With three fine solo shows and one group show, the Los Angeles Art Associations Gallery 825’s current exhibitions, which opened February 22nd, are each deeply rewarding.
Suzanne Pratt
Suzanne Pratt’s exhibit bird·song, which is profoundly meditative, focusing on the transitory yet eternal in the immediate moment. The precise but seeming infinite images weave a complexity rooted in a primal sense of life-force. Spirals, shell-like shapes, seemingly-petaled pieces such as the artist’s richly dimensional “niyamita,” compel a closer look at the world itself as filled with meaning. Dimensional and riveting.
L. Aviva Diamond
L. Aviva Diamond’s large-scale photography also offers a dazzle of meditative works – these riveting works depict water as an entire world – in her glowing Light Stream. Euphoric and filled with a swirling dance that pulls the viewer within them, these sensational abstract images transport the viewer to another world that is both mysterious and magical.
Mark Indig
Photographer Mark Indig uses architectural shapes in his new body of photographic work, Naked Triangles. Skeletal and powerful, described as “x-rays of our culture,” radio towers and cell phone transmitters are depicted with grace, as stark, lovely, and spare, like castle turrets and church steeples for our time. Electric wires and their connection points stand like robotic sentinels, watchfully ominous. The delicacy of their construction reminds the viewer of the art of Watts Towers at first glance; a second look creates a less benign view, as if of a technological take-over.
Osceola Refetoff
And finally, the group show on exhibit, Penumbra, juried by stARTup Art Fair’s
founder Ray Beldner, offers black and white as the palette in a variety of
mediums. Participating artists include Larry Brownstein, Amy Fox, Donna
Gough, Rob Grad, Gina Herrera, Susan Lasch
Krevitt, Campbell Laird, Rich Lanet, Colleen Otcasek, Joy
Ray, Osceola Refetoff, Melissa Reischman, Catherine
Ruane, Seda Saar, Catherine Singer and Stephanie Sydney.
Catherine Ruane
From Catherine Ruane’s lushly nuanced nature in her graphite drawing “Magwitch” to Osceola Refetoff’s haunting infrared photographic sunset image of “Leaving Trona,” to Joy Ray’s mystical, textural wall sculpture, this is another rewarding powerhouse of a show.
Don’t miss!
Genie Davis; photos provided by the artists; exhibition photos from LAAA
The delicate beauty of Kim Kimbro’s work is never to be taken for granted.
Her stunning depictions of creatures large and small: birds, polar bears, deer, horses – have, in this exhibition, just closed at Los Angeles Art Association, moved her intensely realistic yet undoubtedly magical and emphatic work to new subjects: humans.
These particular humans are poised on a cusp of discovery, children approaching puberty, adolescents clinging to childhood and innocence and a pure belief in magic by a linear thread.
They are all soul, with backgrounds a delicate, luminous wash of color, in most cases indistinct. The central image of these children outgrowing childhood – yet retaining its beauty and freshness – remains the focus, both realistic and impressionistic, a web of color and light radiating from rosy skin and just out of sight.
Whether swaddled in the cocoon of a down coat like an emerging butterfly; or shyly profiled in a gauzy dress with other dresses hanging in the background – choices, so many choices ahead – these beautiful, magical creatures, sleeping beauties about to emerge into the full, raw bloom of life, are memorably lovely and graceful.
And yet, not quite among us, yet. Hiding an eye in a visual hide and seek with the viewer; floating against a sunrise-pink, suspended, sleeping, adrift; both considering and considered — these images are magnetically potent.
Kimbro’s work is finely attuned to both nature and the spirit – if there is a difference between the two, and the artist’s work infers that there may not be.
It is life itself that she is celebrating, and the magic that makes it real.
Her work is a joy to see.
Above, the artist with her own family of graceful, growing children.
One of the best ways to start a brand new year is by exploring art which resonates with life, promise, joy, and beauty. Southern California-based artist Catherine Ruane exemplifies all of these in her work, and specifically in one large scale piece currently on display at the Los Angeles Art Association’s Gallery 825 as a part of LAAA’s signature survey exhibition featuring the best in emerging art.
The stellar Open Show 2016, on display now through January 13th, includes Ruane’s simply gorgeous, inspiring 36″ by 72″ “Minaret,” which is reason alone to take in the exhibition, juried by Jennifer Inacio of Perez Art Museum Miami. Featured artists include:
Elizabeth Bailey, Kelly Berg, Clovis Blackwell, JT Burke, Mario Canali, Chenhung Chen, Nathaniel Clark, Jaime Coffey Bateman, Karen Duckles, Holly Elander, Birgit Faustmann, Laurie Freitag, Dwora Fried, Kaori Fukuyama, Miguel Galán, Danielle Garza, Tanner Goldbeck, Antoine Guilbaud, Yoon Chung Han, Gina Herrera, Sol Hill, Mark Indig, Paul Ivanushka, Lynda Keeler, Carol Kleinman, Kevin Michael Klipfel, Faina Kumpan, Tom Lasley, Barbara Lavery, Jung ji Lee, Stuart Marcus, Randi Matushevitz, Dan Monteavaro, Alexis Murray, Makan Negahban, Robert Nelson, Denise Neumark-Rreimer, Eric Oliver, Elizabeth Orleans, Thibault Pelletier, Lori Pond, Meghan Quinn, Margaret Raab, Catherine Ruane, Larisa Safaryan, Shilla Shakoori, Chris Shelby, Susan Swihart, Haikuhie Tataryan, Reisig and Taylor, and Terry Tripp.
