Color, Light, Shape, Magic – Risky Business at TAM

Posted on by Diversions LA

Artist Fatemeh Burnes, above

Through May 4th, the Torrance Art Museum is vibrating with a rainbow palette and exceptional non-figurative paintings. This is a don’t-miss show, alive with brush stroke and texture, a tribute to the art of painting and the risk of creating work that requires both contemplation and jubilation.

These are evocative, deeply felt, and entirely unique human works,  a response, as curators Marie Thibeault and Max Presneill note, to the “concerns and expectations of AI” dominating the artistic landscape today. These often large-scale, always immersive works are highly personal, and yes, risk taking in the aptly named RISKY BUSINESS: A PAINTER’S FORUM.

The unique and wonderfully painterly world the artists create here are each special, unpredictable, and fresh. In short, they are everything that AI is not. This overflowing cornucopia of fruitful art is created by an impressive selection of creators including Nick Aguayo, Sharon Barnes, Michael Bauer, Fatemeh Burnes, Galen Cheney, Mark Dutcher, Barbara Friedman, John Goetz, Zachary Keeting, Robert Kingston, Christopher Kuhn, Annie Lapin, Michael Mancari, Ali Smith, Vian Sora, Marie Thibeault, Liliane Tomasko, Chris Trueman, Suzanne Unrein,  and Audrey Tulmiero Welch.

In a contrasting but vivid and exciting installation, the museum’s Dark Room is concurrently showing The Reflecting Pool: Emergence of the Third Eye. Here artist Kenneth Salter employs the technological to create an interactive device that generates mesmerizing, neo-psychedelic, fractal images and sounds. Responding mysteriously and marevlously to movements of the viewer’s hands, it’s an immersive and hypnotic work that surrounds and soothes.

Not to be forgotten – although admittedly not to my personal taste – is a traveling exhibition in Gallery 2. The Marvels of Old Masters: Rembrandt, Goya and Dürer brings local viewers over 60 artworks on loan from the Park West Museum in Southfield, Michigan.  These are impressive wood carvings, engraving, and woodcuts from three giants of art history: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), Francisco Goya (1746-1828), and Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). It’s a terrific art inclusion for TAM, and don’t pass it by – however, for us, the truly riveting work is the living color shining in the main gallery and the dark room.

TAM is located at 3320 Civic Center Drive in Torrance, and is open 11-5 Tuesday-Saturday.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Art as Medicine at Torrance Art Museum

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If medicine is an art – can art be medicine? The answer is a resounding yes at Torrance Art Museum where two exhibitions are also about medicine.

Provocative, healing and thoughtful both the museum’s galleries feature art that literally and figuratively dissects medical intervention and practice, the body’s capacity to heal and be healed , chronic illness, pain and acceptance, and the state of American medical care.

Gallery Two presents a vivid, compelling exhibition created by patient artists in Art and Med.

Curated by Ted Meyer, the show features work by Ellen Cantor, Ayin Es, Rose-Lynn Fisher, Siobhan Hebron, Cathy Immordino, Rachael Jablo, Daniel Leighton,  Krista Machovina, J. Fredric May, Bhanva Mehta, Dylan Mortimer, Kathy Nida, Alice Marie Perreault, Jane Szabo, Susan Trachman, James T. Walker, and Meyer himself.

Intense and beautiful, viewers see beautiful, heart wrenching and beautiful photographic images of a complicated pregnancy from Cathy Immordino in “Cry for Help;” “Two Mirrors,” a wall sculpture offering a look inside Alice Marie Perreault’s role as advocate and caregiver; and Daniel Leighton’s vivid iPad painting radiating pain and healing – and the admission of same – in “Opening Up.”

Also on exhibit is the delicate mix of Ayin Es’ “Inherited Shock,” a woven wonder of oil, pencil, embroidery, thread, wire, paper, and pins on canvas; Dylan Mortimer’s zen garden and glitter reimagining of an ambulance ride in “Gates in Proximity to Paradise;” and Meyer’s own sinuous skeleton figure in “Structural Abnormalities” among so many other fine works, including dream-like photography from Jane Szabo, and terrific sculptural work from Krista Machovina among more.

