“Darkness Surrounds Us”
Jail Gallery
“Darkness Surrounds Us” at Jail curated by Michael Dee deals with the spiritual loss and alienation characterized by both philosophy and pop psychology. The premise of the show challenges the participants to make meaning out of the void and comment on the proximity of the gallery to the Los Angeles County Correctional facility located across the street. The role of existentialist artist as a solitary tormented figure has perhaps become a cultural cliche. However, there is a power to this show that brings new attention to the contemporary recontextualist fascination with modernist philosophy and the very real anxieties of artists living in the face of Los Angeles’ hollow urban core.
The curator Michael Dee’s sculptures are an odd mix of savant charm and Occidentalism. Dee’s work seems to literally embody the need for a personalized grounding within the darker context of meaninglessness and depression. His piece, “the blue light was my blues the red light was my mind,” fuses plastic 99 cent store glasses creating a piece that resembles a Murano chandelier. Lit from underneath in a darkened corner the piece casts phallic shadows forms on the wall creating sexy red and blue lights out of the otherwise mundane material. Much like the crafty experiments of the Swiss team of Fischli and Weiss, Dee’s piece has an ability to capture the beauty encompassed by the banality of everyday life and magnify this presence.
The rest of the show similiarly riffs on the theme with mixed results. Martin Durazo’s assemblage, “The Ballad of Jim Jones” seems like a derivative Jessica Stockholder without the nostalgia and handiness of Stockholder’s craft. The ancillary photocollage depicts bodies surrounding a Kool Aid tub along with a letter from Harvey Melk vouching for Jones’ character, attempt to push this piece into the territory of a sprawling Jason Rhodes installation. However Durazo falls short in both concept and execution. On the other hand his neon pink drawing “Motorhead Distress Logo” cleverly points to a, “white power” prisoner aesthetic perhaps illustrating the tension between the gallery space and its neighboring “Bailbonds” storefront. Pentti Monkkonen’s giant beer sculpture, “Native America” misses the point, its art historical references to Jasper Johns and political subtext makes it seem out of place in the context of the show’s very personal nature. His much more poetic, “beer cans” sculpture of mice trapped in resin plastic seems to illustrate the creepy tension between alcoholism and hallucination characterized by the lonely addict. Ricky Becerril’s piece, “ Elk” creates a graphic architecture of personal and cultural references bringing the surroundings of downtown Los Angeles into focus. While Jamie Scholnick’s series, “Enemy Combatants” brings to mind the spiritual simplicity of isolation. Her careful renderings of caged pittbulls highlight both to the urban sport of dogfighting and the meditative cloistering of imprisoned souls in direct relation to the gallery. Another stand out is a group of fine small oil paintings by Jamie Adams. “Almost” and “Upstairs” depict the moments just before waking when dim light begins to paint the walls of a plastic thrift store alarm clock and sculpture with imaginative light, and transcience.
Artists attempt to expose the real texture of human experience, in an unreal simulacra. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of “The Darkness Surrounds Us” is its attempt to approach such a grandiose conundrum, successful or not.
-Mary Anna Pomonis
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Alexandra Grant at Honor Fraser
Alexandra Grant
A.D.D.G. (aux dehors de guillemets)
Honor Fraser
September 6, 2008
Alexandra Grant is known for large-scale paintings, delicate wire-form sculptures and installations that explore and blur the boundaries between images and text. “A.D.D.G. (aux dehors des guillemets)” is her first solo show at Honor Fraser. The show consists of seven approximately 12 foot paintings on paper, a large sculptural mobile and a group of videos in a projection room. The exhibition approaches her theme in a variety of ways expanding on her ideas explored 2007 at her MOCA focus exhibition. “A.D.D.G.” pushes the artists intent to paint “image systems” rather than images to do as Helene Cixous describes in The Last Painting or The Portrait of God:” to write like a painter.” Grant writes a painting then rewrites and redrafts leaving the show constantly in process.
