Living Matter: Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja is Fully Alive at Matter Gallery

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Multi-media artist Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja has a radiant new solo exhibition now at Matter Gallery in mid-city. Mystical, mythical, and wildly imaginative, her Living Matter is a full and rich investigation of her own personal story, one that both incorporates and leads to the symbols and rituals of her ancestors and their traditions.

The exhibition was created during the artist’s recent residence in Jamaica, and as such includes a vibrant color palette that seems infused with a sense of lush tropical light. She draws on the vivid landscapes and magical cloud formations of the island, as well as on what she describes as the energy of the island’s residents and the land itself.  Honoring the inspiration she received there, Davies-Aiyeloja is donating a percentage of sales from this exhibition to supporting those affected by Hurricane Melissa.

This is dazzlingly inventive work, in the flow of color and the the patterns that evoke flora and fauna, nature’s blooms and the flowering of dreams and dances. Her images here are mesmerizing in their use of color and light; look at a piece long enough and like sunlight dazzling the ocean waves or dew-encased leaves, there is a shifting and motion to the colors that each work contains.

Her work seethes with a sense of a mystery and the alchemical, from fierce blues to siwrling purples and magenta shades, the artist manifests her own unique vision of the island.

 

Working with acrylic paint, collage, ink, lace and other fabrics as well as beads, cabochon, and aquerelle, Davies-Aiyeloja’s “Generate Excitement” does just that with its layers and swirling lines and colors. She seems to be asking what wondrous, below-the-surface mechanisms allow the earth itself to bring this beauty forth.

In “Rhythm to My Soul,” the artist’s work unfolds through the inclusion of AR, turning this already motion-filled large work into one that literally moves and shifts and breathes and ripples beneath the surface of canvas and paint. This animated addition creates a truly immersive experience that brings the sensations of water and rain forest that find root in this painting fully to life.

Joyous human figures form the subjects of “Golden Elegance I” and “Golden Elegance II,” created from a mix of collage, pencil shavings, meixed media, acrylic and ink as well as collage. Recalling religious icons with the use of gold leaf, these figurative works are shiny, flowing depictions of happiness.

Both her “Hues of the Island” and “Island Glow” series embody patterns that resemble both sea life and flowers, as well as the shapes of rocks and other land formations. “Island Glow” offers the brighter palette; both boides of work are geometric, abstract, and layered, and have the grace and flow of the sea and the myriad of colors the waters themselves contain.

Highly sensorial and sinuous, the artist’s images are awash with atmosphere, reshaping and recreating the land and sea of  Jamaica itself, filled with energy and the wistful longing of memory. They are fragmented and dream-like, smooth and wavering, creating the same visual sensation of looking through astonishingly clear water to the multi-colored stones, shells, fish, and plants undulating below the surface. Or in less literal terms, Davies-Aiyeloja refers to the kaleidoscopic images of our pasts, our dreams, our roots.

The exhibition closes with an artist talk on January 4th, do start the New Year right with a visit to this shining, colorful island reverie.

Matter Gallery is located at 5080 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LACMA Hits Two Out of the Art Ballpark: The Day Tomorrow Began and Grounded Are Home Runs

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LACMA Hits Two Out of the Art Ballpark –  Genie Davis

Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began, is an impressive, immersive series of installations which connect the viewer with the subject of the Black diaspora through resonant, experiential settings. Spread through seven galleries, the exhibition begins with the Encyclopedia Room, a wall to wall, 2,000-page Encyclopedia of Invisibility that riffs on the Encyclopedia Britannica. Illustrating information that has been rendered either invisible or obscured, it covers subjects as diverse as mechanical devices and the music of Billie Holiday. With over 17,000 entries, the information is eye-openeing, both overwhelming and exciting.

The Barbershop, a startlingly monochrome installation depicting a Black barber shop, is bold and involving. Here the viewer enters a complete world, both informational and personal. The installation has black walls,  black furniture, black implements, with the occasional pop of color. Even the barber pole is black and white rather than the traditional red and white. The room references  cultural icons, styling elements, and the importance of Black hair both culturally and personally.  The limited color palette somehow manages to sing with an internal burst of color.

Then, as if feeding off this energy, the viewer next observes a wall of rainbow-colored neon, with paired quotes from James Baldwin and Mark Twain as mirror images. Mounted on a floating wall, behind this singular, stand-on-your-head to read it all image, is The Monument Hall. Here monolithic works capture images such as Henri Christophe, a figurehead of the Haitian Revolution, positioned on top of Napoleon Bonaparte, while a powerful Nina Simone stands over Queen Victoria. Each of these works is a part of the artist’s series In Praise of Midnight, acknowledging and subverting colonialism and repression.

In the next gallery, the alluring odor of sweet grass rises from Rice Grass Meadow, in which actual growing rice grass surrounds beautiful ceramic sculptures and oval plates of renowned Black women, including diver Andrea Crabtree.

The final room revels in a different monochrome immersion than the sleek black contours of The Barbershop —The Wash House is all gray. This laundromat installation, fitted out with moving washers and dryers, and signs admonishing, advising, and exposing common idioms, is a cocoon of sorts, from which one might emerge with new information, new friendships and alliances formed while the laundry tumbles. Here the viewer also sees direct reference to what was witnessed in The Encyclopedia Room, the removal/whitewashing of history. A bleach bottle label reads “Kills 99.9% of truths, archives, and inconvenient voices.”

This is powerful, even thrilling work,  a fierce and fresh tomorrow created entirely by Strachen. Adding even more depth to the work are periodic performances throughout the exhibition by costumed characters inhabiting each room, performing in both spoken word and song. Riveting.

