Diversions LA

Douglas Tausik Ryder: The Texture of Dreams

Posted on April 28, 2018 by Diversions LA

Douglas Tausik Ryder creates wooden sculptures that are all about texture — texture that is both physical and emotional, a visual heft that cries out for the connection of touch.

The artist with his work, “Venus,” and his daughter, at Jason Vass in 2016.

I first saw Tausik Ryder’s work in a group show at DTLA’s Jason Vass – where he will have a solo exhibition in the fall – and was struck by the sense of emotional narrative in his work. That was over a year ago, when a piece of the artist’s in that show, “Venus,” was newly created as a tribute to Tausik Ryder’s wife’s pregnancy. He credits that work with changing his approach to sculpture, saying “This piece came out a little differently…thought and emotion united.”

Flowing, sinuous, mysteriously soft-looking, and somehow intuitively feminine, the piece, like much of Ryder’s work, is both physically impressive and contained, as if he were concealing a kind of poetry within it. That aspect might be the most compelling part of his aesthetic: his work shimmers with some secret thing longing to break free from within the smooth and modulated surfaces.

Tausik Ryder discusses his work as being in “the language of dreams,” and reveals that he explores how “unconscious processes express themselves…” The unconscious and dream-like in his works are the very texture of them: while one could discuss the smoothness, the lack of harsh edges, the abstract constructs of his work itself in terms of texture, the strongest textural aspect of all is unseen: the mystery that seems to be throbbing, just out of sight, within his work.

The artist describes his work using language describing a conflict “within ourselves” as biomorphic and animalistic versus geometric and idealistic. His sculptures are designed to express that dichotomy, to reveal the ability to expand, stretch, and reshape to fit it.

Deceptively simple forms create profound images; there is a solidity that seems timeless in Ryder’s work. His “Outburst” seems to have imploded from within; the oval open space at it’s center has a floral aspect, or that of an exploded planet. The viewer can cull his own narrative from Tausik Ryder’s work, or simply observe at face value: these are elegant, symbolic pieces that defy easy categorization.

Another aspect of Tausik Ryder’s work that fascinates is the fact that he is creating large-sized wooden sculptures using newly self-taught G-code and machining techniques. He relies on these tech methods to create the “look and feel” of traditional sculpture.

He has found the future and shaped it, melding natural materials and warm meaning with cooly geometric puzzle pieces. Some of his works resemble sea creatures, nautilus, perhaps. Others look like alien life forms, or embrace the shape of the human body, symbolic stand-ins for living creatures.

The works are both innately alive and remotely abstract; cool, smooth, smoldering with intensity beneath the surface. The medium is wood if wood were petrified liquid.

We as viewers are caught in Tausik Ryder’s dream state, in a realm of touchable lucid visions, clearly defined – with a definition that tugs at the eye and heart, just out of reach.

Genie Davis; photos courtesy of the artist and by Jack Burke

Daniel Leighton: Mind, Body and Spirit

Posted on April 2, 2018March 28, 2018 by Diversions LA

Swirling digital art captures the mind, body, and spirit of artist Daniel Leighton, whose vibrant, entirely unique, and both literally and figuratively moving work is like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Leighton, who works on his iPad creates work that vibrates and hums with energy.

“I use my body to determine what to draw. The canvas is where my mind and body connect. I start with a line. As I draw I notice where my body wants me to go. I begin to see a story emerging. As I fill the story in, I get swept up in it and it acts as a conduit to my emotions,” Leighton explains.

“Sometimes, I start with a feeling and sometimes I start with a thought or specific scene or idea I want to portray. When I start with a feeling, which could be a physical or emotional, I might draw a face as a way of trying to connect with what I feel. I am, in essence, creating an emotional mirror for myself. I can look at that picture and identify an emotion from past or present that is held within me. When I start with a more specific thought, it morphs into something that may look different than what I imagined, but still conveys the same feeling. Whichever way it happens, I love to see what emerges.”

