10th Annual Spectrum Gestalt Kicks Off Summer at bG Gallery

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It’s the 10th Annual Spectrum Gestalt and we arrive at Bergamot Station and watch as guests spill out of bG Gallery with an energy and crowd that is just as colorful as the exhibition. Many of the attending artists are dressed in their respective color palette and I am no exception.  Joined by my two young boys, I made certain to have a serious talk before entry. You know, the Do Not Touch Anything talk, matched with the No Running in the Gallery talk. My intent eyes linger affirmingly on the littlest, spunkiest of the duo and is followed by a required “Yes, Mom,” before we proceed. We work our way through the crowd and into the gallery and are immediately hit with powerful waves of color. I look to my 10-year-old and find him wide-eyed, jaw ajar. We pause and allow the chromaticity to settle in.

The exhibition is arranged in a classic salon style that flows in the respective sequence of each hue in the rainbow. It’s almost impossible not take a step back and look at the installation in its wholeness. Each band of color is refracted with a range of art styles and media that take the viewer on an electromagnetic & multi-dimensional journey. From visually captivating paintings and detailed drawings to tactile works of embroidery and sculpture to photographic feats that all bode their own greatness, yet meet the viewer’s eye on a level playing field— gestalt indeed.

Spectrum Gestalt was the exhibition that initiated bG’s inception at Bergamot Station Arts Center 10 years ago. Gallerist, Om Bleicher, shares that although they had a location on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica and another in La Brea, when a space at Bergamot presented itself for a one-month pop-up, the opportunity to make a big splash in this creative hub was one not to be missed. Bleicher aimed to activate the space by involving as many talented artists as possible, knowing that the scale of people taking part would amplify and even permeate bG’s presence. The timeline to prep for such a show was short. So much so, that artists were asked to make their own art labels in the color of their work. But it all came together and the scale of people that attended the launch of Spectrum Gestalt energized bG in a new and exciting way, and a sense of place here at Bergamot was born. To be nestled amongst over a dozen fine art galleries that gather both artists and collectors from around the globe was undeniably alluring, and the one-month pop-up subsequently turned into a permanent lease signed & roots were formed. Now, 10 years later, this flagship exhibition serves as an annual reminder of bG’s beginnings at Bergamot.

Chromatecton #5, Sung-Hee Son

This year’s exhibition was heavily reliant on the curatorial direction of Sung-Hee Son, who is an artist her own right. While the unification of impact was achieved, there was a rhythm found in the grounding consistencies presented. Whether through the color wave itself, or the fact that several artists had multiple pieces throughout the exhibition, there was opportunity for the viewer to seek out congruencies that offered an overall fusion.

An Act of Hypnosis, Michelle Kingdom

Established artists such as Michelle Kingdom showcase narrative embroideries in keeping with her recent bodies of work, while emerging and student artists like Trevor Coopersmith shared a handful of playful ceramic wall-hung sculptures sprinkled throughout.

Linkage, Trever Coopersmith

Houlihan, Tamara Tolkin

I found myself absolutely enthralled with both the painted and threaded lips of artist, Tamara Tolkin.  Pretty in pink, the toothy pout of one piece is acrylic on canvas and another is a textile dream of wool, cotton, and linen that speaks to my inner (and let’s be real, outer) appreciation for detailed, yet playful precision.

Laffy Lemon, Isabella

Fig and Water Drop, Paul Art Lee

Windows and Doors 1,  Angela Kent.

No matter what color you find yourself among, the subconscious intuitively stirs. And although my work hangs along the wall of black, I find myself smiling at all the yellow.

Catch your favorite pantones at the closing reception this Saturday,  July 1st 5 – 7 P.M., before all the colors in the rainbow are wrapped up and hauled out until next June.

bG Gallery 2525 Michigan Avenue, #A2, Santa Monica, CA 90404 | Gallery hours Wed-Sun 12 – 5 P.M.

– Written by Aimee Mandala; photos by Aimee Mandala, Paul Art Lee, Zoe Silverman

 

Quick Takes on Hot Art: Mon Dieu Projects Goes Abstract and Shockboxx Heads to Summer Camp

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Two terrific group shows have started the summer season off right in LA.

Mon Dieu Project‘s sophomore exhibition, Absctract Adjacent, is a lovely, lush show that gets its title from being, in many cases, somewhat figurative, or at least elements of the figurative dance through this group show.

Shadowy white figures, both ephemeral and graceful, dance through the vivid red background of lustrous works from Nadege Monchera Baer, created with acrylic and colored pencil on Vellum. Baer’s pointillist style here is new to me as a long-time follower; but like past works, it is poetically perfect.

Lucas Biagini combines wax with oil paint to shape visceral, dimensional images that flow like colored lava.

DL Alvaraz offers surreal and colorful sci-fi shapes; working in graphite and colored pencil the effect of his color and medium is that of a collage. Jaehong Anh is more surreal still, Dali-esque, perhaps and texturally deep.

Eva Blue’s astonishing giclee on glass depictions of the Northern Lights, dazzles with color.

Rick Boling’s vivid crowd scenes, even blurred or dotted with confetti, edge toward the figurative with one eye on abstract wonder.

