Past and Perfect – Exhibitions at Durden and Ray, Wonzimer Gallery, and Persons Unknown

Posted on by Diversions LA

Sometimes life just gets the best of you. You see great shows, post all the photos, and have no time to write the actual reviews. So here are three recently closed, truly wonderful exhibitions that deserve mention. Look for these galleries and artists in upcoming exhibitions throughout the year.

Wonzimer Gallery – We Insist On Growing – Cheyanne Washington 

Cheyanne Washington’s solo exhibition, We Insist On Growing, combined fiercely textured, exciting and sinuous forms wtih the astonishing use of her own natural pigments. If ever an artist deserved the description “alchemist” it would be Washington. Paintings, banners, and a wonderful sculptural work comprised this beautiful exhibition,  the title of which resonates with what the artist calls “the resilience and persistence found in nature.”

There’s a gravitational pull to these works, a life force that seems to arise from nature itself, embodied by the earth-rendered paints and clay. Washington shapes figurative art that exudes a sentient, sensual connection to the natural world, and transcends both its materials and subject, creating work that is serene and absorbing. Both paintings and ceramic works elevate the viewer’s grasp of nature, and relate to the intrinisic joy of creation itself.

If Washington insists on growing, then viewers everywhere should insist on watching her do so.

Currently at Wonzimer: (above) a solo exhibition by Gary Brewer, Everything is Radiant through May 15th, paintings and sculpture.

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Durden and Ray – Tieze – Group Exhibition

Curated by the powerful trio of Arezoo Bharthania, Dani Dodge, and Hagop Najarian, Tieze was the always-inventive collective gallery’s response to the bedecked halls of the Frieze art fair. Fresh and vibrant, the exhibition featured work by Ismael de Anda III, Carlos Beltran Arechiga, Arezoo Bharthania, Jorin Bossen, Gul Cagin, Sijia Chen, Joe Davidson, Dani Dodge, Vita Eruhimovitz, Jenny Hager, Regina Herod, David Leapman, Atilio Pernisco, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, Carolyn Mason, Hagop Najarian, Ty Pownall, Max Presneill, Dylan Ricards, Stephanie Sherwood, Curtis Stage, Valerie Wilcox, Alexandra Wiesenfeld, and Steven Wolkoff.

From the swirling movement of figurative abstracts by Najarian to Wolkoff’s paint sculpture, magical video from Petrovic, asonishing sculptural works from Pownall and Davidson to small but mighty sculptures utilizing Monopoly pieces by Dodge, there was a medium and a message to compel the eye of any viewer. It would be hard to pick just one favorite among a myriad of stand outs. Bhartania and Hager showed vibrant, multi-layered paintings while Wilcox showed a delicate looking paper cocoon of a sculpture. A far cooler and more cutting edge group exhibition than was present at any of the commercial art fairs this year, the exhibition artists were all Durden and Ray artist/curators, participating in the only show each year dedicated to highlighting all of the Durden and Ray artists’ work as a group.

Currently at Durden and Ray (above): Smiling in Chaos – Group Show – Co-curated by Gonzalo García Gaitán, Ismael de Anda III, Carlos Beltrán Aréchiga through May 18th,  a collaboration between Columbian collective Si Nos Pagan Boys and Los Angeles based artists, all of whom use humor and levity in their work as a form of resistance.

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Persons Unknown – Into the Hamper’s Belly – Group Show

Into the Hamper’s Belly featured four artists working in sculpture, installation, and painting. The group exhibition was devoted to those who “revel in ongoing processes of accumulation and transmutation…[and] a sense of porous frementation.”

Artists Inga Hendrickson, Rachel Elizabeth Jones, Caitlin Servilio, and Corrine Yonce used a variety of atypical art materials ranging from cardboard, cement, pigment, foam, silicone, wax, plastic, sand, and even clamshells, to create an exhibition of diverse artists and art forms that nonetheless presented as a whole; a mystical and organic installation that merged into one being within the cutting-edge gallery floor.

And in the back studio space, the beautiful work of gallerist and artist Ariel Oakley Pelletier.

Currently at Persons Unknown (above): Fumbled Worlds – The Invented People of Alfonse Aletto – through May 20th, a survey of painted works from a prolific self-taught artist.

Look for these galleries and previously exhibited artists as well as current shows ASAP.  Great art is a joy we should all be sharing — especially in today’s precarious world.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and provided by galleries

Artist Arezoo Bharthania Welcomes Viewers to A Home in the Inbetween

Posted on by Diversions LA
Arezoo Bharthania’s evocative mixed media solo exhibition, A Home in the In-Between, is both delicate and layered. As skillfully curated by Jason Jenn at LA Art Core in Little Tokyo, the exhibition is divided into three distinct areas: hanging panels, which viewers can walk between, like scrolls that tell the story of both Bharthania’s childhood, early adulthood, and current life; similarly unfolding narrative pieces that flow from ceiling to floor, fringed at the bottom, recalling exquisite Persian rugs; and projected images exhibited in muted twilight, and viewed at least in part, through clear, etched panels. Linking each of these spaces is a section of  nuanced and delicate works of wall art which resemble sections of a quilt or pieces of beautiful wallpaper.
The combination of curated spaces leads the viewer from one room to another, just as you would pass between the rooms of a home. But the home here is a dream-like one, composed of memories and plans, present reality and past sensations.
As the artist leads viewers from her recalled life in Iran to her life here in LA, her personal story reflects a broader one, a uniquely human experience of emotion and sensation, observation and understanding, envirorments both interior and external. It is the unfolding and expansion of roots and the blossoming of the future on the fertile garden of the past.
The exhibition allows the viewer time to take in the full view of her emotional, physical, and remembered home spaces. Viewers are invited not just to see but to explore Bharthania’s carefully explored territory, which she depicts through painted images, photographic depictions, and a range of tactile materials.
This is a graceful show, immersive but delicately so, shaping personal images of home, and with the artist’s projected images, a more urban and global one.  What makes a home? For Bharthania is it is heart and soul, the colors of her world, from lime green to gold and pink, vibrant and personal, and moving into her images of cityscapes, a world that can be more muted and distant, a way to process, perhaps, the urban noise.
Throughout the world and throughout time, home is a place we live, we inhabit, we at least try to make in our own image – a safe refuge. It is a place in which we long for a life outside its walls and equally yearn for the succor of, or at least the hope for, sustenance that we find within them.
There is intimacy and immediacy in Bharthania’s work, and there is also a view out the windows of her metaphorical home so to speak, a look at the broader world, and the passage of time.
The artist shares beauty and wistfulness, the fragile nature of the past, the permanence of personal roots, and the restlessness of urban life, all while acknowledging the constructs of home from beyond the personal to a grander, broader, more social view.
This lovely exhibition closes Sunday, with a curatorial and artist walk through conducted by Jenn and Bharthania at 3 p.m. The gallery is open 12-4 Thursday-Sunday.  LA Art Core is located at 120 Judge John Aiso St,. Los Angeles, CA 90012.
– Genie Davis, Photos: Genie Davis