A beautiful array of art by men and women who share their feminist perspectives fills Muzeumm through this Sunday. A Feminist Perspective offers sculpture, mixed media, paintings, and most of all a witty, transcendent series of artworks.
Curator’s Kristine Schomaker and Baha Danesh present a vibrant feminist dialogue stressing equality for all. Featured artists present works that deal with concepts of race, class, culture, politics, social commentary and representation of women.
Participating artists include:
Austin Young
Baha Danesh
Bibi Davidson
Bill Pacak
Cathi Milligan
Chenhung Chen
Ching Ching Cheng
Daena Title
Deidre Sullivan-Beema
Diane Williams
Emilie Carroll
Gianni Arone
Irma Barbosa
Jenifer Yeuroukis
Keenan Chapan
Kelly Thompson
Kimberly Morris
Kristine Schomaker
Lena Moross
Morgan Green
Poline Shooshani
Sheli Silverio
Shula Singer Arbel
Victoria Sebanz
Virginia Broersma
We were especially taken by the gorgeous coiled metal wires of Chenhung Chen’s cocoon-like sculpture…
Bibi Davidson’s vibrant paintings, with their clean, glowing style and succinct message – It’s None of Your Business indeed…
Lena Moross’ lush and imperssionistic painting of Ms. Davidson, glowing with color.
The video installation by co-curator and artist Schomaker, “The Paper Doll Test,” offers a compelling, compassionate take on body image.
According to Schomaker, “The is the 2nd year in a row that Baha Danesh and I have curated A Feminist Perspective. It initially started with a space and a vision,” she notes.
“We were very lucky last year to be able to use a wonderful large space at the Montalban Theatre and this year, even luckier to have Muzeumm host the event. We created the exhibition because we wanted to be part of the conversation on Feminism today,” she explains. “We wanted to show that there is not just one single idea of Feminism, but many perspectives from men, women and the LGBT community. While Feminism focuses on women, it carries a much broader idea of equality for all.”
Above, the work of Diane Williams, below, Shula Singer Arbel.
Missed the opening?
Shoebox PR and We Choose Art host the closing reception this Sunday, June 5th at MUZEUMM and add in a Feminist pizza party and poetry readings by the WOMEN group. Tasty.
Muzeumm is located at 4817 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016. Closing reception runs 4 to 6 p.m.
Self-taught LA artist Jodi Bonassi may just have created a master work with her “Chungking Alley” – a mural on canvas that depicts the LA Art Scene.
Now on display in the heart of Chung King Alley itself, in the backroom at Coagula Curatorial, artists, curators, regular gallery goers – they’re all here in a truly awesome piece that has elements that are reminiscent of Henri Rosseau in its cavalcade of art.
Described as an upbeat artist who creates sweetly detailed, slightly surreal drawings of iconic LA locations, children, and other human beings, Bonassi is considered an outsider artist, but one whose sophistication and warmth grows with each piece.
Bonassi notes “Chungking Alley” represents “the path we have all chosen. The painting did not come out of an idea but more as a reflection of the LA art scene and the people who chose to be a part of it. The painting was begun in December 2015.”
Oil on canvas, the piece would be a perfect adjunct to a museum collection or for a private buyer. Just about everyone who “is” anyone in the LA art scene is a part of this painting, whose richness requires repeated viewings to truly appreciate its complexity, detail, and profoundly inclusive sweetness.
“The composition is created right onto the canvas. People who have touched my life in some way, who hung out, and were in the art scene ended up in the painting. This is a painting about the art community, and how we all play together. The basketballs on the floor in the foreground represent the striving to be a part of this team. I am self taught and have exhibited in galleries and I have been published in different publications since 1991. I’ve always drawn and painted, and this is the only way that I can relate to the world. My work stems from a desire to understand people and document my experiences through drawing and painting,” the artist explains.
Mat Gleason, curator of Coagula Curatorial, says “My impressions of the piece are that it asserts its own art historical narrative instead of submitting to academic structures and choices.” He describes the painting as an “amazing dreamscape narrative with painterly precision. Jodi has been around forever as have I.”
Does the piece immortalize Gleason and the current body of art in LA? “Immortalized in art would still require the Louvre Museum to acquire the picture,” Gleason notes.
We believe that it would be a most auspicious addition to the Louvre’s collection. In the meantime, view it at Coagula, open Wenesday through Saturday form 1-6 p.m. and on Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. The gallery is located at 974 Chung King Road in Chinatown.
It’s time to get down with Zero Down. Coming up this Saturday, June 4th from 5-9 p.m., it’s a multi-media art experience at the 1019WEST Art Studios in Inglewood, a cool, re-purposed workspace where over 30 artists have their studios in what was once a former Volkswagon dealership.
The third year for this multi-media art exhibit, the evening promises a combination party and art experience, with open studios, a group show, and performance art. This single night event is a festive occasion featuring a variety of artists’ work from the 1019 Artists Studio Complex and the nearby Beacon Arts Building. Live music, installations, and stellar group exhibitions join over 20 open artist studios. Installations and group presentations will take place in hallways and common space around the site. Food and drink will be available, too – we hear there will be tacos.
