Inspirational Work from Late Artist Nadege Monchera Baer at The Front and in Stunning Group Show, Mother Memory at Wonzimer

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Inspirational Work from Late Artist Nadege Monchera Baer at The Front and in Stunning Group Show, Mother Memory at Wonzimer

                                                                                        Genie Davis

It’s been a summer of changes and some chaos, but it is past time to catch up on some of the wonderful exhibitions I’ve had the joy of experiencing in July and August.

It’s only fitting to post first a tribute to Nadege Monchera Baer, a brilliantly imaginative artist whose articulate use of color and pattern, exquisite precision, and enormous artistic and personal grace I am proud to have known over the last 13 years. In my coverage of past exhibitions, I’ve touched on her versatility, her lush textures, her frankly dazzling use of materials, and her constant willingness to both experiment and offer experiential vibrancy to her viewers.

From her dazzling pointillist work to unique laminated dimensional sculptures, her inventive passion for art, and her ever-fresh use of mediums and style were, and will always remain, magical.  Of the latter work,  in 2016, Baer said, “I want to do more of this, laminate different drawings. I love the possibility that the door has maybe begun opening to doing something else with my work.”

At last weekend’s pop-up exhibition of her work at The Front in Lincoln Heights, the luminosity of her work was almost overwhelming.

Whether creating lush works that resemble flowers, a bird of bright plumage, or the human form, her mix of abstract and figurative work shapes the alchemic. In another exhibition as part of the BLAM collective which frequently exhibited on Santa Fe Avenue in DTLA, she even made beautiful a depiction of an oil spill clean-up, saying “I’m always painting changes in the environment. I’m trying to show our concern about the environment. ”

She also profoundly witnessed and depicted the intense wonder in the world.

Invention, beauty, grace: Baer offered each with a generous heart and spirit. She was an artistic force to be reckoned with. Earlier this summer she was a part of a stunning small group show at FOCA, curated by Aline Mare; and along with the brilliant tribute exhibition at The Front, which has now closed, last weekend also brought viewers to Baer’s work at an exciting group exhibition, Mother Memory, at Wonzimer Gallery, curated by Toti O’Brien, and running through September 12th.

At the latter show,  amid a collection of powerful artists’ works, Baer is still a standout, her eye for color, for texture, for pattern, and above all, for the mystical meaning within the heart of her work made her images both bold and exciting.

That exhibition is a don’t-miss extravaganza of joy, mystery, and passion from artists including: Anita Getzler, Gina Lawson Egan, Peter Liashkov, Marina Moevs, Toti O’Brien, Melinda Smith Altshuler, Nancy Kay Turner, J Michael Walker, and of course, the unforgettable Nadege Monchera Baer.

The show richly dives into a wide range of mothering experiences: memories of mothers, the idea of mothering, the experience of motherhood, and the expression of memory itself as a mother to our minds and souls.  O’Brien’s poetic curation asks viewers to examine how memory itself is a mother to us, and the ways in which our memories create and shape us, nurture us and guide us. Of course, memories can also bring tears, wild imagination, revisionist history,  exuberant moments relived, and aspects of our past, our future legacy, and the passage of time that both succor us and can devastate.

In just such a way, this potent exhibition honors Baer, even as her work honors the viewer with its presence. We have our memories of her art, her vibrant personality, her stunning fashion sense, culled from a background in fashion and film abroad. We have our own memories in which her work dances, as well as memories yet formed and yet shaped of her work, her passions, and that of all the artists exhibiting here.

Each work in this show is a gem: an installation from Nancy Kay Turner features elements of glitter and bronze within collages of past memories and evocations of our own collective history…

Curator and exhibiting artist Toti O’Brien’s whimsical, alive, and stirring wall sculptures of the female form are provocative and fun at the same time…

Anita Getzler pays tribute to those who lost their lives to Covid in both video and sculptural forms involving dried roses, which sculpturally are hung like the beads on an abacus that counts the passage of time…

Gina Lawson Egan’s intensely original sculptural totems and figures take the viewer on an evocative but accessible fantasy ride, looking like the stuff dreams are made of.

Each of the artists here provide an insight into memory and movement and invention, the ways in which we, as human beings, bring our own marks into the future, recreate our pasts, and preserve our lives and legacy through art and understanding.