From there, Leighton goes through an extensive color testing process, working with different papers, printing methods, and labs, and leading to an extensive enlarging process that involves both machine and hand-work.

“Since the iPad is backlit to create the luminosity was key for me and getting the perfect prints. At the time I started, nobody knew how to do what we were trying to do because the technology and the way I was using it was so new. I wanted to make sure there was nothing lost in translation when moving from what I painted on the iPad to producing a print.”

Leighton believed so strongly in his work that he knew instinctively it had to be produced in the highest quality possible.

“I also knew that anytime an artist uses a new medium there can be resistance. This would be the first work many viewers would see that was painted on an iPad. I knew there would be skepticism from some since it was an iPad painting. I wanted to make sure the beauty of the piece and the quality of the piece would overcome that skepticism. “

To achieve that quality and resonance, Leighton works hand in hand with his wife, Anna, who is his partner in art as well as in his personal life. Both muse and partner, she’s worked with Leighton for 17 years.

“Anna is the person I most like to share my art with. She’s also the person whose opinion I value over all others. She has taught me more about art than anyone else and has been instrumental in becoming the artist I am today,” Leighton attests.

“Anna gets credit for figuring out how to enlarge pieces and finding the best ways to produce the pieces, including the methods, mounting and framing. When we inspect proofs, Anna has eagle eyes. If there is an issue with the print, she will catch it. She gives feedback on finished pieces and when I hit a block, she helps get me unstuck.”

Perhaps most importantly at all, Anna gets credit for convincing Leighton to start working with Augmented Reality five years ago.

“In addition to everything above, she is very involved in products, marketing, demoing, figuring out which pieces we put in a exhibit and helping me shape the messaging around my work, from speeches to grant proposals and everything in between,” Leighton explains.

Leighton’s work has evolved since he began to incorporate AR into his work – but the two processes are not intertwined per se, he relates.

“My work involves two separate processes, first painting and then creating the Augmented Reality. I’ve purposely kept the two processes separate because my painting process is sacred and involves a part of me that I want to both keep safe and vulnerable at the same time. Because of this, I would say that my paintings have evolved but I wouldn’t say they have evolved much related to my use of Augmented Reality. I often see motion in my paintings, but that was always the case, and it’s still there even without AR. Using AR, however, allowed me to bring in motion in a more direct, explicit way.”

He notes, however, that the AR itself has evolved quite a bit. “I think it has become more emotional and I continue to evolve in terms of using it as a tool to tell the larger story that is contained in the painting. That story becomes more fleshed out, immersive and cinematic in the Augmented Reality. I have also been using it to make a more personalized experience for the viewer and that is going to continue to evolve quite a bit, as well. I have so many plans for where I am going to take this…it is very exciting!” he enthuses.

While the time to create a finished piece varies, he notes that some have taken years and some have “poured out” in one 8-10 hour session.

“Most of my newer pieces are becoming more and more complex so the time it takes to create them has expanded exponentially. The AR, of course, is a whole other ballgame. It’s been a years long and ongoing process. I had to learn a new development tool and a new programming language as well as all of the parts that go along with creating an app including navigating the app-store maze. This is on top of me programming since I was 11,” he adds. “And it’s still an ongoing process to keep it updated technically, increase my abilities and adding new content and features. In addition, many of the pieces have received and continue to receive updates. So, the art evolves over time, as does the viewer’s relationship with it.”

Leighton’s use of color and brush strokes is lush, and he calls his technique primarily instinctual. “Sometimes, a color flashes in my head as I’m drawing or as I’m thinking about the meaning of the piece. Sometimes, I might attach a color to a feeling and I will start there. Once I start, I am working with a combination of instinct and feeling and desire – something pops in my head, I see how it feels and see if I like it. I like to layer on paint so that there is a thick foundation and I like a blend of contrast and harmony between figure and background. So that the figure stands out and plays off the background to create a sense of depth and space between the two. But, I also want the possibility of harmony between them. Sometimes that is right there in the piece and sometimes, if the story/theme of the piece calls for it, I will create more turbulence; something that must be overcome to find that harmony.”