Participating artists from 1019WEST are: Mira Alibek, Susan Amorde, Michee Asselin, Nina Chin, Clerio Demoraes, Jeanne Dunn, Claire Jackel, Rachel Kaster, Henry Kitchen, Stuart Marcus, Jesus Max, David Newcombe, Melanie Newcombe, David Peters, Tony de los Reyes, David Spanbock, Ernie Steiner, Lacey Stoffer, Liza Vosbigian, Pontus Wilfors, Ashley Wilson.
Artist David Spanbock, work shown above, is the co-founder of BLAM, a new Brooklyn/Los Angeles arts collective. Spanbock uses prismatic shapes to refract both light and color. “All of my work is about the politics of transformation, the politics of human physics. I had the insight that a city is a collection of events and figures, creating a larger structure, and that’s what I’m working with.”
Installation photos by SDK Photo & Design
Above, Susan Amorde explores the human form and emotions navigating the challenges of life. Her expressionistic works are created in clay, wax, plaster, and bronze, as well as mixed media. Her recent series “Baggage” engages a highly personal theme of how the literal and figurative baggage we carry with us becomes an emblem of our lives in the emotional and metaphysical sense.
Above, Jesus Max creates light filled still-lifes that vibrate with meaning, poetic settings that translate into beautifully hyper realistic pieces created in often-pastel colors with rigorous attention to detail in a fantastic world.
Participating artists from Beacon Arts Building are: Brian Biedul, Darel Carey, Matthew Carey, Dosshaus, Bibi Davidson, Sue Francis, Nancy Jo Haselbacher, Shelley Heffler, Deborah Lambert, Tahnee Lonsdale, Michael Massenburg, Jen Meyer, Alexis Murray, Calida Garcia Rawles, Dawn Rosenquist, Katie Sinnott, Ginger Van Hook.
Bibi Davidson says she wants her viewers to see the humor in life, humor necessary to existence, or “we would all die of sorrow.” Her paintings provide intense, amusing, and delightfully whimsical views of the world, as if seen through the eyes of a wise child, as sensitive as she is brilliant. Often utilizing her self-proclaimed favorite color, red, her works are different than anything you’ve ever seen, and entirely engaging.
Artist Shelly Heffler describes her art as a “roadmap. I paint a topography that doesn’t always represent an actual location.” Heffler also works extensively in ceramics but her acrylic on canvas pieces are her primary medium at the moment, each with a 3D depth that creates a path beyond maps, grids and lines. “It goes into and beyond surface, layers, strata, land forms, time, and age. But at its core, at its inception, it evokes a sense of place,” she attests.
Performance art by Kayla Tange, L.A. Mudpeople, Vittoria Colonna, and Elizabeth Tobias will also be a part of the evening.
The founder of L.A. Mudpeople is artist Mike Mollet, who sculpts large scale pieces created from found art, shaped into balls and bundles. Mollet’s work offers a look into a different reality, one in which what look like clay statues live and breathe, and bundles of wires move in the wind and become animated themselves. Mollet considers his troupe of L.A. Mudpeople to function as “essentially living sculptures.” Mudpeople don’t speak, and move slowly and deliberately, as if lumps of clay had shaped themselves into human beings and literally come to life.
Kayla Tange terms her passion “in meaningful dialog, creative problem solving, collaborative projects and facilitating a unique relationship between art and audience.” To experience her vibrant yet darkly intense performance art is to become immersed in her own inner vision.
To learn more and experience the work of these and other artists, visit this single night’s artistic adventure. The event is sponsored by 1019WEST/Beacon Arts Building management, Shoebox PR and Kristine Schomaker, and 1019WEST/Beacon Arts Building artists, including: Susan Amorde, Jeanne Dunn, and Deborah Lambert.
1019WEST is a dynamic complex of creative workspaces where 30 multi-disciplinary artists maintain studios.
Zero Down is located at 1019 west Manchester Blvd. in Inglewood. Walk-in entrance only on West Manchester and Hindry Avenue. Get on down.
Valerie Green’s “Left to My Own Devices” now at Moskowitz Bayse utilizes digital processing to create a unique and translucently layered series of dimensions based on photographs of photographs on computer screens, tablets, and smart phones.
Using a liquid lens cleaner, Green devices prismatic rainbows; re-photographing her own printed images, slicing and chopping them, she makes surreal and shredded images that appear fragmented and dreamlike.
Green uses a grey computer screen, Photoshop editing processes, photographs of photographs, and tiny pieces of photographs to create her images, which are all about the layers. Both surreal and abstract, these rainbow droplets and opaque and translucent surfaces reflect the technology of today in the soul eternal.
“My pieces are about the translation from virtual space to 3D. I’ve made lots of different projects that led to this, but in this exhibition, the inspiration was with our hands and our devices, how interconnected they are, and how interconnected what we see in real life and what we see on a screen could be,” the artist relates.