While she may have left us bereft here on Mother Earth, Baer (work above) continues to grace our lives with her eternally living artwork. And the group show at Wonzimer highlights both her work and that of the other exhibiting artists in an exhibition that demands to be seen, felt, and carried in our hearts.

Wonzimer Gallery is located at 341 S. Avenue 17 in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles. The gallery is open Wednesday-Sunday, and do visit Mother Memory, up until September 12th.

To see more of Nadege Monchera Baer‘s works, visit her garden of images on Instagram.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

 

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

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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.

                                                                                 ***

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.

                                                                                                     ***

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

A New Way of Seeing – The Art of Windswept

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A New Way of Seeing – The Art of Windswept – by Austin Janisch

“Every great artist gives birth to a new universe, in which the familiar things look the way they have never before looked to anyone.” – Rudolf Arnheim

 

To experience a work of art is to be momentarily displaced, invited into a new way of seeing. Windswept, Wönzimer Gallery’s latest exhibition, curated by Genie Davis, offers such an invitation. Through sculpture, photography, collage, mixed media, and video, the group exhibition interrogates our relationship with the wind: a natural omnipresent force. Windswept brings together artists whose interpretations of “wind” reflect not only diverse artistic practices but also diverse perceptual worlds.

The exhibition features 17 painted works from throughout Susan Ossman’s career, alongside contributions from Dani Dodge, Angelica Sotiriou, Beth Elliott, Linda Sue Price, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, Diane Cockerill, Bruce Cockerill, Scott Meskill, Eileen Oda, Jason Jenn, Nancy Kay Turner, and Nancy Voegeli-Curan.

Works function as invisible presence, as metaphor, as force, as memory. From a power capable of sculpting landscapes to a passing breeze felt gently on the skin, the wind is as violent as it is lyrical, as abstract as it is corporeal.

Throughout the gallery, Susan Ossman’s paintings seek to make visible the movement of the wind. Through the use of color and line, Ossman illustrates the wind’s ability to transform, uplift and carry with it the qualities of the surrounding environment. In one work, a breeze becomes a conduit for pollen and a symbol of generative force, rendered through delicate hues and swirling pink ribbons. In another, Shamal (2022), the wind acts as an agent of abrasion, a hot, dusty current moving across the desert. A tumultuous force, taking on the coarse characteristic of the sand it casts up. The piece evokes the harsh winds of the Middle East, perhaps part of a regional lexicon in which the wind, through sandstorms, is not a whisper but an engulfing presence. These dualities, fertile and destructive, soft and coarse underscore wind’s shifting character.

Susan Ossman’s work left, Linda Sue Price’s neon to the right

Elsewhere in the gallery, Jason Jenn explores the weight of wind’s influence through a symbolic juxtaposition. The work presents thirteen red bricks painted with clouds resting atop a square cushion stuffed with feathers. The contradiction is immediate: bricks, symbols of mass and gravity, paired with the ethereal imagery of clouds and the literal lightness of feathers. The piece challenges our common perception by illustrating the true weight of clouds and the enormous force exuded by wind that lifts up these visibly weightless objects. It is a meditation on unseen power, presenting what art critic and novelist John Berger might call a “new way of seeing” by disrupting the assumed hierarchies between weight and lightness, gravity and lift.

Each artist offers new, diverse depictions of the wind revealing facets of the shared conceptual element. While some works depict the result of a windswept landscape, others capture the feeling of touching or being touched by a common encounter. Eileen Oda Leaf presents a whimsical take on the idea of being “windswept,” while Nancy Kay Turner’s response is one of rupture both physical and metaphysical. Turner’s mixed media piece evokes an aerial view of a landscape being torn apart. Coupled with her use of vintage photographs, the work suggests a sense of loss or longing as if a connection to the past is perhaps what is being swept away.

Installation by Dani Dodge
Central painting/collage from Angelica Sotiriou; smaller images to the right and left, Snezana Saraswatsi Petrovic

Nancy Voegeli Curran

Snezana Saraswati Petrovic

Recalling the essays grouped within Ways of Seeing, Berger reminds us that our perception is never neutral. “The way we see things,” he writes, “is affected by what we know or what we believe.” Windswept exemplifies this principle, revealing how cultural context, sensory experience, and artistic framing shape our understanding of something as seemingly straightforward as the wind. The exhibition doesn’t offer a singular narrative but rather a constellation of perspectives—each artist conjuring their own universe, each work inviting us to re-experience a common element through their lens.