What does Leighton most want people to know about his art? “My work portrays emotional truths about the human experience. If someone resonates with one of my pieces, it is likely because they recognize that truth and it has some significance in their life, either through their own internal experience or through something they have witnessed in someone else. I want them to examine that and allow that process to bring them closer to the truth of who they are. Once you can get to that place, you’ll find peace and the power to become the best version of yourself.”

Leighton’s work will be exhibited at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) in San Luis Obispo. The show opens April 20th, and there will be a panel discussion April 21st at 2 p.m. It will be well worth the drive. For more information, visit Leighton’s website.

Fragments: Coming to Durden and Ray

Posted on March 31, 2018March 28, 2018 by Diversions LA

Coming to Durden and Ray April 7th, is Fragments, a group show highlighting Italian artists and curated by renowned Rome-based curator Camilla Boemio, above. Boemio was deputy curator of Portable Nation, in the Maldives Pavilion in 2013 at the 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale of Venice. In 2016, she was the curator of Diminished Capacity, the first Nigerian Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

At Durden and Ray, her exhibition looks at cultural identity and current Italian art. The exhibition will include the beginnings of a book published by Studio Permanente with text by Boemio, tracing a line between exhibiting artists’ practices in Italy and California. Held in collaboration with AAC Platform, a nonprofit art organization based in Rome, this is a dazzling exhibition of mixed media works from a strong group of artists.

According to Boemio “The exhibition aims to provide a context of confrontation, dialogue and reflection on theoretical debates on Italian art of a generation in relation to cultural identity: migration, job, crisis, spirituality, city, geopolitics. The various themes create a sort of atlas in which artistic practices trace multifaceted dynamics. In this state of change the ‘fragments’ are part of this reality sedimented by the connections with the past and the signs in progress… the complexity makes every project full of magic.”

Curating the show in the U.S. presented a few challenges, but Boemio takes them all in stride, saying they represented “… the dedication to disseminate, to show, to explain and to offer a cultural proposal of visual art that creates attention, and shakes and engages a debate with the exhibition visitors.” She adds “For me to curate is a kind of plant cultivation, to the various stages we must devote a vigilant assistance based on care, patience and time so that theories, application of concepts and artistic practice can mature. A plant needs sun and air; similarly an exhibition needs the ideal conditions to create a flow, to actively change the language of art, proposing new keys to reading, experimenting, establishing a philological order and a curatorial method and raising the critical debate.”

Boemio quotes Marx, saying “‘Philosophers have only differently interpreted the world, but the important thing is to change it.’ When can art activate and trigger new social and aesthetic ways? The curator comes into play to ensure a fertile humus by implementing the vigilant conditions and opening new avenues for thought, intercepting the ways to represent the start of a movement or research, an aesthetic process or an innovative function.”

Choosing works that represent cultural identity was a process that Boemio describes as beginning with a reflection on the concept of “the spatial, temporal, and functional role of art as an unknown, which can be understood through the tension art is trapped in; exploring new collisions with other disciplines, such as urbanism and architecture, geology and geography and the social and political interventions.” She describes her work on this exhibition as taken up with an “infinite irony, and giving only a ‘fragment’ of a polyhedral reality.” Boemio relates that she could create ten other exhibitions about the same topic, and each would feature a completely different kind of perspective.

She notes that each piece in the exhibition is her choice, and she finds it difficult to pick favorites to describe, but she offers several careful descriptions of some of the works here.

“Glimpses of a Diversities’s Politic, by Irina Novarese, employs a slow and meticulous process of a fictive, but nevertheless approximate mapping of a city’s actual existing systems and dynamics; in this case of the city of Turin. The five photographs in conjunction with an artist’s book, are the second chapter of Novarese’s investigations into the individualization of environments. In its core the project surveys urban structures as places that oscillate between desire and repulsion, between basic needs and necessities, in which a city’s accelerated flow is perceived as the last place of the social.”

