JANUARY PREVIEW
by NY Arts
Here are your links to some of the upcoming Preview articles that we will feature during December, followed by more about some of the upcoming month?s highlights:
* NOH AND KYOGEN THEATER IN JAPAN
Noh was the operatic scaled theater form favored in Edo Japan between the 17th- and 19th-centuries, Kyogen it?s comic cousin. This is a painstaking attempt to transport the visitor, and given the quality of the many objects as well as the attention to detail, immersing yourself will pay off by virtue of the instructiveness as well as the sheer visual richness of this show.
* LAUREN GREENFIELD
The photographer’s current and popular book "Girl Culture" is the basis for this exhibition, and it provides engaging insight into the ways in which women make their bodies a public project. As a window into the private rituals and social lives of young females, the subjects reveal insecurity and anxiety in their moment of display.
* GUY DILL
That Dill’s neo-constructivist bronze sculpture relates to the figure is central to the pairing of sculpture with life studies. Austere but sensual line and wash drawings provide clarification for the reductivist forms that, in turn, wrestle with the relationship between abstraction and monumentality.
* SUVAN GEER on CONSTRUCTING FICTIONS
Narrative art doesn’t necessarily mean realism, of course. But when the intricacies of realism are put to work in the service of building outrageously fictitious worlds things can get quite interesting. In diverse recent exhibitions William Kentridge, R.T. Pece, and Doug Buis created exhilarating art by exposing the process behind carefully constructed illusions.
* Don’t forget to go to the Gallery Pages section for the latest featured exhibitions and portfolios; there’s always some new ones going up:
* You’ll also find the updates for December’s Openings Calendar at:
Beyond documentation–In his wondrous surrealist vision, photographer Rolfe Horne observes the remote shrines of Japan and the enchanting ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, as well as athletes and local scenes. Angles, lighting and technique successfully reinterpret and transform the subjects (at White Room, West Hollywood). . . . Over the past decade over 320 women of the city of Juarez, Mexico have been kidnaped, raped and murdered. "Hijas de Juarez" includes about 20 artists who pay homage to these victims and interpret the social and political environment in which this has been taking place (at SPARC, Venice). . . . Bruce Davidson’s photographs chronicle the civil rights years between 1961 and 1965. They seduce by virtue of their sheer formal craft and design of every on-the-fly shot. There is a humaness that propels these events beyond the realm of politics (at Rose, Santa Monica). . . . A decade-long series of photographs of his wife’s grandmother (now 99 years old) becomes a portrait of San Francisco Chinatown. Color and black and white prints are soft in their focus, all restrained intimacy in their emotional tone, and often cleverly composed (at Fototeka, Echo Park). . . .
Beyond narrative–Every inch of surface bustles with paint, punched holes, folded relief and more in Tam Van Tran’s lush abstract paintings. The surfaces are built from astutely distressed, hole punched, scrubbed, roughed up surfaces that just sing. A good compliment are the commercial found boxes by Kevin Bays, who paints over the manufactured print in washy watercolor scenes that are completed by his tagger friends spraying their own evocative marks (at Susanne Vielmetter, West Hollywood). . . . Olivier Christinat makes staged photographs of groups of men and women that put you in an uncomfortable position. In one suite of photographs each image depicts a bare chested woman seated at a desk staring out at you. The subjects? body types are obviously different, yet as we compare and contrast we simultaneously feel we are the ones being judged (at Paul Kopeikin, West Hollywood). . . ."Art and Film in the Age of Anxiety: Selections from the 2002 Whitney Biennial" presents a mostly narrative-based selection of works which collectively total a bit more than three hours of viewing time. Much of the time spent will be well worth it, and the viewing is made easier by the Museum having created a separate room for each presentation, including a posted schedule of the works? show times and length (at Santa Monica Museum, Santa Monica). . . .
Beyond banality–The landscape of L.A. and surrounding environs take a low key approach in Todd Brainard’s paintings, which thrust apparent cliches at you only to quietly divert your expectations–suggesting that perhaps the familiar isn’t necessarily so when we bother to look (at Roberts & Tilton, West Hollywood). . . . The retro style of R. Kenton Nelson pans in close to subjects who are quietly detached from your observing eye. The subjects unguardedly go about their business–it’s as though we are discreetly hidden behind the bushes with binoculars awaiting telling indiscretions that never quite happen (at DNFA, Pasadena). . . ."1000 Clowns, Give or Take a Few" is an upshot of gallery director Robert Berman and actress Diane Keaton’s mutual, yet coincidental, mania for acquiring all art clown related–thrift store cliches pose alongside fine art? everything hung salon style to present numerous, and some surprisingly provocative interpretations of the clown as icon (at Robert Berman, Santa Monica). . . .
