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

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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

Torrance Art Museum, Angels Gate Cultural Center, and Palos Verdes Art Center Make the South Bay Shine

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A collection of fine exhibitions makes the South Bay dazzle with their first 2024 exhibitions. So swing on down just below LAX and take in 6 terrific art events in three different spaces.

At the Torrance Art Museum, two perfectly realized exhibitions offer fresh, vibrant art. In Gallery One, don’t miss the group exhibition Western Values an exciting take on the mythos of the old west from cowboy tropes to historical implications.

Each piece is frankly outstanding, reinventing the powerful tales of Western fortitude and cultural heft in thoughtful works that vibrate with color. Outstanding video art from Julie Orser shapes a feminist version of gunslinger lore, with overlapping images on three giant screens. Shot in the Joshua Tree area, it’s cinematically stunning, and sharply pointed.

Curated by Sue-Na-Gay and Max Presneill, this is an exciting cultural reinvention and an artistic gem.

Exhibiting artists include Cara Romero, Dana Claxton, Edie Winograde, Ishi Glinsky, Julie Orser, Kyla Hansen, Manuello Paganelli, Pascual Sisto, River Garza, Rosson Crow.

Kyla Hansen’s neon-ribboned “Psychic” and Rosson Crow’s spray paint, oil, and acrylic rhapsody in reds, “Proud to be an American” are among the standouts.

In Gallery 2, the solo exhibition also resonates. “Everything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You” from artist Brian Singer, uses a variety of sculptural objects to explore and expose our country’s responses to refugees, gentrification, surveillance, and other issues. Singer’s mother was interned during WWII, making both the beauty and the harsh truths behind these artworks as personal as they are potent.

Both exhibitions run through March 2nd. Torrance Art Museum is located at 3320 Civic Center Drive in Torrance, CA 90503

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In San Pedro, Angels Gate Cultural Center also has two exhibits, both group shows at this venue. 7 Visions X 7 Artists (above) features new and expansive creative works shaped under the auspices of the MRH Fund for Artists grant. This program follows Southern California artists on a year-long journey expanding their professional artist practice. Well curated by Georgia Freedman-Harvey, works include installations, sculptures, wall art by artists Cesar Garcia, Trinh Mai, Rebekah Mei, Nguyen Ly, Jas Parker, Edwin Vasquez, Patricia Yossen. You can read more about Vasquez’s work here. 

The exhibition ran through February 24th.

Upstairs, phenomenal works using print making and found objects fill the larger gallery, with the stellar Printmaking with Recycled Materials, a group exhibition by LYNK Collective, curated by Christina Yasmin Fesmire and Jared Millar.  Dramatic works utilize everything from fabric to melted plastic; it is a wonderfully dimensional and involving printmaking exhibitions that will exceed your ideas of what print making reveals. Artists include Yeansoo Aum, Elisabeth Beck, Andra Broekelschen, Alexandra Chiara, Christina Yasmin Fesmire, Karen Fiorito, Carole Gelker, Bill Jaros, Nguyen Ly, Diane McLeod, Jared Millar, William Myers, Marina Polic, Francisco Rogido, Olga Ryabtsova, Laura Shapiro, Tracy Loreque Skinner, Mary Lawrence Test, Paula Voss, Zana Zupur and guest artists: Karen Feuer-Schwager, Kim Kei, Wendy Murray, Jackie Nach, MJ Rado, Victor Rosas, Fred Rose, Marianne Sadowski, Jillian Thompson and Katie Thompson-Peer. Ly’s work is particularly mesmerizing.

There will be a closing event and talk on March 23rd from 2-4.  Angels Gate is located at3601 S Gaffey St, San Pedro, CA 90731.

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And, at the Palos Verdes Art Center, glass and jewelry are the sparkling stars of a solo show featuring the jewelry – both wearable and highly fantastical from Ann Olsen Daub in Multifacted, and a mind-altering group of glass artists exhibiting in The Optics of Now: SoCal Glass.

In the group show, the artists create works that defy traditiona expectations of glass art, creating unique and fascinating works from a column of linked glass “paper clip” chains to neon infused fabric daisies. Seashells, sea foam, stained glass, and figurative works all dazzle as do the art deco stylings of Nao Yamamoto.

Among the standouts are otherworldly sculptures featuring crystals and ceramic from Nicole Stahl, and Danielle Brensinger‘s flamedworked glass “Column.” Exhibiting are: Paul Brayton, Danielle Brensinger, Adam Gregory Cohen, Mariah Armstrong Conner, Alexander Dixon, Stephen Dee Edwards, Katherine Gray, Michael Hernandez, Eric Huebsch, John Gilbert Luebtow, Gregory Price, Sara Roller, Nicole Stahl, Amanda McDonald Stern, Ethan Stern, Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend, Hiromi Takizawa, Kazuki Takizawa, Deshon Tyau, and Nao Yamamoto. 

