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

Enchanting and Enchanted Art at Loft at Liz’s

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Above, curator Dale Youngman, right

What better way to celebrate Earth Month than by visiting the beautiful exhibition currently at Loft at Liz’s in mid-city,
Enchanted Earth: Capturing Nature’s Magic.

Nature’s diversity – and a wide range of artistic mediums and impressions of of nature itself – are the subjects of this lovely group exhibition, curated by Dale Youngman.  Filled with vibrant and varied art works including sculptural, mixed media, paintings, and more, this is an immersive, blossoming body of work that includes a stunning use of rose petals by Lori Schouela; lush monoprints from Rhonda Burton, and immersive organic-based works from artist Sarah Pigion.

The heady and ethereal bronze sculpture of Stuart Kusher and the beautiful trompe l’oeil realism of Mark Brosmer are also standouts, but there are no leaves of lovliness left unturned in this exhibition. While each artist works uniquely, the show blends together as a cohesive whole, taking viewers on a walk through forest, field, jungle, and garden.  Exceptional scenes of  endangered animal species from Luis Sanchez pair well with a pop-surrealist view of nature from street artist Mike ‘Tewsr’ Duncan.  Sinulous organic wood sculptures and mixed media works from  Joshua Abarbanel, Matteo Borgardt and
Gary Polonsky are as intricately lovely and unique as the landscapes that inspire them.

It’s a compelling show, filled with joy, light, color, and a fascinating use of materials. As radiant as the natural world itself, put this Loft show on your must see and linger list.

The exhibition runs through June 1st.  Loft at Liz’s is located at 453 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. There are several special events of note as well, including one coming up this week.

Saturday, April 20th from 1-4 p.m., curator Dale Youngman along with exhibiting artists Rhonda Burton, Lori Schouela, Sarah Pigion, Matteo Borghardt, and Joshua Abarbanel will speak about the various processes and materials used in their unique work, from garden grasses to rose petals to wood in a discussion titled “Bringing Nature Inside: Using Nature’s Materials in Art.”

Can’t make this event? Then visit May 11, 1-4:00 when Youngman along with artists Luis Sanchez, Mark Brosmer, Mike ’Tewsr” Duncan, Gary Polonsky, and Stuart Kusher will talk about the how, the why, and also the
importance of, their inspiration from the beauty of nature in ” Nature’s Beauty is SURREAL!”

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

 

Margaret Lazzari Takes Viewers Along on a Perilous Journey at USC Fisher Gallery

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“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, as least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”   Susan Sontag  – Illness as Metaphor

When Margaret Lazzari received her diagnosis of breast cancer in 2003, she crossed over into the frightening and disorienting kingdom of the sick. A classically trained figurative painter and masterful draftsman, she began a body of work to help her sort her feelings -much like artists Hannah Wilke and Robert Mapplethorpe who also tracked their illnesses with powerful images. Over two years she created over 30 paintings, drawings and videos which traced her internal and external journey towards wellness and recovery with grace, honesty and bravery. These works are paradoxically both raw and highly refined, gorgeous and terrifying, portraying actual physical changes that surgery and chemotherapy created in and on her body: and tracing the unseen changes that reverberated in her soul. The exhibition Margaret Lazzari: The Cancer Series, is at USC Fisher Gallery through May 10th, 2024.

Lazzari, a very private person, noted in her catalog interview with Assistant Curator Danielle Sommer that sharing these personal images of her nude body made her uncomfortable and vulnerable, but she deemed it necessary to document the stages of her perilous journey. Four of the earliest works here are a series of self- portraits that present her before and after pictures as she loses her hair from the effects of chemotherapy. The harrowing 2003 painting “Self-Portrait in Blood Red” has her literally up to her ears in blood like a glass vessel filled with liquid.

Her epic large-scale multi-figure drawing “Being Ill as a Dance” is reminiscent of Old Masters figure studies with the bald and androgynous nude or nearly nude figures twisting and reaching out into the unknown, much like dancers about to execute a turn. But what is this dance Lazzari alludes to: the dance between health and sickness, between spirituality and science, between anxiety and equilibrium, between darkness and light? Lazzari suggests it’s a mélange of all of these wild swings of emotion that one experiences – a rough roller coaster of ups and downs, twists and turns to navigate.

