From Lebrun to Paul McCarthy

January 21-May 20, 2012
Pasadena Museum of California Art

There is an overwhelming solidarity by the forty-one artists exhibiting at the LA RAW exhibition.  Many of the artists have long-standing relationships with eachother.  The major focus of Abject Expressionism begins in the entry of the exhibition with Jack Zajac's monumental sculpture entitled, Descent from the Cross (1955).  The viewers are reminded of the torture and humiliation that Christ on the cross symbolizes.  The larger than life Christ sculpture exemplifies punishment and agonizing pain in his sinuous appendages.  He also resembles the emaciated Holocaust survivors seen in news reels of World War II.

To the left of the main room Rico Lebrun's Magdaline (1950) and John Paul Jones' Ronk's Woman (1964), co-exist on opposite sides of the room.  Magdaline an "abject woman" by reputation and rumor is also known as a devoted disciple of Jesus.  She was a witness to the crucifixion, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus.  As a patron saint of repentant sinners, Lebrun's image represents a stalwart woman facing her critics directly and profoundly visceral.  Additionally, women found near battlefields, are often prostitutes who help ease the soldiers' pain during their furloughs.  Jones' Ronk's Woman (1964) can represent a wife, mother, lady of the evening, and the illusions men experience in battle.  The scale of the work is a concentrated effort of heartache. The atmospheric quality centered on a solitary woman, waiting on the edge of the bed, stresses how women are expected to virtuously "wait" until their men return from war.  Jones' painting is the "mastaba" of the exhibition-"a bench of mud", basic, solid and grounded.  Also this female image is a subtle and acute feminist statement that eminates throughout the exhibition. 

Judy Chicago's Red Flag (1971) displays an aggressive symbol of the differences between men and women.  The graphic imagery of menstral blood is loud and clear for womens' rights. But what remains the same between the sexes is the blood soaked flags that are raised during wartime.  Bloodshed is inevitable during an siege.

Hans Burkhardt's My Lai (1968)  is a vestige of the horrors of war.  Cobblestones of skulls narrate the atrocities of the Vietnam War.  The images on Burkhardt's painting are replays that were brought into our homes on the nightly news.  It has been written many times that the exposure of war on television has diminished the shock value for the general public.  This over-exposure does not immunize us but instead infiltrates the television viewers with the trauma. It becomes "post-tramatic stress disorder" by association.

The exhibition is entitled from Lebrun to Paul McCarthy.  McCarthy's work focuses on using the human body as an art medium.  Like Jackson Pollack's action paintings McCarthy's performance piece, where he whips the gallery windows and walls with paint soaked rags, marks time and movement.  With every "whip" he created super-imposed "Rorshasch" images that continually stimulate our visual senses.  He's the "Abject Sisyphus"" painting his way uphill.  Michael Duncan stated that he coined the phrase "Abject Expressionism".  Paul McCarthy embodies the term with permanent and empheral marks.

Karla Klarin "Oceanscapes"

Schomburg Gallery
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave #E3A
Santa Monica, CA 90404

February 25-March 21, 2012

by Sandra Vista

Chris Chop (oil on canvas) 40"x72"

Ocean Study #3 (oil on canvas) 12"x20" (sold)

Ocean Study #1 (oil on canvas) 22"x24"

Karla Klarin's recent exhibition at Schomburg Gallery encompasses forty years of her practice.  Klarin's previous work at Schomburg focused on the architecture of the Ocean Park neighborhoods of Santa Monica.  These paintings are looking even further  westward to the Pacific Ocean.  Klarin paints her familiar surroundings by using what she calls her "eccentric code".  Klarin breaksdown the surface of the canvas into fissures of color that modulate the light and form of her oceanscapes. 

There is an obvious connection with "Cubism" in Klarin's paintings as seen in the intersecting angles and the multitude of viewpoints that intensify the subject matter.  Klarin has spent years studying the ocean waves of Santa Monica.  Her paintings demonstrate her knowledge of how the exchange of energy between the water molecules creates an ocean of crisscrossed waves traveling in various directions.  Each painting is fractured and fragmented  into various intersecting wavelengths.  The crests of the waves are elevated in some areas forming sharp edges.  In addition, the troughs are delineated as deep space with a series of overlapping shapes and revealing layers of color.  And also quite prevalent are drips throughout the paintings which exude Klarin's command of her painting techniques and her courageous use of color.

Klarin spoke of her influences of Aztec and Mayan ruins.  She stated that in l970 she made a journey to see the ruins and was motivated to create paintings based on her familial neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley.  Her signature techniques continued throughout the l980's when she moved to downtown Los Angeles and focused on the "ruins" of the city skyline.  Currently,  the reminiscing shadows that are cast and integrated into the Aztec and Mayan ruins continue to inhabit Klarin's paintings.  The Pacific Ocean provides the visual clay for Klarin to interpret the various fragmented forms of the waves and imprint her inspirational journey.

AFTER THE GOLDRUSH: Reflections and Postcripts on the National Chicano Moratorium of August 29, 1970

curated by Vincent Ramos

Vincent Price Museum
East Los Angeles College
Small Gallery
September 16, 2011-December 16, 2011

                              Diego J. Garza (Silver Dollar (ruinas) 2011
On the Corner
by Sandra Vista

Vincent Ramos curated an exhibition at Vincent Price Museum in the fall of 2011 which spotlighted the National Chicano Moratorium of August 29, 1970 and the death of Mexican-American journalist, Ruben Salazar.  The Chicano Moratorium was an anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.  Ramos' artwork centers on remembering, and continually unfurling the mind, body and soul of the Vietnam War era.  Born in l973, Ramos' involvement with the Vietnam War began in the womb.  His uncle Forrest Lee Ramos, who was killed in Vietnam in l967, became part of his character building legacy.  This legacy also speaks to the Mexican-American families of Los Angeles county.  The After the Goldrush exhibition appropriately invited a group of "cross-generational" artists working in various mediums.  Some of the exhibiting artists like: Will Herron III, John Valadez, Ruben Guevara, and Judithe Hernandez, had first-hand experience with the Chicano Moratorium.

Diego J. Garza's Silver Dollar (ruinas) 2011, served as an essential metaphor of a historical moment influenced by war and the impaling force of grief on mankind.  In a photograph Garza's ruinas seemed monumental in scale.  However, in real life it occupied a small corner of the gallery.  As an abstraction of the tragedy that occurred at the Silver Dollar Cafe in East Los Angeles in l970, Garza gives us something tangible to remind us of the death of Ruben Salazar and all the other people who lived to tell the story of August 29, 1970.

Judithe Hernandez' painting-collage entitled Mekong Ollamalitzi 2011, integrates the Mexican and Vietnamese culture. The horses rustling in terror can almost be heard reverberating off the canvas.  At times they appear mechanical like "war horses" on the battlefield.  At other times, they seem to be harbingers of future bloodshed.  
 Ollamalitzi, an Aztec ball game, linked with Mekong, fuses the cultures and reminds the viewers of the overwhelming contribution of Mexican-American soldiers that served in Vietnam.  War is like a "ball game" where many are destined to lose.

Hernandez' painting was in the entrance of the gallery.  The design of the exhibition consisted of walls that surrounded the center of the gallery.  The viewers were gingerly compelled to walk along the walls observing the various works dedicated to the moratorium.  There was a vigil-like atmosphere expressed by the creative contribution of the artists.  Additionally, there was an extensive amount of photography that served as documentation and portraiture.  Isabel Avila L. Rodriquez included a photograph of a Brown Beret.  The prophetic figure is seated on a metal folding chair at an outdoor event.  He is prepared for the day's events holding two ceremonial wooden instruments decorated with Aztec symbols and his brown beret uniform. He establishes a mixture of his cultures-Mexican and American.  Ramos' referencing of Neil Young's song, After the Goldrush, can be understood in this photograph.  The Brown Beret has a timeless presence.  The past, present and future that has been defined in Young's song exists behind the soldier's sunglasses. He is saying: "I 'm here-don't forget me-there's more to be done."  Was he "... lying in a burnt out basement..."? Was he "...hoping for a replacement..."?  Did this Brown Beret experience the brutalities of the Vietnam War?

Young's After the Gold Rush, was released soon after the moratorium.  It intentionally became the soundtrack for this exhibition.  There were two Postcripts for the show in which there were artists' talks and performances.  I was privileged to be present on September 29, 2011 during the performance of Felicia Montes and the readings by Ruben Guevara.  I came in at the tail end of Felicia Montes' captivating performance but I was able to experience all of Guevara's poetry.  One of Guevara's readings focused on the 10th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium.  The poem written on August 29, 1980 entitled: Whittier Boulevard is Still Bleeding, was written as a tribute to Ruben Salazar and as a response to the closing of Whittier Boulevard to cruising.  Part of the poem goes as follows:

      August 29, 1970

Sirens singing, Sheriffs dancing

To a street song of death

They cut the tongue

They killed the will

They closed the boulevard
Silver Dollar shootout

LA Times journalist

Time Being Thrown In

Moshe' Elimelech
Geometric Geographics
Jan 7-Feb 11, 2012
L2Kontemporary
990 N. Hill #205
Los Angeles, CA 90012
323-225-1282   L2Kontemporary.com

Moshe'  Elimelech's current watercolor series at L2Kontemporary in Chinatown represent individual cross sections of time and energy.  Each watercolor's vertical format consists of bands of subtle color that can be deciphered as ephemeral moments of the artist's creative thoughts.  The energy of his creative thoughts flickers along in chips of color.  The combination of all the formal components-the lines that draw everything together, can be read and played musically.

The timely absorption and saturation of the watercolor documents Elimelech's concern for the importance of craftsmanship and its contribution to the creation of each artwork.



Moshe' Elimelech

L2 Kontemporary

990 N. Hill St #205

Los Angeles, CA 90021

opening : Jan 7, 2012

review to follow

Lisa Adams-Paradise Notwithstanding

Paradise Notwithstanding 2011

CB1 Gallery

207 W. 5th St

Los Angeles, CA 90013

December 11, 2011-January 15, 2012

Bellwether Species

by Sandra Vista

Lisa Adams current paintings of her personal paradise are like a bullet proof vest.  There are signs of protection in the beauty of flora, fauna, and fluffy clouds.  There is serenity in flat areas of color.  But as the title, Paradise Notwithstanding, suggests we have to be prepared for the inevitable.  The individual worlds in each painting are devoid of shadows even though there are objects being illuminated.  Shadows serve as locators and indicators of objects and things.  Without them the artist is not constrained by time or place.  As Adams stated in her artist's statement for the exhibition: "My paradise is broke, melancholic, maybe, but beautiful nevertheless. It's a place that makes me feel comfortable."

The titles of the paintings are clues for Adams' interpretation of her paradise.  By definition, a "generic" paradise consists of a landscape filled with orchards of flowers, exotic birds, and various species of animals communing under the shade of amorous trees.  Adams' paintings limit the imageries to solitary figures such as solemn bird portraits or pairs of objects, as seen in the thistle blooming flowers in Paradise Notwithstanding and the vandalized cottonwood trees in Made in the USA.  These images appear portentous in terms of ecology and the future of our planet. The Bellwether Exchange characterizes a warning to preserve plots of land.  The land is exalted and the grasses partially protected by a dome reminiscent of a "bio-dome" and hot house.

Adams' paintings are "melancholic" and they also continue to engage in abstraction with monochromatic colors and patterns.  The montage style of the paintings stresses Adams' cerebral process of creating the work.  Each color, object, texture are methodically retrieved and placed.  What is inside Adams' head is projected on the canvases.

Made in the USA

The Bellwether Exchange

Roland Reiss-Personal Politics: Sculpture from l970's and l980's

Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art
Sept 18, 2011-January 8, 2012

Semiotics-Semiology-Semiotician

The Castle of Perseverance (1978), Roland Reiss' historically captivating installation of a l970's American living room begins to emanate an alluring incense of sawdust, sandalwood, intention, and ingenuity before it appears behind the museum wall.  The life size installation made from particle board contains furniture and household objects that trigger a spark of time travel for the museum participants.  The living room and miniature environments contain objects that began as clues, cues, and later as Reiss stated:"...became signifiers."  Carpentry tools like hammers and saws combined with TV dinners, beer cans, a litter box and artist's slides.  Tools strewn in the living room insinuate Americans' entrepeneurial efforts beginning in the home.  For artists their studio may spill over into other rooms.  Was this living room a replica of Reiss' home?  During our interview Reiss said that his work was about healing.  Ecclesiastically, the living room opens to a museum filled with satellites of lessons learned.  During the creation of these works Reiss was a middle-aged man who had served in the Korean War and had survived the turbulence of the l960's and l970's.  As a survivor of these eras he expressed his grief over the assassination of John and Robert Kennedy.  These deaths are symbolically overflowing with mystery and multiple intrepretations.  Reiss' tableaux endeavor to explain the human psychology of co-existing with the mysteries of daily life and mankind's need to assign value to objects and subject matter.

The over forty tableaux are encased in clear plexi-glass which gives them a "TV-like" resemblance and familiarity.  Within the common language that the objects project in the tableaux, participants can relax and enjoy the mysteries from all sides.  Also because Reiss lives and works in Los Angeles, there could be touches of Hollywood in the miniature sculptures.  In many of the tableaux there will replicas of lighting equipment and cameras which could indicate the scene to be a movie set or a dose of reality being filmed.  Adventures in the Painted Desert-A Murder Mystery...might have been a Western movie or TV scene in Old Tucson.  There is a tableau dedicated to weightlifting equipment reminiscent of when Reiss lived near Muscle Beach in Venice, California.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jane Fonda would have been in the mainstream at that time.  On display is a series dedicated to the office politics of the business world.  Adult Fairy Tales I: The Migration of Thought (1983) introduces  women as authority figures.  However the CEO of this company appears solemn and unengaged with her staff.  Adult Fairy Tales II: Rates of Exchange (1984), is pre-Anita Hill. There is a woman running away red with emotion.  The saws and logs in the office are equal to "the elephant in the living room", these people are trying to ignore the obvious issues of their environment.  With Reiss' experience as a sculptor, he is responsible for making every item in each of the tableaux.  He mentioned that his figures had an Edward Hopper-like style that emerged unintentionally.

Reiss' tableaux cover a myriad of emotions.  There is romance interpreted in the dance tableaux and the living rooms with suitcases by the door.  Additionally, there are Godzilla creatures in movie tableaux appropriate for the theme of miniatures used in Japanese movies.  The final tableaux enhance the irony of miniatures serving for life situations.