ltdlosangeles Gallery is on Sunset near Curson. Shirley Morales is the gallery owner. She gave me a tour of the gallery which included introducing me to Brian, pictured above, who has created an art library in the gallery where I purchased a book on art critic. The works of Rachel Foullon are "hanging" in the large main gallery. Her wall sculptures shown below hang on wooden pegs like tack or hooks in the barn.
These sculptures hang on a movable cleat system that go with the pieces when they are sold. The artist uses colorful dyes on the ropes and unhemed canvas that she uses to create each piece. Some of the items were culled from an old barn in upstate New York such as garden hoses, gloves, electrical cords and other left overs. She uses colorful descriptions of her work such as: "There is a lot of binding and tying involved! Again, I am talking about relationships that tether individual beings to one another where survival is at stake. So cooperation of some kind is obviously a requirement in these mutually dependent dynamics."
In describing the dyeing process she stated: "I see this staining as a suggestive representation of corporeal negotiations with the environment."
She also has displayed several pieces she calls "Cruel Radiance". She collected pre-industrial vintage tools and stripped them of "their romantic patina, effectively liberating them from their nostalgic aura and the lazy seduction of the found object." Parts of the sculptures are nickel plated. The shining parts "reflect the viewer and the rest of the show."
My first reaction to Rachel Faullon's work was to walk quickly by it in a dismissing manner. Shirley Morales helped me to see the beauty in the arrangements and the colors brought forth by the dyes.
My next stop was the Matthew Marks Gallery on Orange Grove just South of Santa Monica Blvd. This show displayed two pieces in a large open room. The works are by Charles Ray. The first is called "Sleeping Woman" and the other is a life size figure of a nude man. The L.A. Times reviewer, Sharon Mizota, described the man as nude and stands with a slight contrapeosto, but his figure deviates a bit from the classical ideal - softer, with love handles. The woman, she describes, as curled awkwardly on a hard bench, can be seen as a modern-day version of the languid sleeping nymphs of antiquity, although she slumbers under far less ideal circumstances.
These figures are not cast as are most of the bronze statues we know. These are machined from solid pieces of steel. The result is the man weighs 1,500 pounds and the woman 6,000. They were carved out a giant pieces of steel using a computer-controlled industrial machine to shave flakes using a computer reading a digital model that the artist created from a clay sculpture created from a digital drawing. The L.A. Times reviewer wrote that "art history reverberates through the sculptures whether or not we know how they were made, but by insisting on faithfulness to the concept....creating a deeper connection across the ages."
My last stop of the day was to the Steve Turner Contemporary gallery across the street from LACMA on Wilshire. Upstairs in a room by itself is a sculpture of "philomela", a life-sized sculpture by Jacob Yanes. Behind her is a tapestry that records the abuse from her brother-in-law who raped her and cut out her tongue. She told her story through her weaving that she sent to her sister. The story from Ovid. The L.A. Times review wrote: "Philomela's skin is black instead of white and its smooth surfaces are achieved - amazingly - with cardboard and wood putty...grouped...with the slaves, abused and silenced".
Downstairs are works by Deborah Grant including "The Provenance and Crowning of King William" and is based on the life and art of William H. Johnson on 24 wood panels. Born in 1901 in South Carolina and died in 1970, Johnson was an African American artist who moved to New York where he excelled in painting. He faced many obstacles as a black artist and left for Europe in 1926 where he had a very successful career.
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