Lazzari further explores this loss of stability in a remarkable animated video that brings her drawings to life, accumulating stroke by stroke as the image reappears and then disappears. The figures literally move as they sink, twist and fall through space. The accompanying soundtrack provides emotional clues to interior thoughts and feelings. The sound of ragged breaths with long pauses suddenly punctuated by loud gasps is powerful, suggesting attempts to control panic with yogic breathing and failing time and again. Images are erased, then redrawn as the bodies tumble from the upper left towards the bottom like the man who fell from earth. But then, magically, colors appear intermittingly shifting from achromatic to color. Images of the iconic Venus De Milo pop up reminding us that she too was found missing parts of her anatomy, though deemed beautiful anyway. The soundtrack turns upbeat and inventive, channeling early radio sound effects that complement the fragmentary flashing imagery. A subliminal image of the artist herself in a blue bathing suit briefly appears and the video which starts in panicky imagery ends on a hopeful note of hard- won recovery.

During her many hospital and doctor visits, Lazzari became fascinated with the color imaging of radiology tests, showing the cancer and the energy in her body which eventually led her to move from figuration to abstraction in her work. In the transitional painting “Tendrils,” 2006, acrylic on canvas, she paints vibrant, robust plants, almost looking like water lilies, with smiling faces, barely visible towards the bottom, maybe reflections in water or ghost-like images shining through the water. Perhaps images of the artist herself as she banishes cancer from her body and celebrates.

Lazzari wrote in the catalog “I want these paintings to speak to a broad audience to address whatever fear and sickness they may have… Whatever you are feeling, may it always include hope.” The artist herself has gone from the kingdom of the sick to the kingdom of the well and expertly documented the perilous but ultimately rewarding journey with her sumptuous and thoughtful paintings, drawings and brave videos. This exhibit and the journey it chronicles is a rich gift to the viewer from the ever generous and talented Margaret Lazzari.

Nancy Kay Turner;  Photos by Nancy Kay Turner

Sigma Shines at Roswell Space

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Nancy Kay Turner and Michael Falzone are expertly paired in two solo shows now at Roswell Space through April 14th.  Sigma features work that touches on memory and the mysterious in an exhibit that utilizes found objects and memorabilia as well as fascinating artistic form.

Turner fully inhabits a world that touches on the illusions of memory – and how time changes all. There’s a current of magical realism in her work as well. Here working primarily earth tones, the artist offers framed mixed media works that include the abandoned antique photographs of strangers with a variety of other media, including gold leaf, collage materials, feathers, fabric, bits of wallpaper, even a pair of antique eyeglasses and a sheet of music.

One image features Teddy Roosevelt, and a message of despair scrawled in years long past.

Viewers are drawn to the mystery and the recognizable as well as the strange; in her work we are all one generation – or ten – away from being reappropriated as the grand ghosts of imagination.

A massive series of Turner’s scrolls descends from one wall as the viewer enters the gallery. Created from ink and coffee dyed rice paper on embossed wallpaper with mixed media, the 89″ by 63″ triptych “Memory Palace Totemic Scroll” descends from a thin bamboo rod and graces us with a sense of quiet remembrance that is both solemn and sweet. It is a glimpse through the curtains of time and a look at the world beyond it.

Falzone’s metal and wood sculptures are primarily long and thin, evocative sentinels standing at the portal, as it were. “Cat Man & Bird” embodies all three forms of being, with wit and understanding. He, too, touches on magical realism and remembrance.

“Woman in Red,” with eyebrows raised on a lustrous metal face, offers a quizzical guidance.

“Cat Man and Snake” presents a vivid reptile and elements reminiscent of Native American figures that are both welcoming and tributory.

Whether freestanding floor pieces or geared to a tabletop pedestal, each piece is a uniquely engrossing sculpture that compel with their narrative quality. Falzone also offers several wood on panel wall works, as well.

Both Falzone and Turner draw the eye and engage the spirit, evoking other places than this, realms both fantastical and just out of reach, possessing a fierce attraction that can only be called the magic of original art and its complex juncture with the storytelling of dreams.

Curated by gallerist Jonna Lee, Sigma will host a closing on April 14 from 2-4 p.m. and is open any time by appointment.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis