Now through June 12th, both virtually and in person by appointment, Sanctuary of the Aftermath at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro brings viewers to the ocean, the earth, and heavenward. It’s a beautiful exhibition featuring the work of ten visual and one audio artist: David Hollen, Ibuki Kuramochi, Jason Jenn, Rosalyn Myles, Vojislav Radovanovic, Allison Ragguette, Kayla Tange, Nica Aquino, Jeff Frost Anita Getzler, and an audio work by Joseph Carrillo.
Color palettes are muted, natural materials are featured, and motion-filled images predominate – whether a mutable, participatory Zen garden, an astoundingly lovely video, or the dream-like sense of floating induced by audio soundscape. Within that motion is a sense of connection – between earth, ocean, heaven; between humans and the environment; between the living and the dead. It powerfully evokes the senes of connectedness long missing during the preceding year, and as the title implies, what sanctuary and relief we are now able to find. Art itself seems key to provide both.
Raguette’s large scale sculptural wall art, “Cross Section Eclipse” is glorious and eerie, a magical view of an underwater kingdom, a fragile yet fierce connected ecosystem.
Tange’s interactive Zen garden and woven “The Rise and Fall of Decadence” have an equally sea-centric appearance, meditative and peaceful, with the woven work reminiscent of fishermen’s nets.
It is an island of family that forms Aquino’s “A 2020 Reflection,” shaped from a window of video, flickering LED candles, flowers, and fruit – all creating a personal altar of healing, but one that seems rooted in the culture of an island home.
Hollen’s “Indra’s Net” reminds the viewer of sea-grass or driftwood, revealing the viewer examining the work, the reflective glass balls placed within the piece add to the sense of finding a cluster of objects washed up from the sea.
Partially hidden behind blackened branches from a recent wildfire, a speaker plays Carrillo’s hypnotic auditory composition. As the music trembles, rises, and falls, the listener is reminded of the tidal pulse of the sea and the rush of a flaring fire; it seems to speak of the transitory nature of time, change, and life itself.
Fully rooted in the earth but offering an almost hallucinogenic and soaring vision is the large screen video that pulls viewers into the gallery space behind it. Jeff Frost’s “Circle of Abstract Ritual,” takes viewers on a journey through 300,000 still photos which shift and spin through a 12-minute work that leads from the Slabs beyond the Salton Sea and desert ruins to the city and back again.
The works unfolding beyond the film include pieces by curators Radovanovic and Jenn. Radovanovic’s “Descent of the Holy Spirit,” takes us from our own temporal realm to heaven, with a ladder serving as a sense of passage from the heap of Angel’s Gate park soil in which it is rooted past glittering stars hung on the gallery wall, and up a ladder past rungs tied with jewel-like glass jars bearing flames on a transcendent journey.
Likewise site-specific is Jenn’s “Angel’s Gate Leaf Mandala” which uses dried leaves plucked from the grounds of Angel’s Gate Park to form a meticulous, spiritual spiral transformed by the use of gold and copper leaf and a sparkling royal purple.
Myles’ “Pieces of Us,” rejoices in an abundance of harvest with careful compositional placement of collecting baskets and dried peas. But above these hang ghostly, lacy shapes that that recall the passing of those who gathered past harvests.
Getzler’s work ties land and sea, the living and the dead, with a series of works, “Evocation 1, 2, and 3.”
Dried rose petals are kept in bottles, stored in a drawer, and the central focus of a video elegy filmed by Radovanovic and Jenn.
In the video work, filmed with the glow of Magic Hour sunset around her, the artist honors the dead by tossing handfuls of petals into the ocean, as the Jewish prayer for the dead is performed on the soundtrack.
Kuramochi’s “The Memory of Physicality” (above) links viewers fully back to the vicissitudes and the tenuousness of life with a galvanizing video work essentially framed by rivulets and drifts of human hair that speak to loss and growth and an essential, soul-healing shearing.
Speaking to both the spirit and the strength of sea, earth, and human survival, of this life and the afterlife, Sanctuary of the Aftermath is an exceptional show, one that dances with passion while remarkably exuding a sense of welcoming peace. Don’t miss.
And while you’re at Angel’s Gate, definitely take in the exhibition of studio artists’ work, re-adaptations, which also explores connection, reinvention, and relationship. Exhibiting in this lovely show, in a variety of mediums, are Phoebe Barnum, Delora Bertsch, Lynn Doran, Beth Elliott, Henry Krusoe, Vanessa Madrid, Tim Maxeiner, W.S. Milner, Lowell Nickel, Michelle Seo, Nancy Voegeli-Curran, and Ann Weber.
The exhibition is located at Angels Gate Cultural Center,
3601 S Gaffey St, San Pedro.
- Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis
