825’s stellar ecologically-themed exhibitions includes the human species too, with an involving video installation from artist Janine Brown, reviewed elsewhere.

Gallery 825 is located at 825 N. La Cienega in West Hollywood. The exhibition closes IRL February 18th; view images online here.

  • Genie Davis – photos, Genie Davis