Boemio relates impressions of other works, including that of Giulio Lacchini, and Maria Antonietta Scarpari, who creates “meditative states of looking, in which boundaries between the outside world and internally visualized spaces break down. In so doing, Scarpari makes images of what it means and feels like to see, whether this is understood to be a physical or metaphysical phenomenon… For this exhibition three drawings dialog with her pictorial vocabulary–foreground, background, representation, with the installation Honey money Italy and an Arab carpet.”

Boemio also makes note of the work of Maria Rebecca Ballestra, and Ryts Monet, of whom she says “The golden surface of Monet’s “Carpet” reflects light, and its chromatic and material element gives the work a precious as well as fragile look. The combination of matter and image evoke a symbol of protection and prayer intrinsic in the work.

The exhibition opens at Durden and Ray in DTLA on April 7th, with a reception from 4-7; it runs through April 28th.

Genie Davis; photos courtesy of Camilla Boemio and Durden and Ray

Bombay Beach Biennale: A Personal Story

Posted on March 30, 2018March 30, 2018 by Diversions LA

With a first person account from photographer, writer, and musician Nicole Saari, we take another look at the magical mystery tour that is the Bombay Beach Biennale.

The gravel beneath our tires crackled as we paused to take a photo against the Welcome To Bombay Beach sign. As I stood beside it, I could easily imagine the many thousands of tourists who likely lined up to take similar photographs in its heyday.

Above photo, Genie Davis

A time long before flooding or ecological collapse would encroach upon this beachfront town, and many decades before the inception of the Bombay Beach Biennale. With the Salton Sea reflecting mid-afternoon light and brown clouds of dust just ahead, I could already feel the electricity of imagination all around me.

Above photo, Genie Davis

Our first stop was the check-in desk outside the Ski-Inn – the lowest bar in North America at 223 feet below sea level. I’ve had a long-standing fascination with the area and have visited both Bombay Beach and the Sea many times, but I have never witnessed so many visitors. Florescent colored wristbands attached, I began to snap some images for Diversions LA. The interior of the Ski-Inn is covered in guest signed and decorated dollar bills which add to its already outspoken personality. A collection of artists and residents alike chatted while enjoying a reprieve from the high winds that afternoon.

During the festival, driving in town is not permitted to help limit the level of disruption to the residents. After ditching our vehicle in the designated lot adjacent to the bar, we began our Biennale adventure by foot.

Our Biennale visit kicked off with a trip to the Chill Out Among Hay at the Disco-Tron by Mack Suprastudio and IDEAS UCLA. It was a surreal metallic shelter meets the earth scene featuring what would be the first of many pumping techno and house DJ sets to come.

I climbed to the top of a small mountain of hay bails for a better view of the property. The contrasting brightly colored silks, old wood buildings, and vibrant reflective metals of the festival shown in the distance. Once back on solid ground, our next stop in the journey was Randy Polumbo’s stunning Angler Grove – a shimmering chrome mirage melting into its deliciously soft foam steps. Inside we were greeted with disco balls, distorted mirrors, and a postcard view of the trees outside the structure through a perfectly circular window.

As we made our way down 5th street, we were treated to an eye-opening lecture by Professor Mark Wrathall of Oxford University entitled The Eternal Silence of These Infinite Spaces Terrifies Me. It was fascinating to contemplate the richness of silence in the spaces that lie within music, between words, and among the ordinary pauses that occur throughout life. The crowd was hushed as the philosopher spoke and I could feel the depth of the infinite unknown he spoke of in those peaceful moments. This was only one of a series of lectures during the Biennale with the recurring theme of limitless void, the higher power that surrounds us, and infinity. My only regret was not being able to attend each of them.

