Jordi Alcaraz: Altered States | This much anticipated museum-scale exhibition brings together large and small works, which transcend the categories of painting, sculpture, and drawing as they blend all media, employing assemblage-like manner and installation. Conceptually, Alcaraz extends notions of perspective beyond the realms of the physically seen.
The artist furthers his explorations and near-obsessive ruminations on the limits of interior/exterior concepts, reality and evocation, presence versus absence, volume and void - the rational and the poetic. Even boundaries created by frames enclosing his paintings and drawings are altered in extraordinary ways, calling into question these distinctions. The same applies to his sculptures. Alcaraz opens surprising realms through the use of bending, tearing and puncturing materials in unpredictable ways. To quote the artist, "The surface of the works have a plastic behavior similar to the surface of water...it can be traversed, altered, shocked...in which the absence is more important than the evidence; the absence of almost everything, the role of disappearance of the work, the permanence of the action."
R.B. Kitaj, Whistler vs. Ruskin, 1992, oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4 cm), Courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice, CA © Estate of R.B. Kitaj
R.B. Kitaj | This exhibition of paintings and drawings including almost 30 works created between 1992-2007 is the artist's first exhibition in Los Angeles since his solo show R.B. Kitaj: Passion and Memory at The Skirball Cultural Center in early 2008.
Kitaj's subject matter weaves learned knowledge with lived experience. A voracious reader and self-proclaimed bibliophile, Kitaj took inspiration from his extensive personal library where he pored over books that reflected his varied interests: literature, art history, film and Jewish texts. Whistler vs. Ruskin, 1992 is a direct compositional reference to American painter George Bellows' Dempsey and Firpo, 1924, and alludes to the infamous libel suit between painter James Whistler and critic John Ruskin. Russian director Abram Room's 1927 film Bed and Sofa is re-imagined in Bed and Sofa (After Abram Room), 1998; and A Modern Potato Eaters, 2006-2007 reinterprets Vincent van Gogh's seminal work The Potato Eaters, 1885.
John Chiara, Goldmine: Diamond: Coral (Stereographic), 2012 © John Chiara
Staking Claim: A California Invitational | This is the second installment of a triennial series showcasing the talent and diverse scope of photographic work by sixteen photographers, both established and emerging, living within California.
While the ease of access to digital equipment and post-production tools has influenced photography dramatically in recent years, the work in Staking Claim embraces the digital medium but also remains true to, and in some cases reinterprets traditional photographic processes. The result is a dynamic exhibition that highlights the constant evolution of the art form.
Photographers featured are Matthew Brandt, Mona Kuhn, Susan Burnstine, Matt Lipps, Eric William Carroll, David Maisel, John Chiara, Klea McKenna, Chris Engman, Doug Rickard, Robbert Flick, Mark Ruwedel, Todd Hido, Paul Schiek, Siri Kaur and Christina Seely.
Goethe, 2013, pure pigment (Spinel Black) on aluminum, 29 1/2 x 25 5/8 in. (75 x 65 cm), Courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice, CA
Jason Martin: Serendipitia | The title of the exhibition suggests the phenomena of circumstance, and the endless possibilities from which an outcome can evolve. It is this approach to discovery and chance that permeates the 6 new works on view at L.A. Louver.
Renowned for his lyrically fluid and sumptuously colored monochromatic paintings, Martin's new body of work continues in this realm, but with an increasing awareness of materiality, contrasting with a heightened sense of spontaneity. Martin states, "The pictorial path I arrive at comes through an uprooting of familiar approaches, adapting new ways so as to discover if not challenge, what otherwise would be hidden and unseen... Serendipity explored as a world to discover without consciously searching for it."
Challenging the delineation between sculpture and painting, Martin defies the limitations of the 2-dimensional picture plane. To create these works, Martin manipulates paste medium on aluminum panels, completely obscuring their inner framework. He then applies multiples layers of pure pigment - its application accentuating the peaks and depressions of the textured surface with a dense matte finish.
Neha Choksi, Iceboat, 2013, performed February, 2012, single channel video, color, sound: 13 min., 35 sec., Courtesy of the artist and Project 88, Mumbai
Home Away | This exhibition, organized by independent curator Kris Kuramitsu, highlights and contextualizes a group of artists that work in Los Angeles as well as other locations in Asia and Latin America, among them Ho Chi Minh City, Tokyo, Mumbai, Tijuana, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. Los Angeles is perpetually framed as a prototypical global city, an outer-edge American capital that serves as a key Pacific Rim nexus of exchange for people, goods, and ideas. Home Away explores the contours of a transnational artistic practice that is rooted in this context - the dynamism of Los Angeles in the second decade of the new millennium.
The nine artists in this exhibition have deep ties to Los Angeles, yet maintain studios and live part of their lives in cities across Asia and Latin America. While artists have always had a history of living such peripatetic lives - making homes where their inspiration leads them - the artists in this exhibition have found meaning in the relationship between multiple bases of creative operation.
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