The expressive figure–The expressionist collection of Galka Scheyer is among the most celebrated single collections of early modernist work ever assembled. The four German-based artists at the core of the movement, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Alexei Jawlensky make up the collection’s core, and this enormous selection of over 300 works by the Blue Four is a major event by not only presenting a good deal of memorable art in great depth, but by including a documentary show that tells the story of the movement, the collector, and their context (at Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena). . . . Nathan Oliveira is one of the Bay Area’s seminal artists, and he enjoyed regular shows in SoCal until the late ‘80s when we lost sight of him. This terrific retrospective chronicles the artist’s coming upon his signature gestural, fluid style of figuration; drawings, early work and key major paintings fill out the venue and make it hard not to notice what a skilled, emotive draftsman Oliveira continues to be (at Palm Springs Museum, Palm Springs). . . . The concept of beauty, as it principally applies to women, is represented in Deborah Paswaters? signature Venus figure, a gossamer siren in a long flowing gown that Paswaters places in intriguing architectural settings–painted environments or real wood cabinets, doors, stained glass windows, or carved into clay, often with a large flower that echoes female loveliness (at Marion Meyer, Orange County). . . . As one of the preeminent African American artists working in a figurative tradition, Phoebe Beasley continues to produce collage type scenes in a loose, skilled drawing style filled with equal amounts of pathos and whimsy (at M. Hanks, Santa Monica). . . .
Art that isn’t quite as it appears–Jim Isermann’s "Vega" covers the enormous expanse of the museum?s entry wall with brightly colored thermal die-cut vinyl decals creating geometric patterns in yellow, orange, red, blue and green, juxtaposing rectangles with rounded edges of varying sizes to create complex patterns of seemingly simple shapes (at UCLA Hammer Museum, West Los Angeles). . . . Kristin Leachman has been painting tromp l’oeil braided fabric for a while, and this show indicates a focus of theme that is convincing, especially the over twenty-foot painting that builds on the familiar braid pattern to make lush and complex surfaces (at Newspace, Hollywood). . . .Exploring ideas of shelter and sanctuary, and man’s ritualistic, obsessive and decadent translation of these as concepts, urban pods and tents serve as the central theme for Kenneth Ober’s multicultural magical devices, Renee Fox’s organic cultural metaphors, and Tom Steck’s symbolic and self-referential tent series (at Orbetello, Hollywood). . . . You think of doll collections and granny’s china cupboard comes to mind. But forget that; a funny, inventive show called "Dollmination" includes some promising conceptual work by young unknowns who expand and bend the notion of the doll to touch on things like play, our bodies, the eccentric circuits of the imagination (at Todd Hughes, Pasadena). . . .
Their presence will remain strong–Over thirty works by Peter Voulkos touch on quite a range of his seminal achievement without aspiring to curatorial pretensions. In craggy, muscular sculpture, quasi-functional objects, and abstract paintings the artist’s way of striking a balance between aggressively pushed and manipulated form and the sense that a natural process has made it all happen comes across very well (at Galerie Yoramgil, Beverly Hills). . . . Larry Rivers’ skill as a people watcher and shape builder are sampled in series of mixographias and other type prints running about three feet square, the best of which have a strong relief component and treat us to typical Rivers-esque characters-in-common-spaces (at Remba, West Hollywood). . . .
Riffing contemporary trends–"Painted Color," a seven-artist show, takes as its premise that painting as an object with intrinsic physical characteristics is one of the core achievements of 20th century modernism, and that these artists are moving this tradition forward in their essentially monochromatic works (at Chac-Mool, West Hollywood). . . . Concrete blocks are the material premise in Adam Belt’s sculptural series called "Stasis," which naturally calls to mind a motionless balance of natural forces. The heavily eroded cuts and gouges result from processes set in motion by the artist, but not explicitly controlled (Chaffey College, Wignall Gallery, Inland Empire). . . .Architect Michele Saee shows drawings and preparatory materials, the most fascinating of which is the design for a Paris commercial space in which he adds a glass facing that appears held up by an abstract skein of metal as subconscious and sculptural as any work on a pedestal (at Sci Arc, Downtown). . . .
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