We’ve written before on the stunning work of Chenhung Chen, whose life-filled sculptures vibrate with delicate, contained motion; Dwora Fried’s intricate tableaux that inspire passionate discussion; and the touching, funny miniature worlds of Tom Lasley. Each of them and so many more terrific artists are represented in this show. Do explore it.
But today, we are writing about Catherine Ruane, whose graphite and charcoal works, of which “Minaret” is one, are quite simply profound.
Above, “Minaret.” The perfect, delicate detail in this intricate black and white image of a fan palm is nothing short of astonishing. Rough fronds, the scaled surface of the palm’s trunk, the finely caught shadows – this is an image of life itself, contained is a literal and lovely evocation of a palm tree.
Viewers who study this work will find, as with so many of the artist’s pieces, something that goes beyond the literal, that morphs a perfect tribute to nature into something ethereal and transcendent.
“The ubiquitous palm tree is both a part of Southern California which is my home, but also a plant that is a survivor despite long hot summers. The tree was once used as a tall tower to call people to prayer before a temple with a minaret could be built. I am fascinated by how this tree has been used as a way to bring people to a place of spiritual calm. I experience an internal peace while carefully rendering all the complicated mix of details in the bark and leaves. Within the chaos there a structure of order. Opposites thrive,” Ruane says.
Above, “Transgression.”
Ruane’s work is pristine, but it’s almost photographic nature is just one part of what pulls the viewer into her world. She doesn’t just chronicle, she creates a transporting experience, pulling viewers into what feels like a sacred space, fecund with life.
Above, “Gila River II.”
Below, “Cloister.”
Her water series ripples with light, the life of the water is vivid motion and shadow; her cacti are so sharply drawn you can feel the spines.
Above, “Unravelled.”
About her palm series, the artist says “The palm tree is the iconic tree growing throughout much of Southern California, Arizona, and Mexico. The Washingtonia Filifera or California Fan Palm…defines my personal experience of ‘home.'”
Above, “Invocation.”
There is a sense of awe and wonder in each piece, a complexity that is as nuanced as it is sweeping. Above all, Ruane takes a realistic approach that is exceptionally vivid and at the same time that approach is entirely poetic. It is a true experience of beauty to look at her works, and to study their detail is to fall in love with them and the desert life they represent.
Above, “Chaparel,” yucca.
Here’s the thing: the natural beauty she depicts, whether it is her palms, water, or other desert plants, is truly wonderful. But she inhabits each aspect of this flora so viscerally and so completely that her work involves the viewer in the intrinsic life force of that particular piece of nature. One can feel it breathe, feel compassion and empathy for a growing thing, an eddy in a river, a sheaf of cactus blossoms. Feel admiration for the resilience of a desert plant, feel the danger of its spines, feel the magnificence of wind, water, branch — she creates a vibrant personality in each work. These are living beings that she shapes.
Above, “Only the Wind.”
The artist also shares with the viewer a sense of discovery, both of the exceptional wonder of the natural images she depicts and of our ability to view them. Ruane says she hikes and explores the area around her home constantly, observing visual images that help her develop a work.
Feel the artist’s intimate observation in her “Constantine,” below, barbed wire pinning back desert blossoms.
Explore the glowing detail in this section of Ruane’s water series, below, focusing on the environmental improvements on the Gila River.
Do not miss a chance to view the lush, personal, thoroughly alive nature in Catherine Ruane’s work. It’s a beautiful way to start the New Year.
Catch Ruane’s “Minaret” in the exciting group show now at LAAA, located at 825 N. La Cienega in West Hollywood.
Above: Artist Dwora Fried – inside one of her boxes – Photo: Jack Burke
Dwora Fried had created an amazing body of work – wonderfully detailed collages and miniature tableaux that create entire worlds peopled with tiny figures and photographs inside glass-topped wood boxes.
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At her solo show at the Los Angeles Art Association Gallery 825, Fried offers viewers a look at an entirely different kind of box as well as her miniatures – this show isn’t called BIG BOX/Little Box without reason. Yes, there is a box big enough for visitors to sit down inside, and experience an Alice-in-Wonderland-like sensation of being a part of Fried’s art. “People kept saying ‘I want to be in your world, so I decided to create something large enough in which they could literally be in it,” Fried says.
Fried’s “Little Box” works continue to rivet and engage. “With the exception of one piece, they were all made in 2015,” she notes. “I was very inspired.”
Stunningly intricate, each box not only evokes a story but a visceral response in the viewer, who is drawn into the small, intricate world that each box contains.
“When I decided to do the big box piece, I didn’t want to start buying large objects, so I only used what I had around. I had large Legos, an easel, the photos – those were the elements I decided to use. I started with the small box, and matched the big box to it,” Fried says.
The most wonderful thing about Fried’s boxes is the feeling that one is looking not just inside a box or an artwork, but into an alternate universe. Mini worlds, mini planets.
And below, the writer has a seat inside the Big Box. And yes, it’s delightful. The illusion is perfect – the viewer becomes the viewed, fits in the box, and enters a different world.
The Los Angeles Art Association Gallery 825 is located at 825 N La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90069; the show runs through February 19th.
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Genie Davis; Photos: Jack Burke and (little boxes) Dwora Fried
