Okay, Durden and Ray. Your collective is offering radiant exhibitions all over town. We recently profiled the group’s show Odd Convergences: Steps/Missteps closing the 12th at the Korean Cultural Center; now another fast-moving and well-worth-seeing pop-up show is reigning at Muzeumm, in mid-city, Emulations; downtown at the collective’s own location, a stellar international exhibition, Kan, is offering a fresh look at cultural connections.
Let’s start with Emulations – as you should, too. Don’t let this one slip away.
The truly awesome exhibition offers a brilliant look at the “hyper-real.” Taking a fresh look at the ways we, as viewers, consume and produce images, artists Dani Dodge, Daena Title, Ed Gomez, Ichiro Irie, Ben Jackel, Kiel Johnson, and Brian Thomas Jones tackle what we see, how we see it, and new ways of seeing in one fell swoop.
Taking over the gallery’s backroom, Dodge, above, has created a riveting installation in “Screenburn.”
Iconic images taken from films such as Sunset Boulevard and Pretty Women are projected against stained-glass-hues and gauzy fabric. A glitter-lettered director’s chair spells the installation’s title, positioned before a small black and white television screen, perched atop a black draped altar on which a series of large votive candles are placed.
On the glass of the candles are Dodge’s paintings of Los Angeles architectural landmarks, and a rainbow – a symbol of hope. On the television are images of asphalt and a brief message from the artist that reveals this, the gritty streets and endless ability to drive into the sunset, is the LA she loves. The film and TV depictions are the la-la land people strive for and seek – in fact one image is from the film La La Land – but the reality of this strange, anonymous, pulsating city is just as compelling and worthy of contemplation. There may be no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, but the rainbow is real.
Dodge reveals the dreams of this city and the dreamy reality: we can be whoever we want to be here, and let the light of our own candles burn. The nature of the installation is that of a church: our prayers for fame may not be realistic, but we can worship at the altar of possibility, and follow any road to a home of the heart.
In the main gallery, Title’s large-scale paintings on canvas are also dazzling. She presents female icons – beauty pageant winners taking a selfie even as the winner is announced in “Miss Selfie,” “Wonder Woman at the Disco” caught in mid-dance, and “Big Doll” evoking Barbie underwater, her reflection echoing back upon her.
Created in oil and oil/acrylic/pastel/and pencil on canvas, Title’s works pop from the wall, all vivid color, brilliantly realistic yet beyond real. She’s created the ultimate in image: a super hero, a classic doll that little girls have long grown up on, a crowned winner – and taken those images one step beyond. We have made the women she depicts (and Barbie, here, is a woman as much as a doll) what they are, and they have made us aspire to be them. “Miss Selfie” may be a self-referential moment, but it’s a joyous one; “Wonder Woman” might just be one of us, out for a night on the town. “Big Doll” is something else again, poignant, because we can’t ever be the perfection of Barbie – if we were underwater, we would drown.
Stoneware and stoneware with beeswax sculptures by Ben Jackel depict a fire hydrant and a triple standpipe; he’s made sculptural art out of everyday objects, transcending them.
So too has Kiel Johnson, whose cluster of chipboard and tape cameras are a sculptural “picture” of an object that takes pictures. Now that’s hyper-real.
Johnson’s “River Front” model town is a terrific, fresh take on urban dioramas, and a look at our big city as if seen from far, far above.
photo above: credit Ed Gomez
Ed Gomez’ dark oil-on-canvas “Horseman 3” is hauntingly apocalyptic; his “Columbia, Vehicle for Transcendence” is a diptych of the space shuttle cock pit that aims to put the viewer at the control panel.
Irie works with poster putty on panel, creating a dimensional version of “Amsterdam Hilton 1969 by Cor Jaring,” depicting John and Yoko Lennon. The film negative/digital prints of Jones are noir-rich black and white images of Hollywood, from a “Wild West” town to a “MASH Signpost.”
Curated by Jones and Gomez, the exhibition presents a new mythology that transcends reality – and if that’s what hyperrealism is, we may never want to go back to seeing things as they “really” are.
Emulations will be closing May 12th. Get in there.
Muzeumm is located at 4817 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles
– Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis, and where noted, Ed Gomez.