 

Christopher Kuhn devotes swirls and layers of acrylic and oil paint to creating ropey, fascinatingly complex abstract puzzles.

Jeffrey Nachtigall gives viewers a lavender sky and an alien space craft in his single work in this show, a glossy and absorbing mix of spray paint, latex, and acrylic.

Shadowy, nearly submerged images in more muted shades mark the work of Bernardo Montgomery, who works in mixed media on copper and steel here.

The exhibition just closed, but it will be exciting to see what’s next for the gallery, which is new by a few months to the LA art scene. The light filled space offers inventive, smartly conceptual work that feels bracingly fresh in the DTLA art scene. Abstract Adjacent is available for viewing online, here. 

Also fresh in the summer heat, Shockboxx Gallery‘s group show, Summer Camp delights with a wild array of artists in full seasonal splendor. From the campy (yes, pun intended) to the haunting, from stunningly detailed landscapes to fuzzy textile sculptures, this exhibition is as welcome as a cold glass of lemonade (spike it if you’d like) on a hot day.

Eileen Oda’s large-scale “Spring Flowers” is a jaw-droppingly detailed field of poppies in a quintessentially Californian landscape that draws the viewer straight into the sunny meadow.

Aimee Mandala’s wonderfully mysterious glowing blue house in a dark wood, created in charcoal, is both elegaic and grand, a slice of summer memory.

Debbie Korbel delights with a hilarious Barbie narrative.

Emily Wallerstein’s perfectly detailed sunset pink desert sky and Joshua Tree in “Full Moon Covid Camping, Mojave Desert” is all ethereal light. From Amrta’s golden textural swirls to gallerist Mike Collins’ wittily subversive “The Buzzards Left, so it wasn’t me they were after,” there is something for everyone here.

Viewers will find an embroidered “Homeless Man’s Skewer” by Priscilla Vincent; a sensual oil painting from Celina Bernstein;  a whimsical yet fraught paper bag enclosed figure from Isabella Fernanda and Lori Markman’s equally fraught ballpoint pen on paper monster in “I’ve Got My Eye On You.”



You better check in to this summer camp, no tent required, as the show ends July 2nd. You can also view many, but not all of the 39+ works on exhibit here.

Mon Dieu Projects is located at 720 E. 18th Street in DTLA, open 12-4 Tuesday-Saturday.

Shockboxx is located at 636 Cypress in Hermosa Beach and is open on weekends or by appointment.

  • Genie Davis, Photos: Genie Davis

 

 

 

Artist Arezoo Bharthania Welcomes Viewers to A Home in the Inbetween

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Arezoo Bharthania’s evocative mixed media solo exhibition, A Home in the In-Between, is both delicate and layered. As skillfully curated by Jason Jenn at LA Art Core in Little Tokyo, the exhibition is divided into three distinct areas: hanging panels, which viewers can walk between, like scrolls that tell the story of both Bharthania’s childhood, early adulthood, and current life; similarly unfolding narrative pieces that flow from ceiling to floor, fringed at the bottom, recalling exquisite Persian rugs; and projected images exhibited in muted twilight, and viewed at least in part, through clear, etched panels. Linking each of these spaces is a section of  nuanced and delicate works of wall art which resemble sections of a quilt or pieces of beautiful wallpaper.
The combination of curated spaces leads the viewer from one room to another, just as you would pass between the rooms of a home. But the home here is a dream-like one, composed of memories and plans, present reality and past sensations.
As the artist leads viewers from her recalled life in Iran to her life here in LA, her personal story reflects a broader one, a uniquely human experience of emotion and sensation, observation and understanding, envirorments both interior and external. It is the unfolding and expansion of roots and the blossoming of the future on the fertile garden of the past.
The exhibition allows the viewer time to take in the full view of her emotional, physical, and remembered home spaces. Viewers are invited not just to see but to explore Bharthania’s carefully explored territory, which she depicts through painted images, photographic depictions, and a range of tactile materials.
This is a graceful show, immersive but delicately so, shaping personal images of home, and with the artist’s projected images, a more urban and global one.  What makes a home? For Bharthania is it is heart and soul, the colors of her world, from lime green to gold and pink, vibrant and personal, and moving into her images of cityscapes, a world that can be more muted and distant, a way to process, perhaps, the urban noise.
Throughout the world and throughout time, home is a place we live, we inhabit, we at least try to make in our own image – a safe refuge. It is a place in which we long for a life outside its walls and equally yearn for the succor of, or at least the hope for, sustenance that we find within them.
There is intimacy and immediacy in Bharthania’s work, and there is also a view out the windows of her metaphorical home so to speak, a look at the broader world, and the passage of time.
The artist shares beauty and wistfulness, the fragile nature of the past, the permanence of personal roots, and the restlessness of urban life, all while acknowledging the constructs of home from beyond the personal to a grander, broader, more social view.
This lovely exhibition closes Sunday, with a curatorial and artist walk through conducted by Jenn and Bharthania at 3 p.m. The gallery is open 12-4 Thursday-Sunday.  LA Art Core is located at 120 Judge John Aiso St,. Los Angeles, CA 90012.
– Genie Davis, Photos: Genie Davis

Julien Nitzberg and Puppeteer Robin Walsh Go Wild Creating For the Love of a Glove

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For the Love of a Glove, a wacky, weird, irreverent satire, is writer/director Julien Nitzberg’s alternative-reality tale about the once “King of Pop,” and the way in which an alien named Thrihl-Lha is contained in a sparkly glove and trying to overtake all of humanity.

