CO

NT AM
EM ER
PO ICA
RA N
RY
AR
T
JANU
ARY
2011
 JANUARY FEBRUARY 19 - APRIL 30

“Some Assembly Required”

Group Exhibition Assemblage & Collage
Modern & Contemporary

Paintings
Drawings
Jordi Alcaraz
Prints Hannelore Baron
Romare Bearden
Sculpture Hans Burkhardt
Joseph Cornell
Jim Dine
Claire Falkenstein
Llyn Foulkes
Mathias Goeritz
Patrick Graham
also George Herms
Freindensreich Hundertwasser
Edward Kienholz
Marca-
Conrad Marca-Relli
Robert Motherwell
Louise Nevelson
Gordon Wagner, “Construction,” 1950 , 45 x 19 x 11 1/2 inches

Visit us Man Ray

Robert Rauschenberg

January 19 - 23 Mark Tobey

Frank Stella
Gordon Wagner
Los Angeles Art Show Jerome Witkin
& Others
L.A. Convention Center
Booth D-120

JACK RUTBERG FINE ARTS

357 North La Brea Avenue Los Angeles, California 90036 Telephone (323) 938-5222 www.jackrutbergfinearts.com
 Michael Salvatore Tierney
Michael Salvatore Tierney
AEROSPACE
Michael Salvatore Tierney
JanuaryAEROSPACE
8 - February 26, 2011
AEROSPACE
January 8 - February 26, 2011
January 8 - February 26, 2011

5797 Washington Boulevard | Culver City, California 90232

323.272.3642 | www.blytheprojects.net
5797 Washington Boulevard | Culver City, California 90232
323.272.3642 | www.blytheprojects.net
5797 Washington Boulevard | Culver City, California 90232
323.272.3642
Michael Salvatore | www.blytheprojects.net
Tierney, ‘Durand Durand,’ 2010, archival pigment print
Sol leWitt StructureS.
WorkS on PaPer.
Wall DraWingS.
1971 – 2005.

alSo SHoWing: PHotograPHY

RichaRd deacon
FRedeRick hammeRsley
sol lewitt
sean scully
J uan uslé

20 January — 26 February.

45 North Venice Boulevard

Venice, California 90291
Tel 310 822 4955
www.lalouver.com
JANUARY 2011
 CONTENTS

FEATURES EXHIBITIONS
Korean Art in Los Angeles 22 30 Los Angeles
Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus & Beyond 24 35 San Francisco
36 New York
COVER 39 Philadelphia
Abland - Ulf Puder 36 39 Boston
2010 - oil on canvas - 83” x 59” 40 Washington
41 Santa Fe
41 Tucson
41 Scottsdale

Richard Kalisher PUBLISHER

Donovan Stanley EDITOR
Eric Kalisher DESIGN

Advertising Inquires
advertising@acamagazine.com

acamagazine.com
561.542.6028 / Richard Kalisher

Cui Xiuwen - Existential Emptiness No.20 - 2009 - c-print - 37.4” x 181.1” © 2010 R.K. Graphics. All Rights Reserved.
Content courtesy of represented institutions.
Alexander Kroll
Unfoldings
January 13 - February 20, 2011

207 W. 5th Street

Los Angeles, CA 90013

www.cb1gallery.com
213-806-7889
gallery@cb1gallery.com

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday - Sunday, noon - 6 p.m.
Thursday & Friday open until 7:30 p.m.
EDWARD CELLA
ART + ARCHITECTURE
 Lora Schlesinger Gallery

BRUCE HOUSTON
NEFERTETES, TRUCKS &
ASSEMBLAGES

February 5, 2011 - March 12, 2011

Reception: Sat., February 5, 5-7 p.m

East Gallery:

monochromes

No. 10, 2010, oil & alkyd on canvas, 23 x 23 "

w w w . l o r a s c h l e s i n g e r. c o m

2525 Michigan Ave. T3 Santa Monica CA 90404 t (310) 828 -1133 gallery@loraschlesinger.com
 EskE kath
thErE arE housEs EvErywhErE
January 8 – FEbruary 12, 2011
opEning rEcEption January 8, 2011 7-10pm

).'82/+0'3+9-'22+8?
)./4':5=4259'4-+2+9
975 chung king road Los angELEs, ca 90012
www.cjamesgallery.com o (213) 687-0844
info@cjamesgallery.com F (213) 687-8815
Ahn-Nyung | Hello IntroduCtIon to Korean Contemporary art
January 22 – February 19, 2011
Opening receptiOn January 22, 2011 | 7pm – 10pm

Curated by Jae yang |

art-merge.cOm | bringing promising emerging artists to america

6023 Washington Boulevard Culver City, CA 90232 310.558.0200 www.lebasseprojects.com

 RAY TURNER
15 FEBRUARY - 15 MARCH

www.riveragallery.com
RUTH BACHOFNER GALLERY
Bergamot Station Arts Center Unit G2 Santa Monica, CA 310 829 3300 www.ruthbachofnergallery.com

Walker, 2010, Oil on linen, 70” x 60”

DAVID KAPP
New Paintings

January 15 – March 12, 2011

Whitney Hubbs, “Untitled”, 8 x 10", Silver Gelatin Print, 1993 Laura Kim, detail from “Artifact Drawing #1”, 6.8 x 10.2", C-print, 2010

EmbarrassmEnt 2: thEory
through February 10, 2011

michael Dopp Juliana romano

Liz Glynn Frank ryan
Peter holzhauer Lily simonson
Whitney hubbs Caleb Waldorf
Laura Kim Jessica Williams

2903 Santa Monica Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90404 310-828-1912 www.gallerykmLA.com

Gallery Hours: Tue–Sat, 11am – 5pm or by appointment

 Featured Exhibition
Korean Art Showcase in Los Angeles
Ahn-Nyung | Hello is an exhibition of 15 multimedia
works by four Korean artists exploring the conceptual and
visual currents igniting the Korean contemporary art scene
today. Curator Jae Yang is the founder of Art-merge, a Los
Angeles-based consultancy that supports emerging artists.
Drawing on seven years of introducing cutting-edge con-
temporary work to the American art market, Yang mines
the vanguard of South Korea’s dynamic gallery scene to de-
liver the American audience an unprecedented survey of
works that are as effusive in their naiveté as they are ex-
pansive in their aesthetic achievement. As a whole, Ahn-
Nyung | Hello uncovers a culture in transition: memories
are mutable, synthesis abuts tradition, and experience is
subject to a regimen of creative re-envisioning. Featured
artists include Hyung Kwan Kim, Seok Kim, Yeonju Sung,
and Jin Young Yu. A companion exhibition, Paperwork, will
take place in the gallery’s project room, featuring works on
paper by artists Kim Eull, Tae Heon Kim, Kakyoung Lee,
and Yong Sin. In Ahn-Nyung | Hello, the artists utilize a
range of media to explore a rapidly changing society, work-
ing with either synthetic materials (Hyung Kwan Kim’s
plastic tape reliefs and Jin Young Yu’s PVC sculptures), or
22 A|C|A January 2011
organic matter reinterpreted anachronistically (Seok Kim’s
wooden robot sculptures) and unexpectedly (Yeonju Sung’s
photographs of haute couture designs constructed from a
variety of common foodstuffs). In contrast is Paperwork,
the companion exhibition in the gallery’s project room.
Where Ahn-Nyung | Hello embraces postmodernity’s frag-
mented, disparate luster, Paperwork evokes tradition and
continuity in its presentation of contemporary work made
from Asian art’s most fundamental media—ink and paper.
Taken together, Ahn-Nyung | Hello and Paperwork operate
in dialogue with one another to offer an engaging and chal-
lenging overview of Korean contemporary art.
Jin Young Yu’s work depicts the outsider longing to be in-
visible—the fly on the wall or the observer seeking to go
unseen. Artist handiwork meets the commercial perfec-
tion one would usually expect from the likes of Koons or
Murakami, as Yu constructs her figures from a ultra-trans-
parent PVC and hand cast and painted plaster. The result-
ing sculptures explore the dynamics of social anxiety and
expectation through a semi-apparent cast of subjects who
are somber, withdrawn and exquisitely unapproachable.
(left page) Hyung Kwan Kim, More Than This #3, plastic electrical tape, 70”x46”.
(above) work by Seok Kim (below) Yeonju Sung, Banana, pigment print, 35"x54".
The robot — a childhood plaything, object of desire and
memory, and once a cornerstone of Asian pop-cultural ver-
nacular — assumes a transcendent role in Seok Kim’s sculp-
tural work. In his monochromatic plastic pieces, the artist’s
subjects appear nearly untouchable, deep in epic poses of
thought and prayer. Meanwhile his colorful wooden robots
take on distinctly human frailties, as they sit alone at a desk
or pose alongside their bicycle during a commute home.
In her photographs of clothing constructed from material
Jin Young Yu, Family in Disguise, mixed media, 14"x51"x18".
that could never be worn, YeonJu Sung captures a series of
phantoms — temporal checkpoints depicting objects des-
tined to decay, objects that fail in function what they seem
to fulfill in appearance. By ultimately rendering what be-
gins as sculptural work in the photographic medium, Sung
exposes an authority of image over reality, revealing the
tenuous line that separates lived from imagined experience.
In Hyung Kwan Kim’s work, wistful scenes of discovery are
born out against dense, hyper fields of urban activity. Hu-
man figures appear obscured, dismembered or caricatured
in each colorful relief, as Kim explores the concept of cities
and societies as grand artificial exhibition halls. This is a
process-rich endeavor in which the artist derives a nuanced
palette from the subtle color deviations and inconsistencies
in plastic electrical and packing tape.
“Ahn-Nyung | Hello”
LeBasse Projects Culver City
[through February 19]
Feature 23
Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus by Hugo Anderson