For over a decade Ted Meyer had curated art shows focusing on artworks by patient-artists as a means of teaching future doctors and current medical workers about the lived experience of chronic pain and illness.

These patient-artists create work that depicts the myriad of ways their illnesses affect day-to-day living, physical health and mental well-being.  Like all important art, patient artwork makes strong statements about the human condition.  These works are personal in their creation yet universal in their scope. They make up some of Meyer’s favorites from his times as Artist-in-Residence at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.  Over 10 years he has curated some 40 different exhibits tied to the school’s core curriculum, producing beautiful exhibits that are also both compelling and informational ones.

In Gallery One, the medical world is both personal and more political in Body Politics. Curated by Max Presneill and Sue-Na Gay, this potent exhibition examines not only the disabled body, but how it is seen both socially and politically. The presenting artists include Panteha Abareshi, Emily Barker, Yadira Dockstader, Mari Katayama, Katherine Sherwood, and Liz Young.

Emily Barker’s witty and scathing “Good Medicine is Bitter to the Mouth” offers pithy commentary on health in the U.S.

There are heartbreaking installations dealing with medical billing, how the physical body is treated,  specimens and body parts, and the general treatment of those with disabilities or infirmities. It’s an achingly strong show.

View these two powerful exhibitions through September 9th, along with videos in the museums screening room, featuring Surrealist Vacations In The Subconscious 2023— a video art exhibition, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne / The New Museum of Networked Art, inspired by the Manifesto of Surrealism by Andre Breton.

TAM is located at 3320 Civic Center Drive in Torrance, Calif.

  • Genie Davis;  photos: Genie Davis

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

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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

Torrance Museum of Art – More South Bay Art

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Torrance Museum of Art - Closing Reception - The Studio System - All photos by Jack Burke

Torrance Museum of Art – Closing Reception – The Studio System – All photos by Jack Burke

For a long time, the South Bay – those beach-close communities just south of LAX – were regarded as a place where art events were few and far between. No longer.

The Torrance Art Museum, which is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary with an anniversary fundraiser on September 12th, is one strong part of the South Bay’s emergence into the Los Angeles art culture zeitgeist. On the 12th, guests attending the free event can purchase artworks from artists who’ve exhibited at the museum throughout the decade – each selling for a bargain price of $100.00. Funds raised are for museum arts and education programs and future renovations.

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No better example of TAM’s stewardship of the arts – and a commitment to the cutting edge – can be shown than the museum’s August month- long main gallery exhibit, Studio System. The show featured eleven local working artists in a month-long experimental residency which was designed to bridge the gap between artists and the public. This intimate experiment ran from August 1 to 29. The artists were there to create; last Saturday, a closing reception displayed their works.

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A lively, fun evening, the ability to interact with the artists and study their work offered an insider view of the creation process. Participating artists were: Sydney Croskery, Elizabeth Dorbad, Nancy Evans, Josh Hagler, Seth Kaufman, Hung Viet Nguyen, Don Porcella, Dickson Schneider, Mariangeles Soto-Diaz, Vincent Tomczyk, and Valerie Wilcox.

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Over the course of the month, artist Dickson Schneider made his art even more accessible, distributing his work to viewers for free. Artists were committed to discussing the ideas and processes behind their art as well as their concrete materials and artistic vision with museum visitors. That dialog was on-going throughout the crowded reception.

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Also on display Saturday were large-scale works by sculptor and artist Kay Whitney. Her evocative, industrial felt-based pieces were both supple and sinewy, creating sensual shapes of depth and breadth. The exhibit, titled, “A Deceit,” deceived only in the material’s transforming capabilities: the pieces are not cast in bronze, after all, and Whitney is more than willing to tweak and rearrange them, altering perception and meaning.

With shows like these, TAM is well worth celebrating – don’t forget their 10th anniversary fundraiser on September 12th.

 

 

  •  Genie Davis, all photos by Jack Burke