As a whole, Windswept invites viewers to consider how art can visualize the invisible not merely to represent, but to reframe. The exhibition is one that turns an abstraction into various modes of sensation.

A closing and curatorial walkthrough of the exhibition along with a selection of short films on wind from artists Dani Dodge, Jason Jenn, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, David Isakson, and Johnny Naked are scheduled for 5-8 p.m. on Thursday, April 17th.  Walk-through at 6, films at 7.  Wonzimer is located at 341-B S Avenue 17, Los Angeles, CA 90031.

Written by: Austin Janisch; photos: provided by Wonzimer Gallery; additional images by Genie Davis 

Time From Other Places – Carried by Windswept at Wonzimer Gallery

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Time From Other Places – Carried by Windswept at Wonzimer Gallery by Juri Koll

Wind is potent and prescient, bringing time to us from other places, in precious moments we feel, see, smell. With this in mind, Genie Davis has curated an excellent new show, Windswept, at Wonzimer (a great space and crew) opening on March 21.

Windswept builds on 15 works from international artist’s Susan Ossman’s career as a painter with 14 other artists’ work of equally formidable insight and acumen. These works allow us to be in the moment, to stop and look at the fleeting, illusory elements, the bits and pieces we’re all made of.

Ossman’s “Pin The Wind,” represents for this writer the origin of the concept Davis has so adeptly assembled here. Made up of 2 panels that look as if they are 3, the beautiful and momentary view of sky blue above protects the orange under it, illuminates the earthy feel of each edge, and allows us to be here with it.

Motion, flow, and lush color combine in each of Ossman’s works, creating the sensation of a wind made of color and contrasts, including the wild wind that emanates from her “Dark Winds,” an astonishing oil and linen work that was created specificially for this exhibition.

Angelica Sotiriou’s collage “The Sound of Breath,” like much of her work, brings the moment forward with her free, open command of the brush and the elements she uses that sparkle, layer, and reach toward us, while Bruce Cockerill’s photograph, “Tumbleweed Sky,” below, is fleeting, transitory and yet starkly “now” as a photograph.

Diane Cockerill’s photographic image “Flurry” uses stop-motion technique to capture an image that makes you wait to see what happens next, and gives time and voice to the birds in flight.

“The Answer My Friend (Blowing in the Wind),” is Beth Elliott’s sculptural work, which brings a challenging number of physical elements to an equally challenging subject. How do we hold the fort, and keep the sail aloft, as it were, in a windstorm? How do we remember the things that might be taken away from us when forces out of our control overtake us? The cyanotype element, like a flag, makes us hope we do remember, and that the image will survive.

Each of the other works in this show deserve study, and equally anchor the show, the concept, and the time spent with it, including newly created installations by Dani Dodge, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, and Jason Jenn, each utilizing a variety of different elements, including, in one case, an actual tumbleweed.

Clouds, also windswept, as depicted utilizing recycled plastics from Nancy Voegeli-Curran, above.

The winds of personal change are a central part of Nancy Kay Turner‘s work, below.

 

There are also neon works that relate to the recent catastrophic windstorms in LA from Linda Sue Price, along with sculptural works that seem to have arrived as if carried by the wind from Scott Meskill and Eileen Oda, among the many fine artists exhibiting. In many ways, this entire exhibition is a wind-blown surprise.

In all, this immersive group exhibition features painted works by Susan Ossman in conjunction with sculptural, photographic, collage, video, and installation works by artists including Dani Dodge, Angelica Sotiriou, Beth Elliott, Linda Sue Price, Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, Diane Cockerill, Bruce Cockerill, Scott Meskill, Eileen Oda, Jason Jenn, Nancy Kay Turner,  Nancy Voegeli-Curan, and a video work from David Isakson. The show explores each artist’s own unique vision of wind, from oil and acrylic to  otherworldly mixed media.

Don’t miss the opening Friday, March 21 from 5 to 10 p.m., or the artist’s talk scheduled for Sunday, March 30 at 3 -5 p.m.  The show closes with a curatorial walk through on Thursday, April 17 with the gallery open all day and the walk through scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. Regular gallery hours are 12-7 W-Sun, March 21 through April 20th. Go see it.

Wonzimer Gallery is located at 341-B S Avenue 17, Los Angeles, CA 90031 Website: https://www.wonzimer.com/ 

  • Juri Koll, VICA; photos by Genie Davis and as provided by the artists