Bauhaus and our very sense of what is modern

in twentieth century art and design are practically
synonymous. We are surrounded in our everyday
lives by the designs and theories put into practice
by the Bauhaus. While the school of the Bauhaus
existed only from 1919 to 1933, its principals and
influence resonate today because of the achieve-
ments of the artists and architects associated with
it: Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Vassily Kandinsky,
Joseph Alpers, Lyonel Feininger, Laszlo Moholy-
Nagy, Warner Drewes and Herbert Bayer.
By definition Bauhaus means construction or
architecture (bau) and house (haus) in German. It
was the creation of Walter Gropius, who in 1919
assumed control of the Weimar School of the Arts
and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art.
He combined the two into the Weimar Bauhaus
School. It was Gropius’ intention to create a new
generation of craftsmen without the class distinc-
tions between craftsmen and artists. No doubt it

“No institution has affected the course of

twentieth century art and design so pro-
foundly as the Bauhaus. Its impact is stag-
gering. Bauhaus precedents provide sources
for everything from the appearance of our
urban skylines to the modern dinnerware on
our hard-edged, contemporary tables. They
are found in virtually every functionally de-
signed object and graphic today.”
- Gwen Chanzit
Curator,
24 HerbertJanuary
A|C|A Bayer Archive
2011 at the Denver Art Museum
and Beyond
was an attempt to build something new and positive out
of the ashes of World War I when Gropius stated “Let us
desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future
together.”
The central concept was that no one art form was in-
herently better than any other and that the fine arts and
applied arts must be studied and used together. Through
good design the new artist/craftsman would create a better
world. The very fact that easel painting was replaced in the
curriculum by mural painting showed Gropius’ commit-
ment to integrate all the arts within architecture.
Of all of the artists associated with the Bauhaus during
its brief 15 years, it is Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) who actu-
ally devoted a lifetime to a career which incorporated the
ideal of total integration of the arts, in design, advertising,
architecture, public sculpture and painting.
Herbert Bayer was born April 5, 1900 in Haag am
Hausruch, Austria. Because of a book he read by Vassily
Kandinsky (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) he enrolled
at Weimar Bauhaus at the age of 21. He actually arrived
at the Bauhaus six months before Kandinsky began teach-
ing. Bayer studied at the Bauhaus for two years, taking a negatives and collage meshed well with Surrealist imagery,
leave in 1923 to travel through Italy. He had arrived at the as in self-portrait (1932), lonely metropolitan (1932), and
Bauhaus with almost no prior background in art, and thus metamorphosis (1936).
offered the perfect “blank slate” upon which to create the The later 1930’s were difficult times for free expression.
essential Bauhaus artist. Since the Bauhaus offered no art Artists were among the many groups who felt the need to
history in its curriculum it made sense to expand his first- find exile outside Nazi Germany. The Bauhaus had closed
hand knowledge of art architecture and design by spending in 1933 and many of its artists/faculty had already emigrat-
a year traveling in Italy, sketching and painting. To support ed to the United States, finding work teaching at Harvard
himself he painted houses and stage sets during his travels, and at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Bayer had traveled to
thus applying the integration of craftsman and artist at the the U.S. in 1937 and became involved in the design of an
first opportunity. exhibition on the Bauhaus at the newly created Museum of
In 1925 he was offered a position on the faculty at the Modern Art. In 1938 he moved to New York City. Deposi-
Bauhaus, as Master of Typography. It was then, in conjunc- tion (1939) while depicting the tools of Christ’s crucifixion,
tion with the ideas of Moholy-Nagy, that Bayer developed a also portends the dark future of a Nazi victory in Europe, a
“universal alphabet” using only lower case letters. This was victory that seemed quite possible in 1939.
designed to be a practical typeface, which was large enough The exhibition Bauhaus 1919-1928 opened at the Mu-
to read and free of distortions and curlicues, sans-serif type. seum of Modern Art and later traveled around the United
Bayer applied this type design to ad copy, posters and books States. It provided an introduction to modernist design to
throughout his career. a country slow to accept abstraction in painting, much less
In 1928 Bayer left the Bauhaus to pursue a design ca- in advertising, which required client acceptance. During
reer in Berlin. It was his desire to put the theories of the his tenure in New York, Bayer’s graphic work prospered,
Bauhaus into practice in design and advertising. In 1933 but when the opportunity arose to move back to a moun-
he produced a “bayer type”. During his Berlin years, in ad- tain environment he took it, moving to Aspen, Colorado in
dition to his design work, Bayer ventured into photography, 1946. He accepted a position as design consultant for Wal-
which he used in both commercial (ads and posters) and ter Paepcke and the Container Corporation of America,
fine art production. With Maholy-Nagy, Hebert Bayer was whose headquarters were in Chicago.
an early creator of photoplastic or photomontage. The al- The Aspen of 1946 was a small mountain town of less
tering of photographic imagery through the use of multiple than 800 residents and only the beginnings of a ski town,

Feature 25
with two pre-war ski runs. Paepcke and Bayer were instru-
mental in initiating the changes that would make Aspen a
cultural oasis in the 1950’s and beyond. The Aspen Institute
for Humanistic Studies was founded by Paepcke in 1949,
with Herbert Bayer working as architect and design consul-
tant. He designed a complex of buildings for the institute,
integrated within the natural landscape of the mountain
valley. In 1955 he created a work called grass mound, a for-
ty foot grassy place for relaxation, years before the concept
of “earthworks” became popular. He also created marble
garden using discards from an old marble quarry. In 1963-
64 he designed a new tent for the Aspen Music Festival.
With his return to mountain living, mountains and
contour map elements began to emerge in his artwork from
the late 1940’s on, as in his lithograph mountains and lakes
(1948). He designed a series of ski posters, including ski
broadmoor (1959). In 1953 the Container Corporation
published world atlas with graphics designed by Herbert
Bayer. His goal was to put together an atlas with clean
graphics that was easy to read. The interaction between fine
art and commercial art again shows in Bayer’s paintings and
prints with continuing use of weather related symbols, such
as arrows, flow charts and contour maps.
The Container Corporation employed the talents of
Man Ray and Fernand Leger as well as Bayer in the late
1930’s. It was their concept that through good design, cor-
porations could influence good taste and profits. Bayer,
with his Bauhaus ideals, was a natural to work in this col-
laboration of art and industry. In their ads, text was limited
to fifteen words of copy in order to put the emphasis on
visual images. Lengthy texts were out; clean copy was in.
Advertising was seen as good public relations with consum-
ers and buyers at other corporations. Bayer used collage
and photomontage, elements from his fine art, in his early
advertisements. He became chairman of Container Corpo-
ration’s Department of Design in 1956. He was more than
26 A|C|A January 2011
just an art director, contributing in management decisions,
including the design of buildings and interiors.
The Great Ideas of Western Man was a Herbert Bayer
advertising campaign of the 1950’s and 60’s. These ads had
no sales message, again working on the concept that a good
corporate image was also good for business. The ad con-
cept was an out- growth of discussions at the Aspen Insti-
tute for Humanistic Studies.
The Institute worked to bring business executives and
managers together to discuss ideas in a relaxed setting and
a cultural environment. The Aspen Institute was as respon-
sible for putting Aspen on the world map as was skiing. It
was also a great concept for expanding the year past ski sea-
son, with many of its programs in the summer months.
It was through connections at the Aspen Institute that
Bayer met Robert O Anderson, founder of Atlantic Rich-
field Oil Company. In the early 1950’s they became friends;
Anderson bought Bayer’s house in town when Herbert
moved his studio onto Red Mountain, overlooking Aspen.
Along with the house, Anderson also began to buy artwork
by Bayer, providing the beginning of a relationship of pa-
tron and friend that would last until the end of Bayer’s life.
After Walter Paepcke’s death in 1960, Bayer began working
for ARCO as an art and design consultant, starting in 1966.
Bayer oversaw the design of corporate offices in New
York and Philadelphia, as well as Los Angeles when the cor-
porate headquarters moved there. He designed the artwork
for ARCO Plaza in Los Angeles: double ascension, two
linked staircases in a pool of water. He also advised ARCO
on the development of its large corporate art collection and
the performing arts programs it sponsored. He designed
carpets and tapestries for the corporate offices.
He designed a sculpture for the 1968 Olympics in Mex-
ico City. A similar sculpture resides at the Design Center in
Denver, Colorado. He also developed a seriesof sculptures
for ARCO that were designed to hide/beautify the Philadel-
phia refinery area. These were among a number of sculp-
tural projects that were never created and exist only in the
form of maquettes. Currently the Bayer family is working
to try to realize some of his models as larger works in Den-
ver and other cities.
Bayer moved from Aspen to the Santa Barbara area in
1976. He lived there for the last ten years of his life. A fine
collection of his work can be found in the Santa Barbara
Museum, while The Herbert Bayer Archive is at the Denver
Art Museum, with over 9000 artifacts in the collection.
During the last four decades of his life, Herbert Bayer
was well employed in design positions with the Container
Corporation and ARCO. In addition to his corporate re-
sponsibilities he developed a significant fine art portfolio
during these years. Artistically Bayer is probably better
known for his earlier photomontages from the Berlin years
(1928-1938). Having two significant patrons in Walter
Paepcke and Robert O. Anderson, there was little need for
Herbert Bayer the fine artist to go through the normal rou-
tine of gallery exhibitions and reviews necessary for artwork
to find its way into important private and public collections.
The town of Aspen is full of Herbert Bayer paintings that
moved directly from studio to private hands. To a certain
degree his reputation as a painter, printmaker and
sculptor never received the critical acclaim that ex-
hibitions and reviews would have allowed. He suf-
fered a bit from being too successful.
In his later years Bayer used his graphic skills
to create fine art prints, using lithography and silk-
screen, the same mediums used in his commercial
work. A skill learned in one area is used in another.
In these graphic images, as in his later paintings, he
returns to geometric design and abstraction in a se-
ries of works he called “anthologies”. In these works the
Bauhaus artist has returned to basics: color, geometry and
design. The sculpture he produced during these same years
still maintains a freshness today, thanks to his combination
of clean design and primary colors. His surrealist photo-
montages from the 1920’s hold as much shock value today
as they did then.
The success and legacy of Herbert Bayer are the combi-
nation of Bauhaus ideas and American optimism from the
post WWII period applied to a work ethic and career which
lasted until his death in 1985. It is the combination of clean
design and a fresh palette of primary colors that explain the
continuing appeal of his artwork. His work is optimistic
and easy to live with, the result of his lifelong adherence to
good design. More than any of his contemporaries, Her-
bert Bayer stayed true to his Bauhaus ideals through his
sixty-year career.
Hugo Anderson is the Director of Emil Nelson Gallery,
which represents the works of Herbert Bayer
from the Bayer Family Collection.
Feature 27
 BLEICHER GALLERIES
BGartDealings.com
info@bgartdealings.com