Nitzberg is joined in this wildly comic adventure by globally renowned puppeteer Robin Walsh, and the talented actors who operate her puppets and star in the show. The puppets are life-sized and lush, and the show uses them well along its completely irreverent, zany, yet pointed path as it examines everything about Michael Jackson including his skin whitening, his sexuality, abuse accusations, and his religion – all in a defiantly ribald, non-p.c. way.

Far from an authorized biography, the production is an inventive cult-hit that features 20 puppets that are motion-filled, queer positive and drag-friendly works of art.  The puppets are just one part of a talented live cast including lead Eric B. Anthony.

From suggesting a relationship with Donny Osmond was the key to Jackson’s life to a cautionary tale about an aborted romance with Brooke Shields, the wild and crazy humor is just the means to an end: unveiling and dealing with issues ranging from racism and religious hypocrisy to abuse and cultural appropriation.

The inspiration for the musical began twenty years ago, Nitzberg relates. That was when he was “asked to write a Michael Jackson biopic for a cable channel. The production team was trying to figure out how to deal with all the controversy surrounding him. They had no idea how to deal with the allegations of child abuse and so many other controversial things. I had an idea that we could say his glittery glove was an alien who forced him to do all these bad things, causing trouble to ruin his reputation.”

Needless to say, the production execs didn’t buy this approach. “They laughed really hard and said it was the funniest pitch ever, but could I do a normal version?” Nitzberg recalls. “But there was no way personally that I could write a convincing story about Jackson without dealing with these areas of his life and the only way I could make sense of them was through this idea. So, cut to years later, and this idea came back to me as honestly the funniest ever, and I created the musical.”

Making a funny, highly political and satiric musical came naturally for Nitzberg, having written and directed a similarly themed piece, The Beastly Bombing, that played successfully in Los Angeles for over a year.

In For the Love of a Glove, the writer/director explains that there were some subjects that he absolutely wanted to deal with in the production. “One was cultural appropriation, another was racism, and another was being raised in a fundamental Christian Religion. While this is all pretty heavy stuff, you can deal with issues in a lighthearted way without people feeling like they are being lectured. They can learn and feel like they are having fun.”

Dealing with a story about aliens who look like gloves “naturally led to puppets,” Nitzberg says. “Not to mention in the first act, we needed to cover the Jackson Five years, and we certainly were not going to cast five kids in a show that’s honestly pretty filthy. So, it made sense to use puppets to represent the kids.”

He adds “Teaming up with the amazing Robin Walsh was phenomenal. She is a genius, internationally known puppet designer.”  Working together, it took close to five months working on different puppet prototypes to find what worked best for the production.

According to Nitzberg, “Something most people don’t know is that working with pupets can be dangerous. In Broadway shows like The Lion King, people get injured because the ppets are so large and heavy. We wanted to design puppets that are comfortable to wear and lighter, which is tough with life-size puppets.”

Describing the rewards of and challenges inherent in the production, Nitzberg says “One of the most rewarding things about working on this project is our cast. They are so funny and so great, and bring so much richness to the show every night. We are always having audience members tell us that their stomachs hurt from laughing so much. The cast gets standing ovations every time.”

While he calls the entire production experience “super fun,” there have been challenges. “When you add puppets, everything is a challenge. Most of our actors didn’t have previous experience working with puppets, so Robin did a two week puppet camp to explain and practice how to work the puppets and the psychology of puppets, the background of this art form, how they fit into theater history and all of that. Having written and directed a musical before, I knew it took a long time to rehearse and plan, but puppets very much expand that.”

The show features eleven actors and twenty puppets, with each puppet exhibition its own character and persona.  “They take on a life of their own and start to freak you out,” Nitzberg laughs.

Describing the show itself, he notes that “A lot of people assume its going to be like an SNL sketch, making fun of Jackson, but it’s actually about how a great artist goes astray. One of the biggest parts of it is exploring how being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness with their super restrictive sexuality affected him adversely. We try to understand and explain how becoming the most famous crotch-grabber in the history of the world comes out of that background. For us, the answer is that the glove made him.”

The show opened ran briefly in 2020, was shuttered by the pandemic, relaunched this February, and has had its run extended four times, including for the next two weeks.

For the Love of a Glove runs Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. June 23/24, and June 30/July 1st at the Carl Sagan-Ann Druyan Theater at the Center For Inquiry West (CFI), at 2535 W. Temple Street, Los Angeles, 90026. A Pride Month Price Drop special offers general admission seating in these final weeks for $30, and front row bean bag seats for $80.

Go see this almost indescribable, insanely incandescent show before it dances off into the future.  It’s a real “Thriller.”

  • Genie Davis, photos provided by the produciton