Art Exhibitions' Openings in L.A.

Art in L.A.: CURRENT EXHIBITIONS   Art in L.A.: UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS     

Art Exhibitions' Openings in L.A.

THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES (MOCA) PRESENTS

ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND FILM OF LAS VEGAS STRIP
FROM LANDMARK ARCHITECTURAL STUDY

March 21 through June 20, 2010

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), presents Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown March 21 through June 20, 2010, at MOCA Pacific Design Center. This exhibition presents original photographs and films produced in the context of the “Learning from Las Vegas Research Studio” conducted by architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and
Steven Izenour at the Yale School of Architecture in the fall of 1968. Out of this research resulted Learning from Las Vegas, a landmark treatise on architectural theory published in 1972. Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown is curated by Martino Stierli and Hilar Stadler in collaboration with artist Peter Fischli. MOCA’s presentation, organized by MOCA Curator Philipp Kaiser,
follows presentations at Museum im Bellpark, Kriens, Switzerland; Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt, Germany; and Yale School of Architecture, New Haven, Conn.
“The theory of communication in architecture set forth in Venturi and Scott Brown’s groundbreaking publication is crucial for experiencing space in major cities across the world, including Los Angeles,” commented MOCA Curator Philipp Kaiser. “Martino and Hilar have taken on the task of reappraising the engaging visual discourse from this study, and have directed our attention to the photographs themselves.”
“For the architects, photography was both the means of argumentation and representation of their research,” commented curators Martino Stierli and Hilar Stadler. “We have removed the images from their original analytical context and have presented them as photographic sensations.”
At the end of the 1960s and in the beginning of the 1970s, architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour discovered Las Vegas as a paradigm of the commercial city. Their findings, published in the book Learning from Las Vegas, are legendary, extending the categories of the ordinary, the ugly, and the social into architecture. Their contemporaries reacted strongly against the Las Vegas research, which approached architecture from the perspectives of symbolism and the phenomena of appearance. For the architects, photography was both the means of argumentation and representation of their research. Their approach used photographic methods borrowed from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and art.
Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown presents the original research materials from the archives of Venturi Scott Brown & Associates, including over 80 photographs and a selection of films. Motivated primarily by an interest in the image, the exhibition returns to a point before theory formation, and refers directly to the photographic material. The selection of images included in the exhibition focuses largely on secondary aspects and side products of the research project. It thereby shifts to the forefront previously unknown photographs that settled on the fringes of the Las Vegas research.

Art in L.A.: CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE DE PASADENA PRESENTS

FAMILY PORTRAIT: WOLF, GRANDMA AND OTHER ACCOMPLICES.

AN EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS BY VALÉRIE DAVAL

Through March 31st
 

Alliance Française de Pasadena is pleased to present Family Portrait: Wolf, Grandma and Other Accomplices, an exhibition of paintings by French artist Valérie Daval from March 5 through March 31 at 34 East Union Street in Pasadena.
Family Portrait: Wolf, Grandma and Other Accomplices is a series of paintings encompassing real and fictional characters, including animals that look strangely human. Alternating between miniature and life-size images, black-and-white and shades of gray and color, Daval plays with contrasts, thereby altering reality to carry us into an imaginary and mythical world for which she feels great passion. Originally inspired by the little Red Riding Hood story, the artist has developed her own myth, which echoes her own history. Little by little, the children are turned into animals and, as in a game of hide and seek, accomplices appear. These transformations, or voluntary disguises, make this a unique Family Portrait, where reality blends with fiction, where animals speak and grandmas have big ears…
Daval was born in Normandy, but during her childhood her family moved to several different places in France. Living in Limousin, south France, and then in Brittany, she retains strong memories of these places – woods, animals, walks outdoors, seaside – influencing her artwork even today. Daval started painting when she was a child, and took part in various painting workshops. After moving to Sarthe, she signed in with Guy Brunet’s workshop and attended Le Mans’ School of Fine Arts.
After graduating, she began visual research work, which took her through various stages working on portraits and mythology. Whether real or imaginary, the attraction for portraits was not so much anatomical, but came from a fascination with their plastic dimension and history. “A unique color and gesture spring from each of us.” She draws her inspiration from her memory guided by the feelings she had in front of the landscapes, the people and even the animals she encountered. “My work is also influenced by myths. The stories we find in the origin of each civilization inspire me and are reflected in my own history. As part of our collective memory, myths bring us together.”

Daval has made Los Angeles her home since 2007. She has exhibited widely in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as locally at the Deborah Martin Gallery (2009) and Madison Gallery in La Jolla (2008). Daval is represented by the Madison Gallery in La Jolla and by the Cupola Gallery in Sheffield, UK.

The Alliance Française de Pasadena was founded in 1924. Its purpose is to encourage the study of the French language and culture and promote understanding and friendship between the French people and others who share these interests. The Pasadena chapter differs from other language schools by offering a blend of language learning and cultural immersion.

100 for 1000 – Tomorrow’s Legendary Art Priced for Today
Through March 31st
 

LOOK Gallery presents all original artwork, reproductions, and limited edition prints for under $1000. Featuring work by Ann Arden, Gregg Chadwick, Cathy Charles, Ghislaine Fenmore, Jerri Levi, Mike Lohr, Ramon Lopez, Stephanie Mercado, Chris Naylor, Sally Peterson, Walt Peregoy, Eric Poppleton, Jeff Robinson, Ronald Santos, Bruna Stude, Artie Twitchell, Kent Twitchell, Mike Vegas, and Adam Wolpert.

WHERE:
LOOK Gallery
1933 S. Broadway, Space 111
Los Angeles, CA 90007
213-748-1113

TILGHMAN BRANNER: INTROSPECTIVE @ MUZEUMM
through April 16, 2010

Air Sculptures, the Grid, Space, and Beyond

New Los Angeles Gallery Presents Daring New Work
 

One thing is clear to all who step into Muzeumm, a new art gallery that opened in October 2009 in L.A.’s West Adams district: I’ve stepped into another world.
That’s the type of reaction this daring new art space generates with its newest exhibition of work, Introspective by artist Tilghman Branner, opening March 6, 2010. Muzeumm Founder/Director Mishelle Moross explains; “Tilghman’s work takes the familiar and turns it into something exotic. It's alive and bold while inducing child-like inquisitiveness. This body of work beautifully executes the visual parallels between micro-organisms and outer-space to reveal a stimulating relationship that human beings shouldn’t live without.”
In Introspective, Tilghman Branner’s mixed-media work is up to the task. Branner begins with, in the artist’s own words, “light and shapes and form and weight…and absence of weight”. Her paintings play out as hyper real snapshots of camouflage in nature, while the sedated fuzz of Branner’s TV set sculpture transforms space junk into another refraction of light, sound and shape. A series of incredibly dense bronze castings establish a point of reference for the show’s featherweight, paper and gauze air-sculptures.
Central to all of the work in Introspective are two themes: first, is the concept of a grid – be it spiritual, spatial or technological – that binds all things; and second, is a vessel-like formal structure that Branner asserts one encounters repeatedly, “in outer space, under a microscope, in spores—forming and dropping and reforming.” These themes interplay with one another throughout the work in the show, mapping out an unmistakable internal grid of their very own.

WHAT:
Introspective – Mixed Media Paintings and Sculpture by Tilghman Branner

WHEN:
Opening Reception: March 6, 2010 at 7:00PM
Exhibition runs from March 6 to April 16, 2010
Gallery Hours: 11:00am to 7:00pm Tuesday-Friday (by appointment Saturday-Monday)

WHERE:
Muzeumm
4811 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
310-388-6161
www.muzeumm.com 

ABOUT MUZEUMM:
Muzeumm is a daring new art gallery that opened in October 2009, in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles, a burgeoning creative enclave located directly between the gallery districts of downtown and Culver City. Since its opening, Muzeumm has shown work by contemporary artists Tilghman Branner, Bianka Kovar, Peter Liashkov, Elena Moross, Pierre Picot, and Sergei Tivetsky.
Muzeumm Founder and Director Mishelle Moross – whose mother is a St. Petersburg born artist, and whose father was a Motown recording artist with the Soviet dissident band Black Russian – guides this innovative space. Muzeumm shares its facility with Aleksei Tivetsky, the founder of the West coast’s most sought-after art restoration and conservation studio.

Herb Alpert Black Totem Series

Through May 25, 2010

Herb Alpert, the renowned musician and music producer as well as accomplished artist presents his Black Totem Series at Ace Gallery Beverly Hills.
Totems have pan-cultural associations throughout diverse cultures around the world, and these vertical forms have been used over the course of history as tribal talismans representative of genealogies, ancestors and documenting societies. Herb Alpert, in his Black Totem series, has focused on this totemic language of sculpture for the past 20 years.
Alpert’s process for creating these sculptures is very hands on. He works with wet clay first molding it into vertical forms ranging from 8 to 36 inches tall. From these he selects the ones he will make into larger sculptures that will range from 12 to 20 feet in height. These larger works are also hand formed with the wet clay. When completed, molds are made and then the sculptures are cast in bronze and patinaed black. Alpert’s totems read abstractly yet suggestions of recognizable forms appear; an eagle form seemly emerging from the top of one, or human shapes surfacing. That their forms evolved naturally, organically, and are formed by the artist without carving tools that further convey their biomorphic qualities.
Alpert was, for the most part, inspired by the totems unique to the Pacific Northwest of North America such as those of the Haida, Tlingit and Kwakiutl tribes, whose totem poles were made of single pieces of cedar, some up to forty feet in height. For the Haida tribe, these ancestral totems are, and have been for hundreds of years, the essence of family and tribal identity and sometimes were used to mark entranceways to their lodgings. The totems of the Pacific Northwest function as crests of families or chiefs commemorating major events or occasions, represented by hierarchies of different creatures, animals or various supernatural beings (each signifying different human attributes). In Native American tradition, a totem is an entity or symbol that watches over or ‘assists’ a family, clan or tribe. Totemism, derived from the Ojibwe language, refers to that which is kinship-related, and it is also a belief system that is frequently associated with shamanistic religions. Totems act as ‘familiars’ or guides accompanying one through life, both in the physical and spiritual worlds. Alpert’s totems subliminally engage these theories and histories.
Herb Alpert’s Black Totem Series is an exhibition well worth exploring. ACE GALLERY BEVERLY HILLS: 9430 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Phone: 310-858-9090

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