(Ann McCoy Feb /2011)

CB Gallery [Caporale/Bleicher] 355 N. La Brea Avenue, LA, CA 90036 (323) 545-6018

BG Gallery [Bleicher/Golightly] 1431 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90401 (310) 878-2784
 EXHIBITIONS

LOS ANGELES
Nigel Cooke Nigel Cooke's paintings — "hybrid theatri-
Blum & Poe Los Angeles cal spaces" as he has called them — often
[through Feb 12] depict fantastic graffiti-strewn architecture
and supernatural landscapes. Rendered in
a naturalistic style that bounces back and
forth between affirmation and complica-
tion of the canvas surface, Cooke's paint-
ings hover in the vicinity of landscape, still
life, portraiture, and narrative tableau with-
out ever touching down. His current paint-
ings similarly flirt with and confound an-
other painting tradition, the "figure in the
landscape as allegory." Departure, Cooke's
three-panel centerpiece is a self-aware take
on the German artist Max Beckmann's
1933-1935 triptych of the same title. In
Beckmann's painting, images of torture
Nigel Cooke, Washed Up Thinker, 2010, Oil on
linen backed with sailcloth, 87” x 77”.
and brutality bookend a central panel in
which a dignified family sails to salvation.
In contrast, Cooke's figures hang in the end
Sol LeWitt panels pathetic, comedic, and tragic all at
LA Louver Venice once, while in the central panel they writhe
[through Feb 26] and wretch in a boat, tossed about on a dark
ethereal sea. Whether abused by nature's
whim or their own bacchanalian excesses,
for them there is no escape. Cooke de-
scribes his reworking as a vision of "provin-
cial philosophy lecturers sailing to Ibiza for
a rave," yet falling prey to a disastrous reck-
oning en route in which only one "thinker"
makes it to land. Cooke imagines this avatar
of hubris washed up in more ways than one,
dragging himself and his wreckage onto
strange shores to begin the process of re-
building and reflecting. The other paintings
in the exhibition continue to present scenes
of thickly bearded "Master chefs", sailors,
artists, and philosophers as they navigate
the dystopian environment in which they
find themselves. This psychic landscape is
peopled by dredged-up corpses, ancient
philosophers and burnt-out fry cooks, all
overshadowed by the decaying specter of
factory buildings that echo modernist geo-
metric painting. These haunting portraits
model failure, but also artistic production
in the face of peril and creativity on the
verge of existential self-immolation. 

Sol LeWitt: (top) Structure with Three Tow-
ers, 1986, wood painted white, 48.75”x121.5”x
48.5”; (bot) Pyramid #10, 1985, wood painted
white, 79.87”x 47”x 37.5”. Courtesy of LA Louver.
Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), a pioneer of mini-
mal and conceptual art in the 1960s and
1970s, achieved a major breakthrough in
his work in 1968, when he began employ-
ing predetermined line-making proce-
dures and materials usually associated with
drawing or commercial art techniques. He
used this method to execute large-scale
drawings directly on the wall. In 1980, a
variety of geometric shapes emerged as
autonomous subjects, which in turn led
LeWitt to isometric projections in 1982.
By dividing the sides of the basic cube
into halves, thirds and quarters, and con-
necting the resulting dividing points with
lines, LeWitt transformed planar figures
into three-dimensional forms. This exhibi-
tion, Sol LeWitt: Structures, Works on Pa-
per, Wall Drawings 1971-2005, will address
the artist’s investigation of the cube – the
basic modular unit of inquiry throughout
his art practice – with a focus on triangula-
tion. Four of the artist’s wall drawings will
be presented in a dedicated gallery on the
first floor. Dated October 1989, the draw-
ings are from the artist’s 620 series, with
forms derived from cubic rectangles and
superimposed color ink washes. These were
installed in the Galeria Juana de Aizpuru,
Madrid, Spain in October 1989, and have
not been exhibited since that time. The wall
drawings were over three weeks, employing
four L.A.-based artists, working with, and
directed by, Gabriel Hurier from the Sol
LeWitt Estate. LeWitt’s renowned modular
structures originate from his exploration of
the cube, which was the form that inspired
him throughout his career. Works in the ex-
hibition range from seminal squares from
the ‘70s and ‘80s to the artist’s division of
the cube through triangulation. It will be
rounded out by large-scale works on pa-
per, executed in gouache. Comparing the
gouaches to his wall drawings, LeWitt stat-
ed that only he could make the gouaches,
which “followed their own logic,” whereas
the wall drawings “have ideas that can be
transmitted to others to realize.”

30 A|C|A January 2011


In Alexander Kroll’s first solo show in
Los Angeles, Unfoldings, modestly scaled
abstract paintings are simultaneously
structural and intuitive; informal and hy-
per-considered; gestural and geometric.
Alongside an interest in exploring binary
positions, Kroll’s work deals with scale,
painting history, intuition, systems, emo-
tions, and painting as a conversational nex-
us and means of producing an object that
can embody and contradict these issues.
His work exists at a place of complexity and
intensity. Through its conversational nature
the work asserts an expanding set of ideas.
As the work unfolds there occurs a process
that necessitates further viewing and con-
More than or Equal to Half of the Whole, a
two person exhibition of photography by
Kate Johnson and Siri Kaur, is a vivid explo-
ration of both the power and the illusion of
the photographic medium. The exhibition
examines the awe, dislocation and limita-
tion inherent in photographic practice. Il-
lusion and limitation play a central role in
Kate Johnson's work in a series she calls
More Than Or Equal To. For each of these
infinity portraits - self-aware photographs
that attempt to capture the concept of in-
finity - Johnson constructs a small glass
and mirror diorama which she then photo-
graphs. There is a sheer, crystalline beauty
in each of these prismatic pieces, even as
they wryly admit to the illusion that infinity
and depth are being rendered falsely with-
in a finite, two-dimensional work space.
Johnson's  hall of mirrors  visual trick (in
which images repeat endlessly against one
another) purposefully calls attention to it-
self through the repeated appearance of her
camera lens (as well as the green-blue edges
of the glass) throughout the photographs.
Paired loosely in dark and light opposites,
these photographs intrigue aesthetically
and entertain conceptually.  In pursuit of
a profound sense of the sublime, and play-
ing, like Johnson's work, with the dynam-
ics of perception, illusion, and immeasur-
able scale is the Half of the Whole series by
Siri Kaur. This series features a number of
extra-galactic photographs (taken between
2007-2010 using a digital sensor attached to
a Meade solar telescope on Kitt Peak in Ari-
EXHIBITIONS
Alexander Kroll
CB1 Los Angeles
[through Feb 20]
tinuation of a dialog — both sensual and
intellectual.
zona), alongside "faked" astrophotographs
(evidenced by such titles as Lightbulb with
Sunspots Made by Hand), and a single
diptych. After shooting the initial frames,
Kroll, 2010: (left) Untitled, oil, egg tempera, and
Kaur exacts a battery of darkroom "experi- ink on panel, 10”x8”. (right) detail of Untitled,
ments" on her work by applying color filters oil and egg tempera on linen over panel, 12”x5”.
and chemical drawings to both the photo
negatives and positives. By manipulating Kate Johnson & Siri Kaur
the printing process, Kaur effectively dislo- Garboushian Beverly Hills
cates the signified from the signifier - dis- [through Feb 12]
tinguishes what is represented from what
might represent it - as her images transform
from distant celestial objects into light and
ultimately back into physical form, albeit
much smaller, within the gallery. Rounding
out the series, and further illustrating her
penchant for aesthetic awe and print ma-
nipulation is Kaur's stunning diptych of the
Aurora Borealis, fittingly titled (in the de-
scriptive vernacular commonly associated
with late 20th century photography), On (above) Kate Johnson, Untitled #14, 2010, from
the Left, Aurora Borealis, White Horse, Yu- series More Than Or Equal To, 1 of 3, Lambda
print mounted on aluminum, 34”x40”. (below)
kon, March 31 2008, 235 AM. On the Right, Siri Kaur, On the Left, Aurora Borealis, White
Horse, Yukon, March 31 2008, 235 AM. On
the Way I Wanted It to Look (see below). the Right, the Way I Wanted it to Look, 2008,
Diptych 1 of 3, Chromogenic print. Each 30” x 38”.
Exhibitions 31
 EXHIBITIONS
Margie Livingston
Luis de Jesus Santa Monica
[through Feb 26]
Margie Livingston, Study for Spiral Block 3,
2010, acrylic, 5.75” x 6” x 6”.
“After the Rain”
Carmichael Culver City
[through Feb 5]
(top) Boogie, Train To Bushwick, 2005, silver
gelatin print, 20”x24”. (middle) Guy Denning,
Jocelin’s Nail, oil on canvas, 36”x36”. (bottom)
Pascual Sisto, Ne Travaillez Jamais (Never
Work), 2010, neon light installation based on situ-
ationalist graffiti in Paris, May 1968, 33” x 82”.
32 A|C|A January 2011
Margie Livingston has long been admired
for her abstract paintings that articulate the
interaction between the architectural grid
and the natural, organic world. Based on
three-dimensional models that she builds
in the studio (perspective grids crafted out
of string and wood around branches and
twigs) her paintings directly translate the
phenomena of space, light, color and grav-
ity upon these hybrid structures into lines
and bands of color that hang seemingly
suspended in space. Now, letting accident
and discovery meet invention and experi-
mentation, Livingston reverses her usual
process, using paint to construct objects.
Her new paint objects—built entirely from
dots, strips, and skins of dried acrylic pig-
ment—investigate the properties of paint
pushed into three dimensions and offer a
compelling view into how the medium of
paint can be used sculpturally. With this
major transformation of her practice Liv-
After The Rain, a group exhibition featur-
ing Boogie, Guy Denning, Aakash Nihalani
and Pascual Sisto, merges and contrasts
the palettes of four artists who work in a
range of media. The precise neon color
sculptures and abstract mixed media can-
vases of Aakash Nihalani highlight the raw,
candid nature of Boogie’s black and white
photographs, while Guy Denning’s dark
portraits, built with indulgent layers of
oil paint, situate Pascual Sisto’s video and
sculptural works in a new contextual light.
As a photographer, Boogie is singular in
his ability to remove his presence as the
mediator between the subjects of his work
and those viewing them from without. His
illumination of the complexity of the hu-
man condition without the imposition of
his own ego or ideologies presents a more
compelling foundation for the contempla-
tion of his weighty subject matter and the
socio-economic, philosophical and emo-
tional currents that press from beneath.
He will present a series of black and white
photographs. He lives and works in Bel-
grade. Guy Denning’s enigmatic portraits of
androgynous figures possess a strange and
often ethereal beauty, blending the smooth-
ness of classical form with a blunt contem-
ingston has moved away from working
with the illusion of space and toward work-
ing with literal space, constructing objects
that straddle two media — painting and
sculpture. Like her earlier canvas paintings,
which were an accumulation of multiple
gestures and parts, Margie Livingston’s new
paint objects can be seen as a calculated
decision on her part to show her process
and to “reveal how I got from one point to
the next…building a concrete relationship
between each part and the whole.” Her
goal to create an equivalent sense of light
and space with minimal means (“especially
when a daub of paint is referencing a bit of
air in the middle of the room”), asserts its
emphatic physical presence in the form of
paint objects suspended from the ceiling,
attached directly to the wall, or as solid
cube, slab, or egg-like forms installed on
work tables and pedestals.
porary perspective. Sexual and temporal
politics, objectification, and isolation are
illuminated through carefully honed con-
trasts of shape and shade. His will present a
series of oils on canvas. . He lives and works
in Finistère. Aakash Nihalani has fashioned
a visual language all his own. The neon in
his work highlights details that might oth-
erwise go unnoticed, while his minimalist
patterns form self-contained pockets which
encourage examination both within the
isolated space and of the world at large. His
work often engages the public by creating
three-dimensional environments that can
be physically entered, transforming pass-
ersby or gallery visitors into participants
and offering them a momentary escape
from daily life. He will present new sculp-
tural works from his Optiprism series, as
well as new works on canvas. He lives and
works in Brooklyn. Los Angeles-based
Pascual Sisto’s works, which include neon,
video, photography and text-based series,
reassess and recontextualize a range of
historical dialogues that have been instru-
mental in shaping both contemporary so-
ciety and his own artistic practice. He will
present a video installation, amongst other
works, in one of the gallery’s project rooms.

Anthony Pearson's sculptures and photo-
graphs are, on the one hand, records of a
studio practice dedicated to non-represen-
tational mark-making and the pursuit of
free aesthetic movement; on the other, they
are the elements of a vocabulary designed
to systematize the irrational and inexpli-
cable facets of artistic endeavor. For the
first time, Pearson has created large-scale
steel sculptures whose forms are derived
from two of these photographs. Composi-
tions originally made with ink and brush
have undergone a complete alchemical
transformation, passing through the pho-
tographic process to become templates for
three-dimensional objects in space. Until
now, photography has served as a way to
create conceptual distance between the act
of making non-representational compo-
sitions and the act of displaying them in
the context of other artworks. Here, how-
ever, photographs have been cycled back
through the studio practice, and have led
to an expansion of physical scale, the ad-
aptation of new technical procedures, and
Luis Cornejo paints with cheek. He dons
pretty young things with Mickey Mouse
ears, tails, clownish caps and surrealisti-
cally long hands, marring their exquisite
beauty. By using slapstick and coarse dis-
tortion, Cornejo challenges our idea of per-
fect beauty and our tedious worship of it.
Cornejo has had sold out many shows and
has exhibited individually and collectively
in Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Mexico,
Canada and Germany. His work continues
to take off, with a one year paid scholarship
For more than 40 years, Olivier Mosset has
challenged the historical notion of paint-
ing as an art object. Beginning with his in-
volvement in B.M.P.T. (a Paris-based group
of painters active during the mid-1960s
consisting of Daniel Buren, Mosset, Mi-
chel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni), Mosset
sought to question authorship and democ-
ratize art through "radical procedures of
deskilling". As each artist became identified
with a specific composition, the members
of the group would then sign each other's
work thus calling into question the origi-
EXHIBITIONS
increased conceptual reach. Corresponding Anthony Pearson
developments can be seen in new examples David Kordansky Los Angeles
of Pearson's trademark 'arrangements', [through Feb 5]
which combine photographic elements
with bronze sculptures made from castings.
The 'arrangements' are powerful examples
of instances in which Pearson applies cu-
ratorial logic to the results of idiosyncratic,
even hermetic, processes. The relationship
between the pictorial and the physical is
also explored in a series of small bronze
wall-based sculptures. Created using molds
made from shaped clay forms, these works
mark the first time that Pearson has hung
objects directly on the wall, as well as the
first time that he has exhibited bronzes
without photographs.The work is not only
Anthony Pearson, Untitled (Transmission),
a study of the alchemical relationships be- 2010, steel, patina, sandblasted white Portland
cement, 81” x 70” x 30” unique.
tween materials, but an ongoing record of
competing forces at play in the studio. As
such, Pearson's practice represents the fur- Luis Cornejo and
Andriy Halashyn
thering of a tradition exemplified by fig-
SALT Laguna Beach
ures as diverse as John Cage, Jackson Pol-
[through Feb 28]
lock and Bruce Nauman, one based in both
pragmatic and rigorous experimentation.
in Berlin and top awards from the Museum
of Art of El Salvador. Wedding pop and
hyperrealism, Andriy Halashyn’s dys-
topic dreamscapes juxtapose moneyed
beauty with ruin, waste and contamina-
tion. His canvases tell a tale of two cities
in the optic language of a deadpan and
painterly pop. Ukranian born but living
and working in Costa Rica for over ten
years, Halashyn brings a cosmopolitan
Andriy Halashyn. Baby Garbage,
sensibility to his lush paintings. 2010, oil on canvas, 39.5”x32”.
nality of the painting. Following his affili- Olivier Mosset
ation with B.M.P.T., Mosset has become a Christopher Grimes
Santa Monica
pivotal figure in artistic practices span-
[through Mar 5]
ning monochrome, abstract and 'Neo-Geo'
painting. By employing variations on col-
or, size, paint application, format and the
stretch of the canvas, Mosset has continued
questioning the preconceived notions of
what constitutes a painting. Collaboration
remains an integral aspect to his practice.
For this exhibition Mosset will collaborate
with Vincent Szarek and Jeffrey Schad by Jeffrey Schad, Rootbeer Bike,
exhibiting their custom motorcycles. 2004, custom. 96 in3.
Exhibitions 33
 EXHIBITIONS

Josh Peters For his exhibition Furious Seasons, Los
Kaycee Olsen Los Angeles Angeles-based artist Josh Peters mined still
[through Feb 12] images from obscure films and drew inspi-
ration from a short story by the author Ray-
mond Carver, the title of which Peters uses
for his show. These most recent paintings
can be described as both portrait-mask-
icons and figures-in-landscape paintings.
Figuratively, the subjects are mainly taken
from films, albeit mostly obscure with little
inherent 'iconic' value associated. Peters
makes references to figures "away from
civilized society," or, more ambiguously,
"a sense of impending violence or spiritual
awakening lurking just under the surface."
In Peters' recent work, these polarities reg-
ister side by side, beneath surfaces both
saturated and scraped to the canvas (or
frequently, especially in larger scaled work,
linen), and in either case, luminous with a
glow that seems to emanate from within,
irradiating both its subjects and whatever
space it happens to inhabit, including the
viewer's own interior space. Most of this
material falls loosely into a category we
might label mood or atmospheric, with a
few qualifiers. Peters is clearly looking for
certain conditions, the “incident” or its po-
tentiality, the possibility of creating a cer-
tain, transformative moment, of commu-
nion between subject and artist and viewer.
This is not a narrative style, the spaces of
these paintings are transparently abstract,
existential, but almost quintessentially lyri-
cal. [Accompanying this exhibition is a
catalogue featuring an essay and interview.]

Josh Peters: (top) Furious Seasons, 2010, acryl-

ic on unprimed linen, 65” x 86”; (bot) Autumn,
2010, acrylic on canvas, 11” x 14”.
David Kapp & Soojung Park
Ruth Bachofner Santa Monica
[through Mar 12]
David Kapp, Big Crowd, 2010, oil on linen,
98”x76”; Soojung Park, June Paige, 2011, ink
on plexiglass, 38”x56”.
David Kapp was born and raised in New
York and has painted the city since the
1970's. While his subject of traffic, build-
ings and skewed aerial perspectives remain
intact, his current work brings in images of
crowds and figures. For Kapp, the physical
painting is just as important as the scene
being depicted; experiencing one of his
paintings is sometimes seeing the paint and
composition before the image itself. Kapp’s
paintings extract the dramatic contrasts,
harmonies and forms of urban movement
through a graceful shift between abstraction
and representation. The artist responds to
his amplified surroundings through equal-
ly charged brushwork, yet keeps a taught,
Mondrian-like structure intact through-
out his work. Kapp’s physical movements
of paint usher not only a two dimensional
feel for the city, but also a physical sense for
it; acute angles and dramatic perspectives
viewed on a grand scale induces a vertigo-
like sensation in some works, while in oth-
ers, Kapp sets you right into the thick of ur-
ban vitality. David Kapp’s work has been the
subject of over twenty-five solo exhibitions
throughout the country. He has received
two Academy Awards from The American
Academy of Arts and Letters along with a
Rosenthal Foundation award. His work is
in many public and private collections in-
cluding The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
The National Academy of Design, and The
Mint Museum of Art. In her current body
of work, Soojung Park continues to create
luminous linear abstractions that play on
contrasts of flatness and space, buoyancy
and heft. The severity that seems initially
intrinsic to Park’s medium and precisely
stacked slabs in the fashion of Donald Judd,
is countered by the artist’s treatment of the
plexiglass. Subdued hues of inks and pig-
ments are rubbed into the front and back of
the tablets, which are sandwiched together
and arranged into grids. The overall weight
of Park’s work is counter-balanced by di-
aphanous color applications and the array
of striations which range from pencil thin
to several inches thick. Where in previous
work, color penetrated every surface, her
current series offers more variation in both
color and texture. Areas of clear plastic to
play off saturated areas and rough, sand-
blasted bands intermix with smooth, re-
flective ones. Park’s stacked tablets seem to
generate light from within as ambient light
penetrates and bounces between layers of
plexiglass, allowing infinite perceptions to
emerge. While the layered striations allude
to landscape, a more intimate dialog devel-
ops within/between panels, bringing the
work into a sculptural and painterly realm.
Viewers become immersed in the smokey
spaces of the thick plexiglass and milky
inks while always being drawn back to the
syncopated rhythms of the etched lines.

34 A|C|A January 2011


SAN FRANCISCO
Remembering, works from the estate of Den-
nis Leon, include many of the artist’s semi-
nal sculptures and drawings. Two bodies of
drawings, Dedicated to my Father (1984),
and Thicket’s (1994), are brought together
along with wood and bronze sculpture
fromt he same time frame. Although some
years separate the making of these draw-
ings, they coalesce into a powerful, reflec-
tive exhibition. Dennis Leon’s work reflects
his youth on the Yorkshire Moor’s, with it’s
mix of Celtic stone monuments throughout
the countryside. The work is also resonant
of his adopted home, with it’s rich com-
plexity of nature and artifice. With so much
This exhibition of works by Italian painter
Marco Casentini will feature the artist's
signature geometric abstractions, com-
posed of overlapping rectangular shapes
in intense, saturated colors. Working in
acrylic on canvas, Casentini continues his
investigation of color and shape in limited
palettes of red, blue, white and silver. In
each work, the artist incorporates painted
plexiglass panels attached to canvas, adding
a physical dimension to the paintings. The
clean, hard edges of the plexi blend seam-
lessly into Casentini's geometric composi-
Having refined her practice over a period
of four decades, New York artist Max Cole
has earned a reputation as a premier prac-
titioner of reductive painting with a con-
sistently and highly recognizable aesthetic.
Employing a subtle palette of black, white,
and shades of grey, this new body of work
includes a selection of gem-like small-scale
pieces as yet unseen here in San Francisco.
From a distance, Cole’s works appear to be
composed of simple bands of color. But
upon closer inspection, these horizontal
bands reveal intricate patterns of short, ver-
tical hatch marks consisting of alternating
colors. What at first appears devoid of the
human hand reveals itself as an accumu-
lation of subtle imperfections. The stripes
seem to vibrate, at one moment alluding
EXHIBITIONS
written about
Dennis Leon,
his life and
work, it seems
best to offer a
few insights
from those
voices. he
London-born
artist seeks a simple statement of unity in Dennis Leon: (left) Dedicated to my Father
#7, 1984, pastel on paper, 30.25”x44.50”;
his works, which is rooted in landscape (right) Heelstone, 1990, wood, saw dust, paint,
38”x40”x29” Courtesy Patricia Sweetow Gallery.
and memory. The anonymity in his works
is intentional: “it’s not like the uniqueness Dennis Leon
of individuality. I tend to make things that Patricia Sweetow San Francisco
look like no-one made them.” [through Feb 12]
tions and create unexpected variations in
Marco Casentini
surface and texture. Casentini's seemingly
Brian Gross San Francisco
non-objective works are actually the artist's
[through Feb 26]
translations of his emotions and environ-
ment. Each painting is inspired by a feeling,
place, or memory, expressed through color
and composition. In large monochromatic
canvases, subtle variations in tone give the
paintings a contemplative, emotive quality.
In contrast, the largest work in the show
features blocks of multiple hues arranged in
an energetic composition that echoes both
urban architecture and natural landscapes.
to foggy horizons or waving fields of grain,
Marco Casentini, The Bridge on the Sea,
and in the next falling flat on the canvas’s 2010, acrylic on canvas, 51”×51”.
surface. This allusion to landscape is be-
fitting of an artist who was raised on the
plains. Horizontal, unpopulated landscapes Max Cole
Haines San Francisco
are as much a part of her visual lexicon as
[through Feb 12]
is Native American thought (Cole main-
tained a close relationship with her pater-
nal Grandfather, who was half-Cherokee),
and indeed, her works evolve from the ide-
al of harmony with nature, which is at the
heart of that culture. Cole’s work has been
described as obsessive, but she prefers the
term passionate, as it is self-determination
rather than compulsion that urges her to-
wards creation and completion. Cole does
not rely on a preconceived plan; the work
unfolds through time and rigorous process. Max Cole, detail of Briscone Pine,
2010, acrylic on linen, 33” x 49”.
Exhibitions 35
 EXHIBITIONS

NEW YORK CITY

Ulf Puder Ulf Puder’s quiet yet forceful paintings de-
Ana Cristea Chelsea pict an uninhabited world composed of
[through Feb 19] vast, luminous skies and off-kilter man-
made structures. Employing a distinctive
color palette dominated by grays and pas-
tels and a visual language that is both figu-
rative and highly-abstracted, Puder creates
images that are as inexplicably beautiful as
they are haunting. In works like Waldbad
and Schwestern, house-like structures are
composed of flat and weightless planes of
color, but some of these planes are askew
or simply missing. The two bungalows in
Schwestern are so battered that they ap-
pear almost entirely open to the elements,
and stray walls float in what seems to be
an expanse of water covering the ground.
Offenes Gelände suggests a slightly new
direction for the artist: Puder’s paintings
have often suggested the disarrayed and
desolate aftermath of an unidentified nat-
ural disaster, but in this painting, which
depicts a massive tornado approaching a
backdrop of low-slung buildings, we seem
to be witnessing the moment just before
the destruction begins. Born in Leipzig in
1958, Ulf Puder was a member of the now-
famed first generation to graduate from
the Leipziger Hochschule für Grafik und
Buchkunst. Along with Neo Rauch, also a
member of this first generation, Puder was
uniquely successful in melding East-Ger-
man neo-realism with a more imaginative,
dreamlike, even surrealistic vocabulary. His
work is greatly admired by and has had a
tremendous influence on a younger genera-
tion of Eastern European artists. Puder has
been included in recent group exhibitions
in museums in New York, London, Paris,
Dresden, the Netherlands and Prague. He
has had solo exhibitions in Leipzig, Am-
sterdam, and Chicago’s Kavi Gupta Gallery.

Ulf Puder: (top) Waldbad, 2010, oil on canvas,
71 “x 86.5”; (bottom) Abland [cover image],
2010, oil on canvas, 83” x 59”.
Christian Vincent
Mike Weiss Chelsea
[through Feb 12]
Christian Vincent, detail of Waterfall,
2010, oil on canvas, 92” x 154”.
Tunnel Vision, a show by Los Angeles-
based artist Christian Vincent, consists of
eight large-scale oil paintings, in which the
artist deconstructs notions of the collective.
In comparison with Vincent’s previous
body of work, Tunnel Vision is notably re-
duced in palette, line, and narrative. Even
the subject matter, while adhering to the
male figure, is more stark and streamlined.
Vincent is not concerned with mastering
anatomical expertise but rather with con-
veying a polemical undertone, and inten-
tionally leaves the works in contentious
balance, overlapping political propaganda
and pop culture. It is upon immediate en-
counter with the works that their massive
scale divulges their confrontational under-
pinning. Being larger than human size, the
boys depicted in the canvases are turned
into monumental objects that intimidate,
demand attention and inspire awe. The
paint is thick but flat, as Vincent carefully
sands down the remnants of his brushwork,
thereby symbolically removing his finger-
prints from the works and allowing them to
exist autonomously. Much akin to early to
mid twentieth-century mass-printed war-
time propaganda, the identity of the artist
is usurped by the message of unity, solidar-
ity and conformity. In Line Up, viewers are
met with a descending row of young boys
that cuts a sharp diagonal across the canvas.
The convergence point on the horizon is
eliminated, hinting at the infinitesimal con-
tinuation of the lineup. Despite the boys’
petite forms, they are endowed with notice-
ably large heads, becoming cloned eugenic
man-child hybrids. Their nearly eyeless fac-
es speak of their blind faith in a figure that
could evoke as much spiritual benevolence
as it could mass destruction. Group devo-
tion is not meant to be outright rejected as
much as challenged in these works. These
scenes could be culled from a rock concert
or a cult gathering, a private boy’s school
outing or a militia camp – all of which are
unified in the worshipping of a messianic
figure to which the masses turn to for salva-
tion and guidance. The desire for empow-
erment through belonging, while seductive,
is hinged on the acceptance that a person’s
dream would inevitably be sacrificed for a
collective. Vincent, who was born in 1966,
currently lives and works in Los Angeles
and has been widely exhibited throughout
the United States.

36 A|C|A January 2011


For his new show Dark Day, David S. Allee
derived the name and its theme from the
manner in which he captured the images. In
much of his earlier work, he photographed
locations at night with intense artificial light
and extremely long exposures, catching un-
real landscapes in a nether time somewhere
between night and day. For Dark Day, he
did the opposite. The images for this se-
ries were shot on bright sunny days, us-
ing tiny apertures and the highest shutter
speeds possible, with exposures reaching
1/10,000th of a second. This work captures
the texture of the sun's brightest reflections
by letting as little light as possible into the
camera, enabling us to see something we
wouldn't normally be able to see-a kind
of dog-whistle light that leaves everything
INDOOR/OUTDOOR will be comprised
of works from the grand arc of George
Rickey’s career, including some of his most
recognizable imagery, his boldest varia-
tions, as well as some of his most delicate
kinetic creations. Rickey turned to sculp-
ture in earnest when he was in his early
forties – late by most standards – but his
opus is deep thanks both the artist’s lon-
gevity and his tireless work ethic. George
Rickey died in 2002 at the age of 96, and
had only stopped creating sculpture about
a year before his death. Though he is per-
Through a series of eleven paintings, Robin
Williams’ first solo exhibition, Rescue Party,
reveals a surreal world inhabited by ado-
lescents of ambiguous gender that are on
the brink of discovery or revelation. Each
painting has a distinct narrative but with
no specific conclusion. There is a sense of
pause in each work which heightens the
sense of the impending chance for change.
Williams is able to achieve this surreal time-
lessness through her painting techniques.
While at once employing traditional paint-
ing methods, she is also experimental and
intuitive. Her use of color, light, texture
and composition are all used to explore
painting as a medium and to link this to the
conceptual content within each work. Rep-
resented through her adolescent subjects,
Williams examines the internal phase of
development that takes place during young
EXHIBITIONS
else in the photographs underexposed and David Allee
dark. In this series, the light re-imagines Morgan Lehman Chelsea
many different structures and places in the [through Feb 19]
cityscape. In 4:02PM, for example, the sun's
intense reflection on an aboveground sub-
way car filled with commuters re-imagines
this everyday scene with an unusual opac-
ity and unexpected starkness. Additionally,
a number of the images are of glass office
buildings, which capture and provide the
bursts of blinding light that move and flash
across the skyline throughout a sunny day.
The light doesn't penetrate them, nor does
it illuminate- for our purposes anyway- the
veiled things that go on inside the subjects
here; such places as the World Financial
Center and the headquarters of Goldman David S. Allee: (top) 4:02PM, Chromogenic print,
Sachs, Citigroup, and other banking giants. 40”x60”, ed. 3; (bot) 3:46PM, Chromogenic
print, 60”x80”, ed. 3. Both from Dark Days series.
haps most well known for his bladed “line” George Rickey
sculptures, Rickey’s work varied greatly Maxwell Davidson Midtown
over the span of six decades. At the start, [through Feb 12]
Rickey’s work resembled Calder’s catenary
systems, though those early mobiles soon
evolved into the finely balanced sculptures,
“little machines” as Rickey called them –
swaying, rocking, and twisting – that gave
Rickey his renown. Along with the quintes-
sential blades, Rickey used rotors, squares, George Rickey, Etoile I, 1958, stainless steel,
triangles, and trapezoids. With this show - copper, and brass, 26” x 64” x 64”.
the 16th of the artist at this gallery - the im-
pressive career of George Rickey endures. Robin Williams
P.P.O.W. Chelsea
[through Feb 26]
adulthood. These youths inhabit a lim-
inal state of being; they are often stranded,
Hopperesque figures, posing in their cos-
tumes, hoping their visage will evince an
inner truth. Each of her characters is seek-
ing a sense of identity, safety, and well-be-
ing. Some choose to wait for rescue, while
others willfully adopt a persona hoping it
will lead them toward salvation. In Rescue
Party (see right) many possess this stare
but there is also hope in this distant gaze.
This painting, which pulls from art histori-
cal references such as Théodore Géricault’s
The Raft of the Medusa, transforms the raft
into a kiddie pool and although it is staged
in a banal vacancy of surrounding and ges-
ture, there is a sense of hope and possibility.
Each of Williams’ subjects is searching for
meaning: seeking an answer and they will Robin Williams: (top) Swoon at the Waterpump
endeavor in the absurd until it is revealed. 2010, oil on canvas, 40”x60”; (bot) Rescue Party,
2010, oil on canvas, 80”x90”.
Exhibitions 37
 EXHIBITIONS

“Bella Pacifica” Presented by Nyehaus, “Bella Pacifica” is
David Nolan Chelsea hosted at four venues, including David No-
[through Feb 5] lan Gallery, whose selection focuses mainly
on 6 Gallery from the 1950s. Characterized
by tonal, harmonic, and rhythmic instabil-
ity, the 6 Gallery exemplifies the ‘50s at its
most restless, carefree and experimental.
The work shown at the gallery within its
short life span (1954 to 1957) ranges from
expressionism, to surrealism, illusionism,
collage, assemblage and abstraction; pure
and impure. A DADA attitude of Hilarity
and Disdain had replaced the grave sense of
mission that characterized the period from
1945 to the early 1950s. In San Francisco,
the Alternative Scene resulted in collective
projects such as galleries, publications, jazz
bands and film-screening societies. Found-
ed in 1952, the City Lights project became
the center for the literary movement, and
was to poetry what the 6 Gallery was to art.
The gallery, located on 3119 Fillmore Street,
was an informal co-op with six members
and no records were ever kept. The origi-
nal 6 (members) were Jack Spicer, Wally
Hedrick, Deborah Remington, Hayward
King, John Allen Ryan and David Simp-
son. The 6 fostered a spirit of coexistence
not only between faculty and students, but
between different art movements, disci-
plines and ideals. Some of the other artists
who participated included Robert Duncan,
Clyfford Still, and Sonia Gechtoff, the first
woman to have a solo show at Ferus Gallery
in Los Angeles, which later hosted Warhol’s
exhibition. Beat poetry readings were also
an important part o the gallery’s history.
On October 7, 1955, the gallery hosted
Alan Ginsburg first reading of his poem
“Howl”. Everyone present understood they
had been present at one of those moments
when everything changes.

(top) Sonia Gechtoff, detail of The Angel, 1955,
oil on canvas, 72”x67”; (bottom) Deborah Rem-
ington, detail of Blasted Beauty, 1954, mixed
media on paper, 30”x24”.
Cui Xiuwen
Eli Klein SoHo
[through Feb 27]
Cui Xiuwen, (above) Existential Emptiness No.
18, c-print, 56.7”x118”; (below) Existential
Emptiness No. 20, c-print, 37.4”x118” (pg. 6).
Cui Xiuwen, one of China’s foremost fe-
male photographers, is featured in her first
solo exhibition in New York City. Her lat-
est series, Existential Emptiness, pursues
her reflection on the woman as individual
in modern China. This body of work fur-
thers her focus from physical to spiritual
and illustrates her examination and analy-
sis of the woman’s psyche. The girl protag-
onist, considered the artist’s alter ego, has
matured and is accompanied by a life-size
doll resembling her. Inspired from her own
experiences, the appearance of the puppet
without strings recalls Japanese Bunraku
theatre. Companion, reflection, and bag-
gage of the now familiar character, the doll-
complements the girl and acts as alter ego
as well. The two figures evoke the duality
of body and soul, life and lifelessness. The
presence and absence, posture, closeness
or distance of the doll in each work capture
the relationship between the two. The digi-
tal photographs are mostly monochrome.
The palette and format are inspired by tra-
ditional Chinese ink painting. The scenes
take place in the ice- and snow-covered
mountains of Northern China. The quiet,
ethereal landscape acts as a perfect set-
ting for exploring the mind. The physical
appearance of the doll — obvious joints,
revealed ribcage bones and scarred womb
— alludes to the violence of a woman’s ex-
periences and how they impress upon her
spirit. The sparseness of the scenes creates
an absence of temporal sense, emphasizing
the subjectivity of existence.

38 A|C|A January 2011


BOSTON / PHILADELPHIA
The inspiration that Seattle-based artist
John Dempcy finds in molecular structures
is greatly evident in this new body of work,
Wild Type. The forms closely resemble that
of cells; small bodies working together to
make a more complex, advance image.
The colors are brighter than past work, the
forms clearer, and throughout all is a new
addition of white, which was not quite as
abundant before. The white offsets the
brightly colored paint, creating a contrast
Al Loving (1935-2005) is one of the most
intriguing artists of the 20th century. His
work had a personal trademark created by
extending the ideas of abstract expression-
ism in truly original and groundbreaking
ways. His distinctive work united influ-
ences from the abstract expressionist Hans
Hoffman, colorist Josef Albers, and opti-
cal illusionist Viktor Vasarely. He was not
simply an abstract painter but rather an
artist who redefined the boundaries of ab-
straction throughout his career. A native of
Detroit, Loving burst onto the New York
scene painting hard-edged geometric ab-
straction in the late Sixties. Loving was the
first African-American artist to have a one-
man exhibition at the prestigious Whitney
Museum of American Art in 1969. In this
landmark exhibition, Loving succeeded in
breaking racial barriers and opened doors
for other African-American artists, prov-
ing that abstraction was a viable way of
working. Inspired to create work beyond
the boundaries of geometry and traditional
For his new group exhibition of digital
media, alterations, curator and artist Peter
Campus sought to understand "the trans-
formation of our society to an age of elec-
tronics,” He writes that “it was so rapid and
unexpected that the time elapsed to allow
retrospective thinking is almost non-exis-
tent in its brevity. We don’t know the dan-
gers contained in this age; it is too soon to
know, and too integrated to identify. In this
presentation there are five different messag-
es, five different points of view, that present
EXHIBITIONS
to the presence of intense color with its John Dempcy
more absent qualities. The white space adds Walker Contemporary Boston
a shimmering quality to the work, despite [through Feb 12]
it's being a matte finish. It interrupts the
business of the work and instills a sense of
calm amongst the beautiful chaos. The or-
ganic forms float together, sometimes like
flower petals along a stream. In it's abun-
dant simplicity, there is an overwhelming
sense of connectivity between the works,
each presenting a new yet familiar image.
painting on a stretched canvas, Loving be-
gan moving toward the expressive freedom
found in the collage process. These later Dempcy, Coronado, acrylic on clayboard, 30x30”
works were more fluid and freeform: lay-
ered constructions of rag paper painted in
Al Loving
vibrant acrylics and crafted into elaborate
Sande Webster Philadelphia
compositions. Loving referred to these as-
[through Jan 29]
sembled works as material abstraction. This
body of work introduced the iconic spiral-
ing forms. The spiral affirmed a personal
connection to the natural cycle of continu-
ous growth and defined time and space ex-
tending out towards infinity. The driving
reference for all of Loving’s work is the is-
sue of space. He succeeded in expressing a
new and dynamic spatial and aesthetic ex-
perience that pushed his work beyond the
limitations of perspective and the modern-
ist notion of the flat picture plane. This rare
exhibition which will include a wide variety
of mixed media works and prints. Al Lov-
ing has exhibited internationally and his
work is held in numerous major collections
in museusms throughout the world. Al Loving, Life & Continued Growth #12,
mixed media on paper, 29” x 22”.
only a fraction of the message." The videos “alterations”
of Peter Campus provide hopeful images Locks Philadelphia
as a remedy for the anxieties of contempo- [through Feb 5]
rary life, while Nayda Collazo-Llorens
creates multi-media video and installa-
tions to underscore the complexity of the
mind and the obstacles of communicat-
ing thought. Kathleen Graves combines
current technology with objects from
the past. Jason Varone is inspired by the
advancement of society through technol- Peter Campus, Inflections: changes in light
and colour around Ponquogue Bay, 2009,
ogy and its decline from eroding resources. high definition multi-screen video installation.
Exhibitions 39
 EXHIBITIONS

“Bound”
Hamiltonian Washington
[Jan 22 - Mar 5]
Katherine Mann, Net, 2011, acrylics and
sumi ink on cut paper, 90”x102”.
Simon Gouverneur and
Andy Moon Wilson
Curator’s Office Washington
[through Feb 15]
Andy Moon Wilson, Untitled, 2010
ink and acrylic on paper, 10” x 10”
Courtesy of Curator’s Office, Washington, DC.
“Saturnalia”
Irvine Washington
[through Feb 12]
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, detail of As we waited
we were longing for Spring’s sun, 2010,
acrylic and mixed media on Mylar, 78”x60”.
Courtesy of Irvine Contemporary.
WASHINGTON DC
Bound, an exhibition of new works by
Katherine Mann and Selin Balci, exam-
ine the limits of their medium, as well as
notions of humanity within an expanded
ecologic understanding of the living world.
Whether in Balci's laboratory approach
or Mann's painterly exploration, both art-
ists create vivid abstractions, ripe with no-
tions of growth, wonder and subjugation.
Katherine Mann's oversized, abstract works
on paper consist of accumulations of se-
quins, paint and ink, which illustrate the
potentiality of growth, as well as the peril
of overabundance. “I think of my work as
baroque abstract, a celebration of the dispa-
rate” says Mann, who creates carefullycom-
posed fields with moments that are at once
Debt, a new exhibition featuring Simon
Gouverneur and Andy Moon Wilson, is
not about money. Rather, it is about the
slippery terrain of artistic debt. In 2006,
artist Andy Moon Wilson was introduced
to the work of iconoclastic and abstract
symbolist painter Simon Gouverneur, who
had been based in Washington, DC, for the
last decade of his life prior to his suicide in
1990. Andy Moon Wilson has spent his ar-
tistic career exploring the infinite possibili-
ties of visual design and ornament both as
an artist and in his day job as a carpet de-
signer. Simon Gouverneur also investigated
global visual design motifs in his paintings
and notebook sketches. Both artists share
Saturnalia is a group exhibition of new
by Teo González, Melissa Ichiuji, Hedieh
Javanshir Ilchi, Akemi Maegawa, Alexa
Meade, Susana Raab, and Nicholas Kahn
& Richard Selesnick. Teo González’s new
paintings challenge the boundaries of or-
ganic and geometric form through a pro-
cess of abstraction from the colors of skies
over specific city locations. González’s new
series of works are based on photographs of
skies, which he uses to map a color palette
in Photoshop. Melissa Ichiuji’s new work
expands on her approach to materials,
identities, domestic space, and sexualities.
chaotic, organized, thriving and decaying.
Katherine Mann elegantly builds her paint-
ings with hoards of ambiguous forms re-
calling elements found in systems of nature
and in the highly-decorative, resulting in
a menagerie of depth and color. By utiliz-
ing traditional lab procedures, Selin Balci
creates microenvironments by incorporat-
ing biological material as a new art media
to explore the literal process of life. From
sterile beginnings the growth of microbes
demonstrate a turbulent arc of life within a
largely imperceptible world. Balci's simple
living organisms live and die within a net-
work of biological exchanges highlighting a
wide range of behaviors similar to the hu-
man equivalent of social exchanges.
a fascination with archetypal abstracted
forms that can communicate on both eth-
nographically specific and universal lev-
els. But there is where the similarities end.
While Gouverneur intended a profound
and rigorous spiritual engagement with his
artwork, Moon Wilson rejects this spiritual
quest in favor of an exploration of the in-
tensely visual as it expresses itself both his-
torically and, more importantly, in contem-
porary culture. Mostly, the artist just draws
compulsively. But it is an intoxicating visual
experience to present these two artists to-
gether. Gouverneur's two large paintings
are flanked by hundreds of Moon Wilson's
small intense works on paper.
Her sculptures and installations are per-
formative works and staged fantasies that
often explore the boundaries of childhood
innocence and adult self-consciousness
andrepression. Each sculpture is sewn and
assembled from many materials. Hedieh
Javanshir Ilchi presents new mixed media
paintings on Mylar as provocative visual
essays on Persian, Iranian, and American
cultural identities. Ilchi uses militarist icons
of the current Iranian regime as invasions
and disruptions of a possible cultural co-
existence and mines imagery from both
Persian culture and Western abstraction.

40 A|C|A January 2011


SOUTHWEST
Tony Cragg was born in Liverpool in 1949.
Cragg’s main artistic expression is sculp-
ture; however prints are also a strong show-
case in his oeuvre. The works included in
his series Test Tubes and Bottles are some of
the most recognizable and are being repre-
sented in the show. In sculpture, he works
in metal, glass, and plastic fabrication, as
well as in traditional sculpture materials,
and applies a casually exquisite draftsman-
ship to drawings and prints. In the late
1970s, he began making wall sculptures of
assembled found objects, and has said, sur-
prisingly, that in doing so he was thinking
of van Gogh. Van Gogh, Cragg explained,
Terence La Noue's uniquely riven and reas-
sembled sculptural-paintings have gained
him worldwide recognition and over a
hundred and forty acclaimed solo exhibi-
tions throughout London, Paris, Tehran,
Stockholm, Cologne, New York, Los Ange-
les, Atlanta, Tucson, and Scottsdale. Muse-
ums such as The Museum of Modern Art
in New York, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Tate
Modern in London, and others in Japan,
Singapore, France and Australia, have in-
cluded his work in their permanent col-
lections. One of the most intriguing quali-
ties behind La Noue's brilliantly colored
mixed-media paintings, is the way La Noue
Mike Stack constructs paintings of thin hor-
izontal strips of oil paint, for a color field
that shifts vertically in shimmering optical
effect. Like so many modern painters, his
works are fundamentally two–dimensional
yet convey a subtle illusion of depth. His
drawings are highly worked, spontane-
ous exercises in process, where order is
wrought from non-specific gesture. In his
introductory exhibit, Steve Murphy takes
the Minimalist road to expression in highly
refined, severely reduced metal sculpture.
His simple shapes are proportioned to cre-
ate substantial volumetric weight and se-
ductive 360 degree views. Both these art-
EXHIBITIONS
wrote about going through the trash as “a Tony Cragg
fantasy journey through a land of strange Zane Bennett Santa Fe
forms and colors.” Cragg was elected Roy- [through Jan 28 - Feb 18]
al Academician in 1994. His works are in
many private collections but also found
extensively in many public collections, in-
cluding The Tate Gallery in London, the
New York Public Library and Museum of
Modern Art in New York City, the Alber-
tina Museum in Vienna, and several corpo-
rate collections among them Estee Lauder.
In 2007 he was awarded the Praemium
Imperiale, a major prize for outstanding
achievement in the arts that is given by the
Japan Art Association. Cragg, Spores, T.P.E., 1988, etching, 23”x24.5”.
creates them. He starts by combining lay- Terence La Noue
ers of colored acrylic with cotton netting Bentley Scottsdale AZ
and acrylic saturated canvas into low-relief [through Feb 6 - Feb 26]
molds, and allows them to dry overnight.
La Noue then proceeds to cut the dried
reliefs into sections and shards, which he
later unites in various ways to make up a
finished work. The ending effect is a multi-
dimensional art piece that is part mosaic,
part tapestry, part painting, and even part
sculpture. The diverse shapes, colors, and
textures that are created invite the viewer to
divulge into the intricacies of the painting, Terence La Noue, Return to Dakar,
while at the same time, enjoy the work of multimedia on wood, 33”x46”.
art as a whole.
Mike Stack & Steve Murphy
Davis Dominguez Tucson
ists have accomplished the abstract ideal of [through Feb 26]
provoking thought and emotion through
non-definable form.
(above)Michael Stack, Pilot, 2010, oil on linen.
(left)Murphy, Big Brother, 2007, leadened wood.
Exhibitions 41
 2010.21. 80 X 72 INCHES • MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS

Luc Leestemaker
Songs of the Unconscious
1020 Prospect, Suite 130, La Jolla, CA 92037 • (858) 459-0836
www.madisongalleries.com
HERBERT BAKER

“SELF-PORTRAIT” 1932
FROM THE BAYER FAMILY COLLECTION

EMIL NELSON GALLERY

2864 COLORADO AVE
SANTA MONICA, CA 90404
310-266-9904
KO
KAYCEE
OLSEN
GALLERY
 
exhibitions and special projects 2011

The California/International Arts Foundation’s

New Encyclopedia
L.A. Rising: So Cal Artists Before 1980
written by Lyn Kienholz
and overseen by Joan Weinstein, Associate Director of the Getty Foundation

Make ‘Em All Mexican

Two Solo Exhibitions

Ave 50 Studio ChimMaya Gallery

Highland Park, CA Montebello, CA
curated by Dr. Karen Mary Davalos full color catalog
opening in April 2011 opening in October 2011

L.A. Xicano
“Mapping Another LA: The Chicano Art Movement”
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center in collaboration with
Getty Southern California Research initiative
Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1945-1980
curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas
scheduled to open at the Fowler Museum, Fall 2011

Doin’ It in Public:
Art and Feminism at the Woman’s Building
as part of the
Getty Southern California Research initiative
Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1945-1980
scheduled to open at the Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art
October 2011

Fierce Beauty: The Art Work of Linda Vallejo

GO TO www.lindavallejo.com TO PREVIEW
full color 220 page book
with over 100 color plates
“Xicana Pop”
with essays by Betty Ann Brown, Peter Frank, William Moreno,
Peyote Earring
2008 Gloria F. Orenstein and Sybil Venegas
86”(h) x 14” (w) x 16” (d)
1
2

LEXANDER

PAST PRESENT FUTURE G. B. JONES

CURRENTLY SHOWING THROUGH 2011
  2 1 5 W 6 T H
S T U N I T 1 1 3 L O S A N G E L E S C A 9 0 0 1 4

W W W . L E X A N D E R G A L L E R Y . C O M  
 SUZANNA FIELDS

W A L K E R C O N T E M P O R A R Y
450 harrison avenue boston ma 0 2 11 8 6 1 7 . 6 9 5 . 0 2 11 w w w. w a l k e r c o n t e m p o r a r y. c o m