ABEL ALEJANDRE-THE RODIN OF CROSS-HATCHING

Abel Alejandre "Public Secrets" Installation of acrylic paintings on panels.

ABEL ALEJANDRE- "PUBLIC SECRETS"
APRIL 9- MAY 22, 2016


COAGULA CURATORIAL
974 Chung King Rd
Los Angeles, CA 
213-620-1569
www.coagulacuratorial.com

ABEL ALEJANDRE, "Rodin de Cross-Hatching

Rodin dice: puedo elegir un bloque de mármol y cortar lo que no necesito." Alejandre del "bloque de mármol metafórica" funciona en sentido inverso. He observado su dibujo maestría con diversos grados de grafito. Su exhibición actual mantiene su firma rayado transversal técnicas definidas con pintura acrílica.
Alejandre emociones autobiográfico imágenes guiadas y espiritualmente. La representación de imágenes familiares evolucionan a partir de las líneas que se cruzan ferozmente como águilas construyendo sus nidos.

Las pinturas de la exposición denominada "secretos" público, parecen ser tocado por la divinidad. Alejandre comparte su lucha con su creencia en Dios. Él viene de una familia de devotos católicos. Su obra representa su formación religiosa combinado con su arte educación secular y la puntualidad en las luchas políticas de inmigrantes mexicanos. Alejandre y su familia emigró desde Apatzingan, México a Wilmington, California. Alejandre actualmente vive y tiene su estudio en Long Beach. Él me escribió: "Yo le digo a mis amigos que soy una recuperación católica. He leído todo ahora y tomar lecciones que me hablan, más notablemente ha sido Siddhartha. Ahora, yo tome la ruta de menor resistencia, excepto cuando se trata de trabajar. En ese caso, voy a ir en contra del grano en esperanzas de lograr algo grande o ser un fracaso espectacular...ambos son aceptables."

La pintura titulada "La Trinidad" que representa al Padre, al Hijo y al Espíritu Santo, también está dedicado a su padre, su hijo y él. Las patatas con los cables eléctricos se conoce como un proyecto científico de la niñez, Alejandre afirma: "Hay patatas metida en un acto carnal bajo el ojo vigilante del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo. Se trata de mi fe o falta de ella para este asunto." La pintura habla a su espiritual-creativo-itinerario educativo-su vida. El ape podría representar la teoría de la evolución, las patatas copular, como introducción a la infancia la ciencia proyectos combinados con Kris Kristofferson y "Jesús fue un Capricornio". Eclesiastés 1:18 :" con mucha sabiduría hay mucha molestia; cuanto más conocimiento, más dolor." Alejandre crea conmovedora belleza desde su corazón y su talento y él no está solo.

by Sandra Vista



Abel Alejandre "The Rodin of Cross-Hatching

Rodin said: I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."  Alejandre's "metaphorical block of marble" works in reverse. I have observed his drawing mastery with various degrees of graphite. His current exhibition maintains his signature cross-hatching techniques defined with acrylic paint. Alejandre emotes autobiographical and spiritually guided images.  The representational-familial images evolve from lines that fiercely intersect like eagles building their nests.

The paintings from the exhibition named "Public Secrets", appear to be touched by the divine.  Alejandre shared his struggle with his belief in God.  He comes from a family of devout Catholics.  His work represents his religious training combined with his secular art education and the timely political struggles of Mexican immigrants.  Alejandre and his family emigrated from Apatzingan, Mexico to Wilmington,California. Currently Alejandre lives and has his studio in Long Beach. He wrote to me: "I tell my friends that I am a recovering Catholic.  I read everything now and take lessons which speak to me, most notably has been Siddhartha.  Now, I take the path of less resistance, except when it comes to work. In that case I will go against the grain in hopes of achieving something great or being a spectacular failure...both are acceptable."

The painting titled "The Trinity" representing the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, also is dedicated to his father, his son and himself.  The potatoes with electric cables is known as a childhood science project, Alejandre states: "There are potatoes engaged in a carnal act under the watchful eye of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  It deals with my faith or lack of it for that matter." The painting speaks to his spiritual-creative-educational journey-his life.  The ape could represent the theory of evolution, the potatoes copulating, as the introduction to childhood science projects combined with Kris Kristofferson and  "Jesus was a Capricorn". Ecclesiastes 1:18 :" For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."  Alejandre creates soulful beauty from his heart and his talent and he is not alone.

