Climb This Mountain: Sonja Schenk at Show Gallery

31958238_10214548819621418_1616315816913928192_n

At Show Gallery off Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood, Sonja Schenk’s New Mountain is a beautiful mix of oil and acrylic works on canvas and sculptural works. Schenk describes her work as depicting “hyper objects,” which until recently were “earth, fire, water, air, all the natural things. Today you have plastic, landfills, a new landscape that is a combination of plastic waste and natural materials.”

31925184_10214548819701420_5252536327726956544_n

Looking to the future in New Mountain, Schenk offers work that posits a world in which manmade materials are fused with natural – granite mountains and plastic, crystalline forms that are created using “intentional repetition.” The gorgeous, almost alien mountainous forms the artist creates were in part inspired by visits to relatives in Switzerland as a child, where stunning snow capped vistas were depicted in drawings, sometimes altered and given human forms or names that reflected their natural formations.

31882776_10214548825261559_2900985520634986496_n

Schenk’s work is powerful and glowing; the first in her series created for the show is “Silver Mountain,” which in featuring silver leaf in its composition, literally glints.

31944180_10214548820101430_1849125348122296320_n

“Empire” depicts a scaffold shrouded, aged ship – a vestige of the past that is being preserved or reconstructed, a somewhat fragile yet lasting form.

With no horizon line, the pale peach, blues, and pinks that make up the background of her works make the mountains in the foreground seem to float; a floating chunk of ice/mountain/artificial material – take your pick – is literally depicted in a beautiful hanging sculptural work, “Known Unknown,” shaped from gypsum, resin, and polyurethane.

31912685_10214548820741446_2608996708796858368_n

Her titular “New Mountain” piece is strikingly gestational, as if a mountain were being created, birthed, before the viewer’s eyes.

31913809_10214548821701470_4891086478689435648_n

The exhibition is a fascinating look at both an imagined, futuristic world, and one that is realistically shaped. The wonder of it is both how beautiful and how curious a world the artist has created. Reaching almost beyond and inside the artwork itself is a mythic story, a superbly detailed examination of something that could foreseeably come true, and the strange beauty in that story.

31932849_10214548819781422_6481766834109415424_n

Above the well-curated exhibition in a loft space, Schenk is working for the next week on new projects; come meet her at her residency.

Show Gallery is located at 1515 N. Gardner in West Hollywood. The exhibition runs through the 12th.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

 

 

Artists Rule at Durden and Ray: Reviews of Americanism and Yvette Gellis/Drea Cofield

crowd shot

Above: Americanism, from March 2016

We’ve seen two fantastic shows at the Durden and Ray gallery space in DTLA recently – unfortunately, you may have missed them. Both shows ran for short periods of time, two weeks and one week respectively, making it essential to put this gallery on your radar and your must-see gallery list.

We’ll give you a look here and suggest that you check out the well-curated offerings presented and the artists who created them online.

F23C2277

Above, Yvette Gellis

The most recent stand-out exhibition was the paired solo exhibition of Yvette Gellis and Drea Cofield curated by Susan Lizotte.

In the back room of the Durden and Ray space, Drea Cofield paints a post-impressionistic lush and magical world in warmly saturated colors. “It was observational work created in Long Island City,” Cofield relates. Created in water color and colored pencil, she calls her work here “American Summer paintings, the hot sun, the back yard with the bathing suit on, a lot of our culture comes out in that,” she says. These Edenic pieces are softly sensual

F23C2288 F23C2283 F23C2281 F23C2280 F23C2278

In the main exhibition room, the work of Yvette Gellis, whose paintings reconstruct and redefine her place in the world, through lyrical abstract impressionism. “Most of my pieces are oil on mylar, the panels combine acrylic and oil to break up the paintings and bring them into the space. The mylar tends to transform the entire space,” Gellis explains.

F23C2270 F23C2263

It’s a conversation in which you are always on guard, a metaphor for life and what’s happening geopolitically, where we are headed as people.” These recent works were inspired by the artist’s recent visit to Paris and her return right after the bombings there.

F23C2276 F23C2261 F23C2260 F23C2259 F23C2254

Further back, Americanism, a powerful group show curated by Steven Wolkoff, ran for far-too-short a time March 26th, and featured an absolutely killer collection of artists focused on what exactly it means to be an American – and what is an American “ism.”

sonya 1

Featuring images as interesting as they are fun “including cat memes, supersized sodas, bottomless military funding, and all the anti-establishment political candidates you can handle,” according to Wolkoff, exhibiting artists included:

Gavin Bunner
Don Edler
Raymie Ladavaia
Ben Jackel
Casey Kauffmann
Yoshie Sakai
Sonja Schenk
Ami Tallman
Drue Worrell

gavin bunner with steven

Curator Steven Wolkoff left, with artist Gavin Bunner, right

Wolkoff says “The project started with a few artists who wanted to show the Americanism spirit as something to explore. They had the idea of components of American spirit which are manifest in politics right now. The ideas coalesced around that,” he says.

The prescient and timely topic – given today’s political scene and the upcoming California primary election – offered a strong and bracing look at who we are as a culture in this point in time.

gavin bunner with art

Gavin Bunner’s “Job Interview” features a delicately rendered job interview line, with hope and dejection both rampant in a piece that serves as a solemn yet amusing ode to the recession we have still not recovered from – unless one is part of a political or economic dynasty.

gavin 3

“Even Superman cannot get a job,” Bunner points out. “There’s hope going into the inteview, rejection and disappointment coming out.” The piece was created with gloss and sharpie ink.

gavin 2

rami with art

Raymie Ladevaia uses “the feline as a metaphor for the endurance and stamina, the power and energy of a cat’s bounce. It can start and stop, an action, a force of itself,” the artist relates.  His work was created using water color, crayon, and collage. “Lots of my work deals with feline energy and force. If you’re a cat person you understand.”

rami

Sonja Schenk’s “The End” is a plaster and styrofoam sculpture. “I considered what’s iconic about America, and I decided it was the car the road. It’s the end of that era, and our roads could be like the ruins of the Roman Empire or Native American Mounds. That was my inspiration.”

sonya with art sonya 2

 

yoshie

Yoshie Sakai’s video work above shows Americans mindlessly eating junk food “Come One, Eat All;” while Ami Tallman’s “Local 215,” and other images below, are all about the desire for change.

ami tallman 3

ami tallman ami tallman i think

Below, the sculpture of Ben Jackal

ben jackel

Below the work of Stacy Kaufman: smashed iPhones, hot dogs, Mickey Mouse, sex, and bombs.

casey kauffman

Find these artists! And keep an eye on Durden and Ray’s exhibition space, located at Durden and Ray 1950 S Santa Fe Ave Los Angeles, CA 90021