Tag: Los Angeles
Ala Ebtekar
Through a steady and impressive career that has incorporated sculpture, photography, fashion, and installation, Ala Ebtekar has continually returned to his initial passion of drawing and painting. With meticulous deliberation to conceptual intent and aesthetic execution, he creates fluid, graceful pieces that inhabit a realm where past and present / east and west collide in a dance of time and space.
Well known for his series of intricate paintings on pages of religious manuscripts, in which he situates scenes of epic battles of warriors donning helmeted armor, wielding medieval swords and modern day bandoliers, Ebtekar has created a hybrid world that references both past and present in a seamless fusion of mythologies and time. In recent solo exhibitions at The Third Line Gallery in Dubai in Fall 2009 and Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco in 2010, he created a series of multimedia works of women in resilient poses emanating strength, resolve, and determination, simultaneously hinting at ancient Persian epics and the most recent call for social justice by Iran’s youth – a movement led quite visibly by young Iranian women. He brought to the
forefront an often overlooked chapter of history and field of scholarship about the role women warriors had in ancient Persia – dating back at least 2,000 years to the time of the Parthians – while simultaneously honoring and highlighting the role Iranian women play today in the creation of history.
In his upcoming exhibition @ CJG, Ebtekar will bring all threads of his practice together, showing his epic paintings and drawings on mounted prayer book pages, his series involving re-mythologized Persian women, and a newly constructed installation piece(s).
A talented draughtsman since childhood, the artist studied traditional painting technique in Iran, and was an active collaborator in Tim Rollins’ K.O.S.(Kids of Survival) before attending the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and Stanford University (MFA.) Ebtekar has exhibited in Los Angeles, London and Dubai, and was chosen for the 2006 California Biennial. His installation “Elemental” travelled in the acclaimed exhibition “One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” organized by the Asia Society.
Wally Hedrick
Jeff Sonhouse | Better Off Dead Said The Landlord
DAVID NOONAN @ DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY
JEFF SONHOUSE @ MARTHA OTERO GALLERY
Martha Otero is pleased to present New York based artist Jeff Sonhouse’s exhibition, ‘Better Off Dead,’ Said The Landlord. For his Los Angeles solo debut, Sonhouse deconstructs the accepted theories of ownership and invites us to reexamine how we interpret relationships of power, as tenants of an overbearing architect. With alluding portrayals of glorified facades, he creates a frictional energy of immortality.
The exhibition will include Sonhouse’s recent portraits of oracular figures that evoke familiarity, such as Papi Shampoo, bearing a Jesus like stance and demeanor. We’re instantly drawn to the silky smooth satin textured vestment and its vividly deep aquamarine and violet colors. Draped over a brash black and white pinstripe suit with ashen hands in an iconic Pantocrator posture. The background palette harmonizes burgundy with black, phthalo blues and rich purples into a contemporary vision of a halo. Maintaining his ingenious approach to mixed media, we see meticulous hair constructed of matches and steel wool combined with composite figures of oil paint. Sonhouse’s unorthodox use of materials successfully disorients the viewers prescribed sense of space. Even more irresistible are Sonhouse’s masks and the intense gaze concealed behind them.
Jeff Sonhouse was born in 1968 in New York where he currently lives and works. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and his MFA from Hunter College in 2001. He has exhibited at The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY; Samson Projects, Boston, MA; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA; The New York Historical Society, New York, NY.
Lezley Saar
Merry Karnowsky Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new work by
artist Lezley Saar entitled Autist’s Fables. The exhibition begins with a painting
titled “They’re Here, Get Used To It,” which sets the tone for a modern allegory
compromised of paintings, dioramas, photographs, and a short film. Saar uses
multiple mediums to create an imaginative and enigmatic environment
inspired by the sensibility, perception, and reality of her 17-year-old Autistic
daughter, Geneva.
Influenced by 19th century illustrations of animals and nature, the work
includes references to gothic literature, anatomy, biology, tattoos, cartoons,
and Art Nouveau. Saar expertly blends symbol and allegory with imagination and wit. The artist’s ethereal
work questions notions of normalcy, perceptions of reality, modes of communication, and the veracity of
emotions. The exhibition uses the body and soul approach of Aesop’s Fables where the body is the story,
and the soul is the moral.
In addition to paintings, Saar has created glass-encased dioramas resembling vintage dollhouses in which
scenes from Saar’s modern fables (based on things Geneva has said or done) unfold in miniature. With
found landscape paintings serving as the backdrops for tales unfolding within, titles like “Sorcerer’s Ritual”
and “Bad Seed Boy” describe the scenes and characters inhabiting Geneva’s imagination. In Saar’s
paintings, circular color photographs taken by the artist of vignettes within the dioramas are collaged into
the paintings, as hand painted animal creatures (Geneva’s numerous imaginary friends) are the ones
telling the tales of humans, or the Autist’s Fables.
Le Mystère de Geneviève, Saar’s short film, or court métrage, is a fairy tale which is symbolically
autobiographical as it relates to Geneva’s journey. In the words of Saar, “So much attention is focused on
the problems of autism; the tragedy of it all, how to ‘cure’ it, how to ramrod these children into being
‘normal.’ But, I find autistic people fascinating. With Autist’s Fables there’s the body; my work which tells this
story, and the soul; the moral which is that perhaps Autistic people should finally be accepted as they are.”
Saar’s work has been exhibited around the U.S. as well as in Germany, Cuba, Bermuda, and Australia. Solo
museum exhibits include The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, The ContemporaryArts Center, Cincinnati, OH, Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO, Fresno Museum of Art, Pasadena
Museum of California Art, Palmer Art Museum, PA, and San Jose Museum of Art. Her works are included in the collections of The Ackland Art Museum, MOCA, Kemper Museum of Art, California African American
Museum, and Smith College Museum of Art. Saar has been featured in Artforum, Art in America, The New
York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artnews, Time Out New York, and XXL. Originally from Los Angeles, Saar is
the daughter of assemblage artist Betye Saar, and the sister of sculptor Alison Saar. She currently lives and
works in Redondo Beach, California.
AIKO, JUNKO MIZUNO & SAMUEL LOWDER
Weight Perception
Imagined weight can be heavier than real weight, sometimes to the point where our perceptions apply more pressure and gravity than what can actually be accounted for. How does this happen? In today’s world, where environmental disasters of tragic magnitude have practically become the norm, where ongoing wars are being fought simultaneously on multiple fronts, and where we’re in the midst of the worst economic catastrophe since the great depression, it’s apparent that we are living in “heavy times”. In some way or another, each of us carries the weight of our times, if not in a physically tangible way, at the very least in the mind. How are we dealing with all of this? What is the current state of contemplation surrounding it? Where does the resulting energy find a resting place? Can bad things actually be transformed into good?
It is not the intent of this exhibition to address any of these issues directly, as much as it is to address the individual’s unconscious and conscious responses to the current state of affairs that dominates our political and social landscape. Oftentimes, we attempt to escape the heaviness, through expressions of laughter, serenity, or even music. Sometimes, we attack the weight head-on, using pent up energy that inevitably needs to find its release somewhere. In this exhibition, eleven artists address this placement, both definitively and abstractly, and in the two-dimensional and the sculptural. Featuring new work by Ben Venom, Casey Jex Smith, Glen Baldridge, Harley Lafarrah Eaves, Kevin Taylor, Kyle Ranson, Laurie Steelink, N.Dash, Shelter Serra, Thomas Øvlisen, & Vanessa Blaikie.