 

Daub’s work is as whimsical as it is gorgeous. Giant gemstones, disco galls wearing crowns, a ring big enough for an elephant’s wedding, and examples of the artist’s wearble jewelry are all on display. All that glitters is gold here – or silver, mirror, and glass.

Palos Verdes Art Center is located at 5504 Crestridge Rd, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275 Both shows are on view through April 13th.

  • 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

Studio System II at Torrance Art Museum: Audience with a Muse

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Tam 2

Making art is magic.

There is no other way to describe what viewers have been privy to see this past month at the Torrance Art Museum. I’ve visited twice during the process of artists working at their month-long, in-house residencies, and both times the experience was incredibly special, profoundly illuminating, and offered a look at what it means to have an artistic muse.

At the closing tomorrow night from 6 to 9, we’ll have a chance to see the finished products, but as with life itself, it was the journey to get here that was so profound.

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Perhaps the real expression is soul-satisfying. Museum curator and director Max Presneill allowed artists space and freedom to work their own individual magic, to bond with and be inspired by each other, and to share their artistic alchemy with each other. And in so doing, he created the ability for visitors to not just interact with the artists but to get in touch with something indefinably special, to be an audience to the manifestation of beauty.

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It’s a bit like being present for the creation of the universe.

Okay, on a slightly smaller scale.

Resident artists include: Jodi Bonassi, Chenhung Chen, Tom Dunn,
Huo You Feng, Anna Garner, Lawrence Gipe, Debby and Larry Kline, Feng Ling, Hagop Najarian, Khang Nguyen,
Samuelle Richardson, and Tyler Waxman.

Tam JB 2Bonassi weaves complex, delicate and precisely realized realistic paintings and drawings that capture an indelible image of people, often surrounded by small magical beings, or animals. From her lush color palette to her intuitive emotional resonance, its a treat to see the artist slip in and out of the worlds she’s created.

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Chen creates beautiful, flowing sculptures of cords and woven metal and other found objects. Her use of detritus to shape enigmatic, motion-filled sculpture is rather amazing; she weaves her sculptural works from seemingly nothing into something graceful and mythical.

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Khang Nguyen’s sacred geometric art is hypnotic, drawn in pencil and painted in acrylic.

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Each piece is like the frame of a kaleidoscope image, dancing with light and shape, as if caught just in a brief and fragile moment before a shift. His works, in a muted, earthen palette, bloom as if flowers were plunging up through the soil.

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Hagop Najarian is inspired by music – and uses its rhythms and sounds to create vividly colored works that reflect that inspiration. His multi-layered works have the consistency – or rather the illusion – of stained glass.

Zou

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Feng Ling, also known as Carmen Zou, has created a lovely, Zen-like tea room, offering visitors tea and small snacks of raisins and nuts, and engaging them in conversation. For my grandson, present on both visits to the space, this was an introduction to a beautiful ritual, and allowed him the calm to interact with it and share through it. Older participants wrote their names on the wall behind Zou, and spilled tea on a scroll, upon which the artist will be symbolizing each participant.

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Also highly participatory and involving,  Huo You Feng, a guest artist from China – where he is working on lithographic projects – has created a movable, mutable large scale sculpture reminiscent of both the Stone Henge and abstract art. The installation consists in part of mega-sized hay bales which Feng has shaped into a space the resembles a temple of sorts. Scattered soft hay forms the base from which these bales rise.

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Viewers can touch and walk through, and in the case of my accompanying 3-year-old visitor, help to reshape the work while in progress.

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Samuelle Richardson builds sculptures from fabric and wood, creating beings that seem almost alive, and very much on the same page with the “woke”  by love Skin Horse character.  Her distinct,  shabby-chic works are ready to take flight here, in what she describes as a flock of “angry birds.”

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Her work is entirely fresh, and upends the concept of sewn, material based exhibitions as being “less than” and women’s work.  These are powerful creations.

TAM DUNN

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Tom Dunn has created large scale works that are mural-like in size and scope for this exhibition. The paintings are abstract but oddly recognizable; the pieces shimmer and shiver as if waiting to pop off the walls and dance.

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And don’t miss the potent political and social messages inherent in Debbie and Larry Kline’s series work here. They bring a sense of humor and humanity to their interactive mission.

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Gipe, Garner, and Waxman all have equally beautiful works.

Whether you’ve followed them all in their process or this will be the first time viewing – don’t miss the closing on Saturday from 6-9 p.m.

TAM is located at 3320 Civic Center Drive in Torrance.

 – Genie Davis; photos Genie Davis; Hagop Najarian – photo credit to Chenhung Chen