Like the show at MOCA the paintings are ponderous in scale and content. Her pieces are made with a signature hand that operates almost as predictably as typeface. The artist achieves her uniformly awkward looking text by forcing herself to write in reverse. The connection between words is loosely organized by using literary sources in this case the hyper-text poet Michael Joyce composed six poems or sutras depicting the senses and the mind. The artist has lifted the text from the poems to use the words as intuitive marks giving the pieces a kind of maniacal synthesis of image and process. There is an element of endurance involved here, words pile up obscuring the surface rather than achieving some kind of intentional optical effect. In “Third Portal (ear) “ she seems to have stopped mid-letter and dropped the brush during a static moment. The large bold word/mark, “Hola” is partially red, blue and black. The battle between black and primary paint colors with in the form creates a haptic mud of mark and meaning.
The real break-out surprise is inventiveness of Grant’s video accompanying the paintings and sculpture. Meditative and formal the videos more fluidly than the paintings or sculpture to present the narration in a way that highlights the gravity of Joyce’s poetry. “Ladder ” based on Joyce’s poem of the same title follows the artist’s handwriting in neon climbing up the wall slowly. The after-image effects of the glowing neon, bend creating a kind of horizontal and vertical banding a lot like the physical structure of a ladder. The process of painting is much more intuitive than the process of editing a video. However, aesthetically the viewing of painting is a schematically prescribed process that invokes a heroic character at its center making and leaving marks and ultimately owning the relation between the viewer and the object. Grant seems to have reopened the process of painting in video in a highly inventive way allowing us into her process as collaborators.
A counterbalance to the delicacy of the video is the clunkiness of the sculpture, “A love that should have lasted (in memory of a Diasporist painter)”. The sculpture is heavy, black and appears to be made out of paper towel cores. Listed as paper mache the sculpture is based on a phrase within the First Portal (sight) and is linked to the scale of words in the Third Portal (touch). The title however seems more likely lifted from the Beatles song, “No One” than from Joyce’s poetry. It hangs heavily on its support and rather than feeling active and light like Grant’s mobile, “Nimbus” at MOCA it is more ominous and difficult to absorb.
There is a quality of self-abasement that tracks the hand of the artist through media in an indeterminate way. Using ephemeral paper materials and a discomfitted hand Grant’s pieces strike a balance between her opposed sensibilities, the clumsy and the poetic.
A.D.D.G. (aux dehors de guillemets)
Honor Fraser
September 6, 2008
Alexandra Grant is known for large-scale paintings, delicate wire-form sculptures and installations that explore and blur the boundaries between images and text. “A.D.D.G. (aux dehors des guillemets)” is her first solo show at Honor Fraser. The show consists of seven approximately 12 foot paintings on paper, a large sculptural mobile and a group of videos in a projection room. The exhibition approaches her theme in a variety of ways expanding on her ideas explored 2007 at her MOCA focus exhibition. “A.D.D.G.” pushes the artists intent to paint “image systems” rather than images to do as Helene Cixous describes in The Last Painting or The Portrait of God:” to write like a painter.” Grant writes a painting then rewrites and redrafts leaving the show constantly in process.
Like the show at MOCA the paintings are ponderous in scale and content. Her pieces are made with a signature hand that operates almost as predictably as typeface. The artist achieves her uniformly awkward looking text by forcing herself to write in reverse. The connection between words is loosely organized by using literary sources in this case the hyper-text poet Michael Joyce composed six poems or sutras depicting the senses and the mind. The artist has lifted the text from the poems to use the words as intuitive marks giving the pieces a kind of maniacal synthesis of image and process. There is an element of endurance involved here, words pile up obscuring the surface rather than achieving some kind of intentional optical effect. In “Third Portal (ear) “ she seems to have stopped mid-letter and dropped the brush during a static moment. The large bold word/mark, “Hola” is partially red, blue and black. The battle between black and primary paint colors with in the form creates a haptic mud of mark and meaning.
The real break-out surprise is inventiveness of Grant’s video accompanying the paintings and sculpture. Meditative and formal the videos more fluidly than the paintings or sculpture to present the narration in a way that highlights the gravity of Joyce’s poetry. “Ladder ” based on Joyce’s poem of the same title follows the artist’s handwriting in neon climbing up the wall slowly. The after-image effects of the glowing neon, bend creating a kind of horizontal and vertical banding a lot like the physical structure of a ladder. The process of painting is much more intuitive than the process of editing a video. However, aesthetically the viewing of painting is a schematically prescribed process that invokes a heroic character at its center making and leaving marks and ultimately owning the relation between the viewer and the object. Grant seems to have reopened the process of painting in video in a highly inventive way allowing us into her process as collaborators.
A counterbalance to the delicacy of the video is the clunkiness of the sculpture, “A love that should have lasted (in memory of a Diasporist painter)”. The sculpture is heavy, black and appears to be made out of paper towel cores. Listed as paper mache the sculpture is based on a phrase within the First Portal (sight) and is linked to the scale of words in the Third Portal (touch). The title however seems more likely lifted from the Beatles song, “No One” than from Joyce’s poetry. It hangs heavily on its support and rather than feeling active and light like Grant’s mobile, “Nimbus” at MOCA it is more ominous and difficult to absorb.
There is a quality of self-abasement that tracks the hand of the artist through media in an indeterminate way. Using ephemeral paper materials and a discomfitted hand Grant’s pieces strike a balance between her opposed sensibilities, the clumsy and the poetic.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Paul Guillemette at Metro in 2008
Paul Guillemette works as an art handler by day in one of Los Angeles’ most famous packing firms, Los Angeles Packing, Crating and Transport. At L.A. Packing crates are opened by the handler, the paintings removed and hung on the wall in anonymous houses. The lost pieces of wood in “Finished Wood” begin at this ”finishing point”, born as monuments to salvage and beauty.
Guillemette has created a remarkable show solely from the material fragments of his day job. The best work in the show utilizes the incidental accidents made by puncture and inconsistency of surface to full optical effect. Staple holes are lit from the inside and create glowy terrains of wood grain caused by the varying thickness of the plywood. A pencil shaving encased in amberlike resin sets off the diagonal wood grain in a highly inventive way. Similiarly the mailing address of the crate transforms the word, “Los Angeles” into pure visual texture.
Ironically the work ethic of the artist perhaps limits the focus of the artist’s statement. The show suffers from a lack of editing. There are too many paintings shoved into a relatively small gallery space which dilutes the strength of the most interesting work. There is however something to Guillemette’s quirky painting style, but it feels like the intentionally painted elements are after thoughts and separate statements from the purely abstract marquetry and patchwork of crate stenciling evidenced in the rest of the show.
As an art handler Guillemette comes across “lost wood’’ set adrift by time and circumstance. He transforms the objects of his daily chores into reliquaries for disembodied art. The pieces themselves bring to mind a conversation I once had with Los Angeles gallery directory Inmo Yuon. He told me that in Los Angeles, the back of the painting was as important to the collector as the front. Guillemette’s work has a similar kind of logic. After all if the crates are this beautiful imagine how great the contents must be?
Guillemette has created a remarkable show solely from the material fragments of his day job. The best work in the show utilizes the incidental accidents made by puncture and inconsistency of surface to full optical effect. Staple holes are lit from the inside and create glowy terrains of wood grain caused by the varying thickness of the plywood. A pencil shaving encased in amberlike resin sets off the diagonal wood grain in a highly inventive way. Similiarly the mailing address of the crate transforms the word, “Los Angeles” into pure visual texture.
Ironically the work ethic of the artist perhaps limits the focus of the artist’s statement. The show suffers from a lack of editing. There are too many paintings shoved into a relatively small gallery space which dilutes the strength of the most interesting work. There is however something to Guillemette’s quirky painting style, but it feels like the intentionally painted elements are after thoughts and separate statements from the purely abstract marquetry and patchwork of crate stenciling evidenced in the rest of the show.
As an art handler Guillemette comes across “lost wood’’ set adrift by time and circumstance. He transforms the objects of his daily chores into reliquaries for disembodied art. The pieces themselves bring to mind a conversation I once had with Los Angeles gallery directory Inmo Yuon. He told me that in Los Angeles, the back of the painting was as important to the collector as the front. Guillemette’s work has a similar kind of logic. After all if the crates are this beautiful imagine how great the contents must be?
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Sandeep Mukherjee
Known for his kaleidoscopic mural-scale works Sandeep Mukherjee’s solo exhibition at the Broad Center Pitzer Art Gallery represent a departure for the artist. The coloration has disappeared from the work and in its stead Mukherjee conjures up a dark Wagnerian landscape full of reference to both the natural and the unnatural world. Serene and hypnotic, this exhibition is appropriately named Spell.
The show consists of three horizontal works on vellum that hang unframed on the wall. The artist seems to be parsing out everything that is unnecessary in order to make a direct statement. Taken down to its elements Mukherjee has restricted his images to primarily three elements; the radiating space in the background, a horizontal thrust of a large mark that vaguely represents the ground and a limited palette of black and white. The overall effect is a meditation about human endurance and bravado much like the sumi-e brush work he seems to be referencing in his choice of materials.
These works are large scale and ambitious in their execution. Thousand of repetitive marks burst from the center creating a spatial vortex that spins like a time-lapse photograph of outer space that is colliding with the blackened ground. The delicate complexity of these marks result in a shimmery surface that seems to change as you move along the pieces like a vinyl record tilted to catch the sunlight.
What makes these pieces synthesize so well is the balance between the artists labor and his willingness to take risks. His brush work dramatically slashes the bottom of the pieces with a massive matte black that almost completely obliterates the delicacy of his exhaustive handwork. It is this gesture that takes this work to a higher level and pushes it into a contemporary context. Spell consists of two very different cultural traditions meditating on the concept of transcendence through mark making. These pieces reference both the asian and the western cultural traditions of the perfect forceful black sweep.
Overall Spell is a fusion of sensibilities and pared down haptic marks that together create a labyrinth of meaning for the viewer. I think it is too easy to read this work as either non representational abstraction or vaguely figural abstraction. Rather the paintings subvert both abstract traditions by calling to mind universal concepts that predate both.
The show consists of three horizontal works on vellum that hang unframed on the wall. The artist seems to be parsing out everything that is unnecessary in order to make a direct statement. Taken down to its elements Mukherjee has restricted his images to primarily three elements; the radiating space in the background, a horizontal thrust of a large mark that vaguely represents the ground and a limited palette of black and white. The overall effect is a meditation about human endurance and bravado much like the sumi-e brush work he seems to be referencing in his choice of materials.
These works are large scale and ambitious in their execution. Thousand of repetitive marks burst from the center creating a spatial vortex that spins like a time-lapse photograph of outer space that is colliding with the blackened ground. The delicate complexity of these marks result in a shimmery surface that seems to change as you move along the pieces like a vinyl record tilted to catch the sunlight.
What makes these pieces synthesize so well is the balance between the artists labor and his willingness to take risks. His brush work dramatically slashes the bottom of the pieces with a massive matte black that almost completely obliterates the delicacy of his exhaustive handwork. It is this gesture that takes this work to a higher level and pushes it into a contemporary context. Spell consists of two very different cultural traditions meditating on the concept of transcendence through mark making. These pieces reference both the asian and the western cultural traditions of the perfect forceful black sweep.
Overall Spell is a fusion of sensibilities and pared down haptic marks that together create a labyrinth of meaning for the viewer. I think it is too easy to read this work as either non representational abstraction or vaguely figural abstraction. Rather the paintings subvert both abstract traditions by calling to mind universal concepts that predate both.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)