Art Fair Week Commences with the LA Art Show Celebrating 30 Years

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Art Fair Week Commences with the LA Art Show – by Genie Davis

The LA Art Show celebrated its 30th anniversary with an Opening Night Premiere featuring actress and producer Jenna Dewan as celebrity host,  but for Los Angeles residents especially, the biggest start of the night was artist Robert Vargas, creating live a  24-foot mural  called “Heroes,” honoring first responders and LA firefighters, some of whom attended the premiere.

The mural will continue to be live-painted and completed during the art show’s run. The evening itself was a benefit for the American Heart Association’s Life is Why™ Campaign and the California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Recovery Fund.

Guests enjoyed Pink’s Hot Dogs (including a vegan version), gelato, champagne, and mini cookies along with other selections from pasta to sandiwiches and cookies.

But how about the art? LA Art Show’s independent curatorial project, DIVERSEartLA, has run for many years at the event, curated by Marisa Caichiolo, and this year featured a retrospective that included a goregous video installation by artist Luciana Abait among so many other important works, in a collaboration with museums from around the world, including LACMA, the Broad and MoLAA.

A separate installation created by Reflectspace Gallery, the Glendale Library Arts and Culture & Culture Nomad by artist Han Ho  represented a stunning achievement, above.

From a towering orange bear in the event entrance area to lustrous mirror and gemstone animals to Montague Gallery’s superb collection of glass art, Ryan Art’s impressive selection of sculptural, multi-media, and painted works, lush abstracts by Mark Acetelli, and the photographic work of Maureen Van Leeuwen Haldeman and others at the Fabrik booths, there was plenty to see inside the South Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Outside, a terrific particpatory art gumball machine was manned by artist Iz Infine for some additonal fun and a commentary on the true egalitarian nature of art.

My extensive photo album follows – enjoy and please feel free to share. Frieze is coming up next, along with The Other Art Fair.

 

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

 

The LA Art Show Celebrates 30 Years

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The LA Art Show Celebrates 30 Years by Genie Davis

The LA Art Show is returning to the Los Angeles Convention Center to mark its 30th anniversary. The first major art show in LA is now back with over 100 galleries from every corner of the globe, including Switzerland’s Licht Feld Gallery, the U.K.’s Columbia Road Gallery, Ukraine’s Snisarenko Gallery, and South Korea’s Art in Dongsan, as well as exhibitors from the U.S. such as the Coral Gallery in Miami, and closer to home Santa Monica’s Copro, Bruce Lurie,  and Building Bridges Art Exchange, as well as the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach.

DIVERSEartLA will also be back, curated as it has been for the last eight years by Marisa Caichiolo, and this year showincasing a variety of projects affiliated with DIVERSEartLA since its beginning. DIVERSEartLA arose from the necessity to raise the voices of and amplify marginalized perspectives, and continues to be one of the most compelling and innovative experiences in the large-scale exhibition space.

According to Caichiolo, “Visitors can look forward to an engaging display that highlights pivotal moments through videos of performances and installations from each year.” Her curatorial vision of diversity and inclusion also serves this year as an important reminder that artists and art lovers alike must stay active and engaged with securing and sustaining their rights.

Caichiolo notes “This retrospective, which feels particularly important right now, honors the creative contributions of our partners while emphasizing the vibrant evolution of DIVERSE as a vital presence in the art community.” Artists and institutes included in this year’s exhibition include a special institution focusing on diversity and pride from MOLAA, in collaboration with renowned Argentinian artists Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone.

Other DIVERSEartLA highlights include Carlos Martiel’s Cauce/Riverbed, exploring the deep challenges faced by
immigrants in California and throughout the country; and Viktor Freso’s enormous and exciting 30-foot Bear Sculpture presented by Slovakia’s Danubiana Museum, and serving as a symbol of power and resilience.

Los Angeles-area artist Robert Vargas will be back at the event, creating an enormous live mural, “Heroes,” during the Opening Night event. The mural, which will be on display throughout the exhibition, will be designed to serve as a heartfelt tribute to the first responders who continue to serve the city, standing as a symbol of hope and perseverance in the face of the recent fire disasters.

In addition, LA-based Building Bridges Art Exchange will showcase art from those artists who have lost their homes and studios in the fires, with all proceeds from that showcase going to support them.

The decision to proceed with the LA Art Show this year was in fact made in support of LA’s creative community in the aftermath of the recent fires. The exhibition’s director and producer Kasssandra Voyagis says that “As LA’s longest-running art fair, our mission is unequivocal: to champion the artists and galleries that constitute our cultural landscape…[we have] a resolute commitment to aid in the healing and rebuilding efforts while offering much-needed community support and reprieve.”

The LA Art Show runs February 19th through 23rd at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Tickets are available at www.laartshow.com with 15% of proceeds being donated to the life-saving mission of American Heart Association’s Life is WhyTM campaign.

Free entry to the fair is available February 20-23 for firefighters and their families as a thank-you for their efforts on behalf of all Angelenos in the recent and cataclysmic fires throughout our region. The LA Art Show has also donated to California Community Foundation in support of wildfire relief and provides event attendees with the option to do the same when they purchase tickets.

Stay tuned to this space for coverage of the event as well as other art programs during February’s LA Art Week – beginning with as always, our own homegrown LA Art Show.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the LA Art Show

The Future of Art Is Fine – Students Show Bright Vision

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The Future of Art is Fine by Genie Davis

Guest critiquing at NYU Abu Dhabi last November, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation of art students’ works in Projects in Painting, a class conducted by Susan Ossman, artist and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies; Visiting Professor of Movements and Places, Movement and Cultural Practices.

The students’ work focused on technology and its representation in and alteration to the practice of their art. Some students were majoring in art, others in film, new media, psychology, and creative writing among others. Each displayed an intuitive and impressive ability to project their vision and shape works that encompassed various areas of technology and intimate self-perception.

Among the students presenting were  Ahmed Alakberi,  Abdulla AlHosani, Manal Aljaeedi, Shamma Alkaabi, Sara Alrayssi,
Bruna Araujo Pereira, Ayazhan Gabitkyzy, Honey Htun, and Charlotte Hall.

The awesome work above was created as an acrylic painting based on a photographic image taken by a LEGO camera built by the artist. Fun, cool, and the ultimate in multi-media.

This sculptural work – with lushly painted images on the wooden platform, cleverly incorporated LED lighting.

A super series of interlocking fish formed this vibrant, stackable sculpture.

Here, the artist has created two separate books with fascinating painted covers. On the right is a bejeweled “Mae’r Dechreuad,” on the left, in haunting black and white, is “The Last Word.”

Beads, flowers, and a bejewled heart serves as an interconnected web representing both the artistic heart and the biological in this sharp work.

This student artist’s self-portrait contrasts vivid internal color with the external white of eyes, lips, and T-shirt for a fascinating and intimate personal expression.

Here the artist riff’s on a video game figure moving through a magical landscape of abstract paint in a richly dimensional work.

The mastery and self-awareness in these young artists’ work was impressive and exciting. See for yourself: this is the vision of tomorrow’s sharp, smart, and lovely international art world. And look for their names in the years to come!

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis, photo of myself by Susan Ossman

 

Magic and Realism at MOAH

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Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture and Before You Now: Photographic Transmutation, now at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History through April 13th is a wide ranging exhibition presented in partnership with Local Access and LACMA as part of the Art Bridges Cohort Program. The compelling exhibition features the works of Naida Osline, uncovering the plant world with Botany of Transcendence; Andrew K. Thompson, with A Sky Full of Holes; Ellen Friedlander, with the exquisite portraiture of her exhibition The Soul Speaks; Brad Miller, with his shimmering Water Shadows; and Osceola Refetoff, with his dynamic Magic and Realism. Each artist has a different approach, but all of the works comprise a potent mix of the experimental and the traditional. Full coverage of the full exhibition is upcoming.

Turn Signals

Osceola Refetoff’s Magic and Realism, presented on the museum’s mezzanine gallery, features the artist’s stunning use of both infrared and pinhole photography. Dreamy and surreal – while also staying firmly in tune with a sense of place,  Refetoff deals with subjects as diverse as climate change and the lure of the open road, covering a wide range of physical territory from Anarctica and Svalbard in the Arctic Circle, to Palm Springs, LA, and the Mojave Desert.

Owners and Guests (Pink/Blue)  -
Multispectral exposures combine infrared and visual spectrum light using filters in front to the lens to control the wavelengths recorded.

There are hot pink palms and lawns in a brilliantly alien world of an altered Palm Springs, above, while in the artist’s “Proteus Rising,” below, a soft focus icy blue creates a poignant look at the changing climate in Antarctica.

Proteus Rising 


Chandelier on La Cienega Boulevard  

The diffused light of a chandelier is a perfect metaphor for Los Angeles in all its glamor and the grief of broken dreams. In  “Moon Under Virgo Bay,”  taken in Danskoya, Svalbard, a blue orb of sea, populated by a small ship, forms a reverse planet. Intense blue water beneath snow and ice swirls around a darker ink blot of deeper water – like a black hole beyond the Milky Way, ready to consume the known-world from the center out.

Moon Under Virgo Bay – captured during The Arctic Circle artist residency aboard the tall ship Antigua 

Throughout Magic and Realism, in the many different series that the exhibit pulls from, Refetoff’s meticulous technique includes modified digital cameras, analog filters, and pinhole devices. But, his perfection of technique takes a back seat to the lustrous colors and compelling pull of his subjects. With a background in filmmaking, Refetoff brings to the photographic art world a keen sense of visual dynamics, a stroke of noir, a hint of the Fellini-esque, and a bold design asethetic that lifts the most common of vistas into a higher realm.

Mirror Truck

Through his lens, we observe the mirrored sheen of a truck on an empty highway; a spin of white clouds down a long, linear, vanishing point of a road; a whirring section of an amusement park ride; and a row of mustard yellow golden palms.

Rock-O-Plane



These are among the many startling, significant images on display.Two of Refetoff’s artworks that already have a home in MOAH’s permanent collection, the pinhole exposure of “Blue Hopper,” shot in the Mojave, and the LA-set “Day Tripping” are also a part of the wide-ranging exhibition.

Duplexity  (from the series Chromatopia)

More of the MOAH exhibition ahead. Keep one eye turned to your cameras, and the other to this site.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist