Rafal Bujnowski and Kerim Seiler
Daniel Hug Gallery
510 Bernard St.
Los Angeles 90012
Through July 1
Enacting the notion of the artist as critic, Polish painter, Rafal Bujnowski presents his "Wrong Works 2005 - 2006," a series of abstract canvases formed by the compressed layers of his earlier "failed" paintings. Nearby, a pile of "rejected" drawings of fishhooks is off-set by the single successful image framed on the wall. While Bujnowski scrutinizes his own gestures he seems to also question the gallery as another context of appraisal.
Swiss artist, Kerim Seiler probes the psychology of space--from the site-specific to the claustrophobic--offering an array of vivid Rorschach drawings in the black-walled project room and a sculptural architecture on the roof of the gallery.
Rafal Bujnowski
Kerim Seiler
Lesley Vance
David Kordansky
510 Bernard St.
Los Angeles 90012
Through July 21
Developing her consciously amateurish Romanticism, Lesley Vance's new group of small, quiet paintings familiarly draw on the composition and technique of 17th-century Dutch and Spanish still lifes. Her ten, oil on linen studies render mussels, nautili, poppies, and bouquets with dark, heavy tones and subtle luminosity, a handling that is both homage to and extension of art historical tropes.
Lesley Vance, 'Urchin with Wild Rose', 2007
oil on linen, 19 x 16 inches
Monique van Genderen
The Happy Lion Gallery
963 Chung King Road
Los Angeles 90012
Through July 7
Monique Van Genderen's large, open canvases work the language of commercial graphic design and modernist abstraction with equal strokes. For her third solo show with the Chinatown gallery, the L.A-based painter honed her geometric marks and streaks to produce a series of floral inspired compositions that are part Miro and part Mondrian, but with a looser sense of ground. And in the true spirit of neoplasticism, Van Genderen has designed a bench for her viewers, which also displays a selection of artist books.
Monique Van Genderen
Bill Komoski, Matt Chambers, Michael S. Moore
Angstrom Gallery
2622 La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles 90034
Through June 30
Three solo shows fill the generous space at Culver City's Angstrom Gallery, starting with New York painter, Bill Komoski in the main gallery. Komoski's six massive canvases recall the kaleidoscopic crystal patterns formed by chemicals and minerals under a microscope. Otherwise drippy, pastel lines are controlled by hard-edge borders that structure intricate lattices. Next door, Matthew Chambers' messy installation situates a wall of drawings among the litter of some fictional club house--empty bottles, punk fashion, makeshift weapons, graffitied furniture, a crude urinal. Chambers, who runs the tiny Chinatown gallery space, Trudi, incorporates everything from adolescent fantasies to art world fan-art and cult movies to personal mementos. In the project room, Michael S. Moore presents a series of paintings based on World War II mail-order photographs found in his father's belongings. While the source material speaks of memory, politics, and masculine camaraderie, Moore's paintings linger on the landscape in ruins.
Bill Komoski
Chen Xiaoyun
MC
6086 Comey Ave.
Los Angeles 90034
Through July 14, 2007
Photographs that fixate on dreamy metaphors can become heavy-handed fairly quick, but Chinese artist, Chen Xiaoyun's simply staged images and videos retain their lyricism while moving beyond a merely symbolic surface. Through two large photographs and two video works, Xiaoyun creates a portrait of dislocated humanism. His four-channel video projection, 'Several Moments Extending to the Night II' (2004-2006), merges urban street scenes with forest landscapes in which lone figures perform endurance-based actions.
Chen Xiaoyun
"Natural Geographic"
Norma Desmond Productions
2654 La Cienega Avenue
Los Angeles 90034
Through July 22
Norma Desmond Productions is artist Luciano Perna's small, homey exhibition space on a quite side-street in Culver City. Given that it opened its doors late last month, it is known largely to insiders alone and is easy to overlook while making regular gallery rounds in the neighborhood. A few years in the making, Perna's inaugural group show, "Natural Geographic," brings together works that center on our relationships with the natural world and its diverse anthropologies. The salon-style exhibition includes artwork by Dave Muller, Mike Kelley, Judy Fiskin, Tom Lawson, Douglas Huebler, Raymond Pettibon, Dean Sameshima, and Alexis Rockman, to name a few. Perna is also planning a screening of videos by Alex Bag, which are available to view upon request, and a possible second opening reception. With L.A.'s rash of young, startup galleries, Norma Desmond Productions appears as a refreshingly earnest endeavor with the street cred to prove it.
Alex Bag
Vincent Johnson: Civil Air Defense Project #1
Matt Lucero: Travelogue
LAXART
2640 South La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles 90034
Through July 7, 2007
At the non-profit, Culver City gallery, LAXART, two L.A. based artists, Vincent Johnson and Matt Lucero, offer sculptures that mirror SoCal experiences, past and present. Johnson's "Civil Air Defense Project #1" recreates two cold-war era American defense mechanisms, a massive air-raid siren and a prefab underground bunker intended for any mid-century nuclear family. While Johnson's reflects on the paranoia of our past, he intimates America's current devices of fear and defense. Matt Lucero's eight-foot tall abstract sculpture employs fetish finish on a monumental scale. The piece is accompanied by a sound installation mixed from fragmented movie scores creating a cinematic atmosphere and speaking to Los Angeles' chief industry.
Vincent Johnson
Matt Lucero
Erik Parker
Honor Fraser
1337 Abbot Kinney Blvd.
Venice 90291
Through July 21, 2007
In Erik Parker's flashy compositions, organic, biomechanical forms seem to churn out liquid colors that drip from intestine-like openings and intricate pores. Usually accompanied by pithy, suggestive phrases that double as titles--"Double Vision," "Half Made Man," "Alone Again"--the detailed scapes literally spell-out the psychological and emotional interiors that Parker projects onto each psychadelic ground. The New York based painter's Los Angeles solo show follows a recent exhibition, "Liner Notes", at the De Appel Center for Contemporary Art in Amsterdam.
Erik Parker
"Past-Over"
Steve Turner Contemporary Art
6026 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Through June 30
Through photographs, sculpture and drawing, this group show examines social histories and their documentation, power structures, and the sanitization of injustice. Artists include Michael Arcega, Sam Durant, Mary Kelly, Ken Gonzales-Day, Zoe Charlton, Marc Andre Robinson and the L.A. video and performance collective, My Barbarian.
Michael Arcega
"I Don't Do Nature: Jennifer Nocon, Diana Thater, Paul Winstanley"
1301 PE
6150 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles
Through 19 July, 2007
Amid talk of melting ice caps and disappearing bees, "nature" has become more cultural buzz word than existent global ecosystem, conveniently conjured for political gain and green advertising. Considering the concept of "nature," its meaning, uses and relation to artificiality, "I Don't Do Nature" brings together Jennifer Nocon, Diana Thater and Paul Winstanley for an exhibition that begs to questions our comfortable notions of human and animal realms. Winstanley's paintings of recognizable public spaces situate the man-made as an environment while Thater's video work and Nocon's abstract sculpture trace patterns within the natural world.
Installation view
Raised in the Rocky Mountains, Catherine Taft now lives and works in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in various catalogs and magazines including Modern Painters, ArtReview, and Artforum.com, for which she is a regular contributor. She has curated shows on both US coasts and is currently working on an exhibition of the history of California video art opening at the Getty Museum next spring.
)
)
)