Leaving the lecture, it was a dream-like sight to witness the parade of musicians, artists, and revelers making their way down towards the water past Bombay Beach Estates and Stefan Ashkenazy’s captivatingly sensual Shaguar. Bass drums backlit by LED decorations boomed, attendees clapped and sang, and harmonizing horns and percussive elements blended together into an enveloping swirl of instrumental beauty.

Above photo, Genie Davis

On the beach we were able to witness one of Olivia Steele’s incredible neon pieces, entitled Save Me – placed several yards out in the Sea and lit just as the sun began to set. Giancario Neri’s Moonstuck and Debra Berger’s Sculptures From The Sea as well as Ray Ewing and Adrian Pijoan’s Salty were other beachside standouts. In all honesty, each piece and artist who brought them to life was breathtaking – there were no weak links here. The Biennale as a whole was a perfect living collage of individual self-expression.

Heading back into town from the beach we were able to catch Greg Haberny’s exhibit at the Petit Hermitage gallery entitled Why Do I Wreck Everything I Love. Black and white shapes surrounded us and enormous melancholy cigarettes with faces of their own greeted us at the entrance and exit.

Additional sounds of music and laughter welcomed us as we entered Pirate’s Alley – a pop-up bar with fairy lights, connected trailer buildings, and enticingly scented tacos. My colleague and I went our separate ways for a time and I had the opportunity to listen to everything from an acoustic version of the Disney Jungle Book classic Bear Necessities to a Bombay Beach infused cover of New York, New York while seated there. Near the Alley is the Bombay Beach Opera House by James Sorter, where performances by Kate Feld, Harrison Lee, Lance Trevino and enticing dances choreographed by Benjamin Millepied took place. The haunting voices of the performers echoed down the blackening streets.

The Opera House

At full dark the town of Bombay Beach was lit with translucent neon, brilliant psychedelic color changing lights suspended above walkways, trash can fires around the Bombay Beach Drive-In with an apropos screening of Sea of Love: Monsters in The Water, and the glow of many beach installations in the distance.

Above photo by Anya Kaat

On our way back to Los Angeles the next day I was thankful to have gotten the chance to take a walkthrough the glorious Pythia which is a converted permanent performance space by Danielle Aykroyd. The coda of the journey was an end full of heart, literally.

Home Is Where The Heart Is by Jennifer Korsen drew the eye into a transformed decrepit home. Gold filled the many cracks in the seemingly ancient floors, and a sparkling winged heart hung as centerpiece against the bones of its decay.

The Bombay Beach Biennale is much like a scavenger hunt of experiences. Each small town road leads one to more surprising visual, aural, and overall sensorial works than can be given justice here. I am eager to return next year – this time with a bicycle – to cover additional ground and bear witness to more incredible expressions of art and culture. “Home Is Where The Heart Is” and a piece of my heart is still drifting in the breezes of Bombay Beach.

Nicole Saari; Photos by Nicole Saari; additional photos credited individually

Heather Lowe
April 29, 2026 at 7:09 am
on Transformations: A Review by Betty Brown
wonderful
Nancy Mooslin
April 29, 2026 at 6:35 am
on Transformations: A Review by Betty Brown
Beautiful review Betty!! I am looking forward to seeing this exhibit on Sunday!
Karena Massengill
April 24, 2026 at 2:50 pm
on Wonders Immerse at Angels Gate
Yes, both exhibitions are breathtaking! Well, worth the effort of going to see them while you still can!
Karena Massengill
April 24, 2026 at 11:11 am
on Quantum Beauty in Quantum Matter at Matter Studio Gallery
Thank you for this thoughtful review! I am honored to have my artwork be exhibited with these other powerful artists.
Angelica Sotiriou
April 22, 2026 at 5:34 pm
on Quantum Beauty in Quantum Matter at Matter Studio Gallery
Beautifully written. It was an incredible show. Thank you for the review.