Also now open at LACMA, Grounded is a group show of 35 artists that look at the ground we inhabit as an exploration of memories, homelands, exploration, and purpose. There are so many terrific artists here, and their work dovetails to some extent with that of Strachen in regard to an exploration of colonialism and imperialism and it’s attempt to compromise or control indigenous cultures.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the absolutely mesmerizing 90-minute video installation In Pursuit of Venus by Maori artist Lisa Reihana, a mindblowing series of perfectly realized, 180-degree images that dazzle and define the impact of colonialism.

Touching upon just about any medium you can think of, from photography to painting to sculpture, the exhibiting artists offer passionate, insightful portrayal of their own experiences and a universal truth about homecoming and one’s place in the world. Along with Reihana, artists include Laura Aguilar, Clarissa Tossin, Ana Mendieta, Eamon Ore-Girón, Courtney M. Leonard, Rose B. Simpson, Leslie Martinez, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Siah Armajani, Patrick Martinez, Jackie Amézquita, Narsiso Martinez, Michael Alvarez, Nery Gabriel Lemus, Guadalupe Rosales, Guillermo Bert, Mercedes Dorame, Connie Samaras, Beatriz Cortez, and Carmen Argote.

The Day Tomorrow Began runs through March 29, 2026; Grounded through June 21th.  Both are must-sees, and highly pertinent to this moment in time.

  • Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis

Monica Marks Considers Abandonment

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Monica Marks Considers Abandonment – Genie Davis

What does it mean to be abandonded? A state of loss, adrift, free? To quote Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

It is with that in mind that viewing Monica Mark‘s compelling installation and individual, but linked works in Abandonded, now at LAAA through the 21st,  echoes with an eternal sense of wanderlust and loss, the aching state of the deserted jackrabbit homesteads with which the artist became fascinated traveling through the Mojave’s Wonder Valley, just a few miles past 29 Palms.

Marks says “I’m struck by how these small, weather-beaten cabins seem to hold both the weight of forgotten dreams and a quiet beauty born of survival. Originally built under the 1950s and 1960s Small Tract Act, these structures once represented possibility—a promise of new beginnings in an untamable landscape. Today, they stand as fragile monuments to ambition, disappointment, and endurance.” There’s nothing left to lose, but plenty to be gained in taking in Marks’ conception of these structures.

Shaped around her own beliefs about the history of the sites, her own personal feelings, and the “human condition– the ways we build, collapse, and sometimes rebuild again,” her exhibition is a truly beautiful work that includes the construction of a partial homestead contained within the gallery walls, as well as photography, painting, and found-object assemblage, Marks takes viewers into an immersive world that revolves around memories and loss, the fleeting nature of both human civilization and our secular beings, as well as our resilience and capacity for dreams to come true, or to fail and reincarnate.

Marks states that in these works “The desert itself becomes both subject and collaborator—a place of haunting stillness that contains stories of hope, failure, and transformation…At its core, ABANDONED asks what we leave behind—physically, emotionally, environmentally—and how those remnants shape our sense of self. ”

For the viewer, the installation lifts us beyond the gallery walls and into the realm of great loss, great dreams, and the tattered but still quite present beauty that inhabit each of our hearts.

Into the lonely desert sands we blow, and where the soul stops, only an artist truly knows. Certainly Marks has found this knowledge, felt it, and transmits it here deeply. She believes and beautifully expresses that “To rebuild something that was left behind is to insist that meaning still exists in the fragments.”

For Marks and the viewer, these fragments are both tragic and terrific, a meaningful walk through abandonment, and the hopes, dreams, refuse, and reimagining that remains no matter how far away from our own creations we walk.

Don’t miss the event’s closing on the 21st. LAAA is located at 825 S. La Cienega in West Hollywood.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

An International Exhibition Pairs Work with Artists from Los Angeles and Belgrade

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An international exchange of art may or may not work as anything more than an interesting premise, or a way to open dialog between two disparate locations.  But with Translocal Conclave Amid the Market, an exhibition pairing Los Angeles-based Durden and Ray with Blok Gallery, located in Belgrade, Serbia, both artist-run spaces have hit the collaborative mark and then some.

The group exhibition was presented in Belgrade, and viscerally examines both the connections and disparities between the two art collectives. Each is an innovative gallery space that offers provocative, unique work reflecting on the nature of social and political societies and the heart and soul of the very human artists who live within them.

Paired, there are immediate differenes in color palette and patterns between the Serbian and American artists. Durden and Ray artists dive into deep color and bold shapes; the Serbian artists rely more on a graceful minimalism in both palette and form.

The differences coalesce into a woven dialog of abundant beauty and precise tradition.  Exhibiting artists include artists:

Djordje Arnaut, Lore AKA Lortek , Željka Momirov, Miodrag Perić, Tanja Strugar, Carlos Beltran Arechiga, Snezana Saraswati Petrović, Joe Davidson, Alexandra Wiesenfeld, Max Presneill, Regina Herod, Ismael De Anda III & Eugene Ahn, and Arezoo Bharthania.

Petrovic straddles both Serbian and U.S. based artist groups. Originally from the Belgrade area, she is now a member of Durden and Ray, and was the catalyst in creating this exhibition.

The exhibition’s wide range includes work rooted in vibrant street art, sculptural forms that transcend the traditional, and transcendent work rooted in memory. There is also that soars beyond the typically temporal, as in the VR installation of Ahn and De Anda. Regardless of medium or the location of the originating artists, these images sing with humor as well as grace.

Smart, sophisticated, and using a wide range of materials, the exhibition not only spans art around the globe but within the heart and soul. So what happens when two art collectives collide and conjoin? Universal art magic.

May there be more such, which given Petrovic’s prediliction for engaging in international. boundry crossing wonder, it’s extremely likely there will be. Stay tuned.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the gallery and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic