LAAA – Powerful Environmentally Focused Solo Shows

Posted on by Diversions LA

An environmental focus forms the theme of three of the four fine exhibitions currently on the Los Angeles Art Association’s Gallery 825.

Awash in the rich blue of the sea, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic’s impressive and immersive installation Collateral Damage Recall serves to compel viewers to act against our consumer madness – the use of plastic, plastic everywhere. The exhibition is thoroughly entertaining, even exuberant, as it brings viewers awareness toward climate change, and the terrible destruction mankind has wreaked upon ocean, coral reefs, and other water resources. The artist has created both a wondrous immersive world in her futuristic living room and bedroom, while also leading viewers to contemplate the ongoing nightmare of plastic. The installation is an outgrowth of a room-size exhibition held at MOAH Cedar four years ago.

Along with its immersive nature, the exhibition now features video and audio components and interactive capabilities for viewers. There are 3D printed corals, a waterbed for viewers to incline upon while experiencing underwater video images, a suspended blue marlin which emanates with sounds of the natural world from speakers contained within the great fish. Images of augmented reality, accessed through the ARTIVIVE app add an extra dimension to the exhibition.  A sculptural tour de force for Petrovic, the exhibition will haunt viewers with its beauty and challenge them to take action in the name of the Earth.

With her own images of nature, including strong visions of sea and sky, the large-scale painted images of Frederika Roeder in her exhibition, Scapes, are equally captivating. Roeder illuminates the walls with her glowing abstract landscapes describing  geography, place, new horizons, and the majesty of the natural world, through the lens of biological narrative.

Depicting both the Southern California environment to which Roeder is native, but also cooler images inspired by a recent residency in the Italian Alps, Roeder, like Petrovic, stresses the importance of protecting our fragile earth, specifically its coastal areas, and at the same time expresses the vibrant beauty of the sea. Her eight acrylic works shimmer with images of water and sun, wild waves and pristine clear bays. Her geometrically abstract use of vertical bands, bars, and narrow lines are hypnotizing, but it is her palette, shimmeringly poetic, that aches with the beauty of the natural world.

S.P. Harper’s Natural Force contains images of nature, both painted and sculptural, vibrant in color and precisely structures. Unlike Roeder and Petrovic, Harper focuses on land rather than sea, specifically the jeweled wonder of nature’s crystals. Employing found-art objects in her sculptural style and a sleek modernist approach to opaque oil paintings, Harper’s work offers its own jeweled dazzle. Her Gods of Fire series of small paintings represent birthstones of singular luster and depth; her use of geometric imaging includes reforming and upcycling of diverse discarded mediums from fabric to her use of an appropriately diamond-blade circular saw.

Gallery 825’s stellar ecologically-themed exhibitions includes the human species too, with an involving video installation from artist Janine Brown, reviewed elsewhere.

Gallery 825 is located at 825 N. La Cienega in West Hollywood. The exhibition closes IRL February 18th; view images online here.

  • Genie Davis – photos, Genie Davis

 

 

 

 

 

Quaranta at BG Gallery Reveals Dreams of Pandemic Art

Posted on by Diversions LA
Susan Lizotte

Quaranta, just closed at bG Gallery in Bergamot Station, but viewable online, is a dynamic group exhibition with a powerful group of LA-based artists.

Curators

Susan Lizotte and Jenny Hager (above) co-curated a beautiful show with an inherent and wildly colorful rhythm, one of introspection and resurrection, of internal vibrance and vivid takes on the external world.

Both alluding to and inclusive of work produced during the beginning of the pandemic and quarantine times, Quaranta offers a wide range of work that reveals not only the artists’ psyches during that time period, but the diverse and experiential quality of the Los Angeles area artists who produced it.

Dani Dodge

The work includes the glorious gold leaf-infused mixed media images of Dani Dodge in her tragic yet life-affirming “Mojave Burning…”

Luciana Abait

the vibrant colors of Luciana Abait in “Pink Sky-Orange Mountains,” in which a reflective body of water and an ice formation reflect these hot, bright shades…

Gay Summer Rick

twilight drenched yet still glowing work from Gay Summer Rick…

Susan Lizotte

lustrous new map work from Lizotte, above; rich layered abstract from Hage, below…

Jenny Hager

and, an intricate landscape piece from Sijia Chen that summons a sense of profound wonder in its multicolored patterns.

Sijia Chen

There is lush sculptural work from Steven Fujimoto in the mandala-like pattern of his “Tide Pools” …

Steven Fujimoto

and the fascinating four-part reworking in watercolor of a classic image from Lena Moross.

Lena Moross

Other excellent pieces come from Douglas Alvarez, with his lovely still life depictions of fruit, and Ray Beldner’s tribal-like geometrically patterned rocks.

Douglas Alvarez

Tara de la Garza’s raw sculptures, Alex Shaffer’s perfectly lit, graffiti-filled LA street scenes, and the fascinating patterns represented in diverse pieces from Diane Meyer, Curtis Stage, and Alexandra Weisenfeld complete the exhibition.

Curtis Stage

The curators’ description reads “Work produced during the Quarantine, by nature, is a visual documentation of artists’ emotional response, either directly, or indirectly.” That response is one of vivid palette, repeated patterns, totem-like shapes and colors, an inner world of brightness, texture, contrast, and form that both mourned and celebrated an outside world. Both curators exemplify this in their own very different works – compelling in color and depth.

Tara de la Garza

As we drop our protective cocoons and become masked butterflies, it’s wise to remember the year 2020, and the time of emotional gestation, both physically limiting and emotionally draining, yet somehow as crazy perfect as dreams become art. Quaranta’s perceptive take on this period and strong mix of important, LA-based artists brings that art dream full circle to external viewers.

If you missed Quaranta at BG in Santa Monica, view the online exhibition here. 

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

 

Illumination Shines on “Reindeer Road”

Posted on by Diversions LA

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse (okay, 6 cylinder) open (well, it was chilly, so the windows were open to take photos only) sleigh (automobile.) Located in the parking lot of Santa Anita Racetrack, Reindeer Road offers an exuberant drive through-light experience, perfect for a car load of kids or Christmas-light seeking adults.

Produced by World of Illumination, which holds the title as the producer of the world’s largest drive-through animated light show, has brought their illumination nights to Arcadia.

The exhibition opened Thanksgiving weekend, and will be running through January 2nd. Synchronized to pop and holiday music, the road leads guests under glittery, light changing tunnels, past polar bears and ice caves, blue sparkling mountains, leaping reindeer, happy gingerbread men, and a glowing version of the North Pole.

The event traverses over a million square feet that contains 250,000 glittering lights.

The colors and general jubilance is delightful, and it’s easy to get into the spirit of the season and starting singing along to those rocking holiday songs.

“World of Illumination prides itself on creating immersive experiences that push boundaries when it comes to audio-visual and drive-through entertainment. We’re not just about creating spectacles in our work. Our team of artists, engineers, designers, and technicians are passionate about telling stories, and that is reflected in Reindeer Road,” according to event marketing partner Stacey Kole at Branded Pros.

Reindeer Road was developed by a team of artists and technicians led by creative director Aaron Curry, who has also worked in lighting design for theatre and opera.

The company runs 4 other events events in Arizona and Georgia; this is their first year in Los Angeles, the land of the automobile. It should be a tailor-made experience for the region.

Reindeer Road‘s vibrant, dancing, and colorful LED lights and state-of-the-art displays are pure fun to drive through, and the attraction takes approximately 25 minutes to experience; when we went early in the run on a weeknight, it took us a little less time; if things are busy it may take longer. Either way, you’ll feel thoroughly “illuminated.” Ticket cost is per vehicle so you can scoop up everyone and go “laughing all the way.”

Weekday vehicle passes start at $59; Dasher fast passes are $79; weekends are $69/$89. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit World of Illumination’s website.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis, drone shot provided by WOI

Happy Hauntings All Year Joy Ray Haunts in Ghost Visions

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Closing on Halloween and with a Zoom-friendly séance, Joy Ray’s Ghost Visions was perhaps the most seasonally accurate hosting of an art exhibition to appear in greater Los Angeles. The always provocative artist hosted a robust opening, a well-attended art talk, and the aforementioned magical séance, but it is Ray’s art itself which haunts with a lushly dark beauty.

Ghost Visions: A Joy Ray Solo Show, installation view

From black, dense, and fanciful sculptural work, such as the spooky “Diadem” and “The Futility of Consent,” to lushly textural wall art and mysterious plasma cut shapes on metal, Ray’s work here has an otherworldly quality that is entirely intentional.

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Fabric based wall art sometimes feels richly balanced, visceral both in terms of texture and visual layers. Like melted artifacts from a fire in a haunted house, her dimensional sculptures range from a blackened bat mobile with shiny black paint and a seeming growth of sand to a sand obscured blackened kneeling child figure in “Thoughts and Prayers.” These found objects made sculpture are perhaps the most spooky element of the exhibition, witty and dark, both literally and figuratively.

Joy Ray, Dark Mirror.jpg

Wall art includes materials with their own “past life,” materials and repurposed garments purchased at thrift stores, specifically the denim material used for jeans.  Much of this work has a metallic appearance, alight with a kind of inner, silvery glow, as with the striated “Spirit Duplicator.”

Joy Ray, Ghost Signatures.jpg

Rusted metal pieces comprise other, smaller sculptures in which the artist has described her process of metal sculptural use as a process in which the conditions she creates in determine the final outcome – a collaboration, if you will, with the spirit world, or at least the environmental one. Standing rectangular works feature kinetic scrawls akin to a signature, wave like and not quite intelligible. These are the works the artist created during a six way stay at the Chicago School of the Arts Institute, using a CMT plasma cutter and a simple string as the basis from which to cut.  Each 4 x 11 piece has patterns cut directly into steel, and are reminiscent of a name plate, the kind a ghost or sea nymph would leave on an office desk.

Dark and experimental, Ghost Visions is also experiential – viewers could enjoy a haunted moment or two contemplating each work. The exhibition is also playful, an invitation into another realm. Some of the works are available for viewing through Shockboxx’s Artsy page, at

https://www.artsy.net/show/shockboxx-1-ghost-visions-a-joy-ray-solo-show?sort=partner_show_position. If you missed the show in person, or if you’d simply like to bring a little ghostly glamor into your life, be sure to make a visit