Wall of Silence 2016 (acrylic on panel)

The Doctor Is In 2016 (acrylic on panel)

Baseball caps with images/ acrylic

Coagula Curatorial opening night

SKIN-BARNSDALL PARK

NODE #5 MY STORY

SKIN

BARNSDALL PARK

4800 HOLLYWOOD BLVD

LOS ANGELES, CA 90027

www.barnsdallartpart.com

FEBRUARY 7 - APRIL 17, 2016

                                       G: " Dad why are you so dark?"

                                        D:  "Because I drank too much chocolate milk as a kid."

I wanted to begin by adding one of my family anecdotes regarding "skin".  It was triggered by an interactive piece referred to as an "educational mode".  These nodes were designed by the staff of LAMAG, including gallery educator Marta Feinstein and director Isabelle Lutterodt, as a place for "reflection"  and "dialogue".  During the opening I was too overly stimulated to sit and write my reflections in the provided sketchbooks.  The exhibition has served to impress upon me how the color of our skin begins its relevance in our family structure.  The dad in my story is my brother who was called "Prieto" by my mother.  In Spanish this refers to a dark-tan person.  It is a common nickname in the Mexican culture.  "Prieta" is for girls.  My niece "G" had just began school when she asked this question.  "Kindergarten" is the beginning of learning and maneuvering racial differences.

"Node #5" contains reflective words like: us, race, self, family, history, change, identity, and diversity, which serve as a base for the gallery visitors.  In the main gallery exist a floor piece with the phrase: "OUR LIVES MATTER".  Everyone's life matters, however, this phrase is a graphic reminder that we are all connected and feel the same kind of pain.  In the same space is a monumental wallpaper, on foam core piece, by Ken Gonzales-Day entitled "41 Objects Arranged by Color".

Ken Gonzales-Day " 41 Objects Arranged by Color"

Gonzales-Day's billboard style technique is a contemporary/pop way to reach a broader audience.  The images of sculptural busts, from antiquity, are also displayed in a familiar, academic, manner.  Most people have seen these images in their high school and college history books or on posters advertising the local museum of man.  The variety of profiles and the warm tones of the central figures, emphasizes that these artworks were derived from human beings.  The stones become flesh suspended in time.

"Skin" interpreted as shelter is presented in a site specific piece by Holly Tempo.  The long, narrow room with high ceilings, creates a vault, or room found in an ancient temple.  Tempo uses Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House, at Barnsdall Park, as the inspiration for the Mayan tile and hollyhock designs she has painted in the room.  Additionally, there are framed collages made with cardboard to symbolize the cardboard shelters runaway youth, in Los Angeles, sometimes use for sleeping.  Tempo specified the gay youth that are thrown out of their homes because of their sexual identity.  Cardboard Revival 2016, subliminally embraces the divinely inspired Mayan architectural designs with the memories recalled by the seeds of the hollyhock.  Hollyhocks are symbols of abundance, fertility, and considered "un premio de apoyo", (a prize/gift of support in the Mexican/Central American culture).  Tempo, an associate professor (painting) at Otis Art Institute, dug deeper by sharing her project with some of her painting students.  Her multicultural crew of students became artists on the job.  The message of the exhibition also exposes future artists to use their art for messages of love, understanding, remembering and reflecting our ancestors.

Holly Tempo "Cardboard Revival" 2016

Ann Le and Kaitlynn Redell's mixed-media works refer to their Asian ancestry.  Le's photo/collage works are also reflective of "home, sanctuary, and shelter" by using wallpaper floral designs to replace the people's faces in the photos. Wallpaper can serve as forms of skins in our family memories.  Layers of wallpaper in a home can attach remembrances of unity and the longevity of a family.  The floral wallpaper also reminded me of a personal experience with my grandmother's purchase of new kitchen linoleum in the late l950's.  My father laid it out on the kitchen floor and my brother and I rolled around on the floor trying to flatten the linoleum.  It is one of my favorite childhood memories.  I had permission to roll around foolishly on a Pollack splattered design long before being introduced to abstract expressionism in college.  As a visual artist Le probably absorbed patterns and colors from her family environments. 

 Memory is skin.

Ann Le and friend in front of her work.

Kaitlynn Redell exhibits two pieces, one  is an independent mixed media painting in which she uses photographs of the 1920's Chinese American actress Anna May Wong.  Imposter , a photograph from The Residents Series is the collaborative piece she shares with her creative partner of Redell and Jimenez.  Redell stated that their partnership "shares a mutual interest in the concept of inbetweeness, a space of fluidity and negotiation, where predetermined categories of the body, gender, history, and psychology are constantly formed and reformed." Redell's mother is Chinese, the inbetweeness she describes is perpetuated by people asking "what are you?".  This is a question I am constantly being asked.  I can fit into many cultures, the older I get the more Asian I appear to people.  I always say: "there are all kinds of Mexicans."

Kaitlynn Redell - Supporting Herself

Redell and Jimenez- Imposter

The SKIN  exhibition combines a variety of interpretations from the obvious of skin color, to conceptual approaches related to artists' homes and environments.  The artists do agree on the integration of mind, body, and spirit to communicate the purpose of the exhibition.  The color of our skin still matters.  SKIN uses the beauty and creativity of visual arts to remind the viewers of our connections.  It's like a "maternal broken record" which continually illustrates the hope for community and compassion.

 

EMMA SULKOWICZ-SELF PORTRAIT

EMMA SULKOWICZ-SELF-PORTRAIT

Coagula Curatorial
974 Chung King Rd
Chinatown,
Los Angeles, CA 90012

February 27 - April 3, 2016
Artist's Performance thru Friday - March 18, 2016

Sulkowicz and visitor Feb 27, 2016 

 Portrait by EMS (Eric Minh Swenson)

I BELIEVE YOU- CONVIVERE...

by Sandra Vista


Today is the last day to participate in Emma Sulkowicz' self portrait performance.  She has been at the gallery for three weeks, courageously exchanging conversations with Chinatown's art affecionados.  Sulkowicz has received national press regarding her visual arts senior thesis at Columbia University(2014) in which she carried a college dormitory mattress with her throughout her senior year protesting her rape by a fellow student. The mattress is symbolic of her traumatic experience of sexual assault and her fight- "la lucha" for reparation. 

Sulkowicz', a freshly incarnated avatar, appears strong and humble.  Unadorned, and make-up free, she shares her most precious gift of herself.  Sometimes when we are young our bravery supersedes our experiences.  With more opportunities for bravery individual patterns emerge. Sulkowicz is fortunate to have a creative arsenal to process her personal experiences as a woman of sexual assault.  When I spoke with her during opening night, I told her that I believed her and that part of my life purpose was to listen and support peoples' stories of emotional and physical abuse.  With no physical contact aloud, she gave me an "air high five".

Gloria Steinem said that putting a woman on a pedestal is a good way to know where she is.
Sulkowicz' is challenging this concept by presenting three aspects of herself, a 3-d model, Emmatron, her robotic version, and herself.  She represents a positive and encouraging example of the current generation that is portrayed as parakeets looking at themselves in the mirror of their cellphones.  For my satori I tried to give her an offering of a sheriff's badge.  As her assistant took my gift, she asked what it symbolized.  The badge is open to interpretations, for me it was an expression of gratitude for being part of her art performance. 

Sulkowicz could be anybody's daughter who is sent away to college.  We have high hopes for their future and fear the dangers of their first steps into the adult world.  Sulkowicz has received support her for her claims but also has been slandered as an opportunist using "her rape" as a way to get famous.  She wants you to see her as a real person, flesh and bones, not a news sound bite.  

The Mattress Girl will be with Sulkowicz as long as she needs her.  Right now TMG is the first cannon ball.  Gallery director and feminist, Mat Gleason was born at the end of the baby-boomer generation, where the womens' rights movement was already in place.  He welcomes women artists and respects their perspectives whether he agrees with them or not.   Sulkowicz' current exhibit, is becoming a significant contribution, by Coagula Curatorial,  for womens' rights, re-defining sexual assault, rape, and the need for human contact.  The beauty part is that it is delivered to us through art.



Graduate School CSULB Fall 1979- Painting class student critique...

Mr. Palm : " Hey Sandra, I like your painting-you paint like a man."

Sandra:             "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

Mr. Palm:   " Well yeah...!"

BEST IN SHOW- SAN DIEGO ART INSTITUTE

BEST IN SHOW

SAN DIEGO ART INSTITUTE
FEB 13-MARCH 17, 2016

1439 EL PRADO
SAN DIEGO, CA 92101


INTER-SPECIES LOVEBOAT

by Sandra Vista

This exhibit will be coming down after March 17, 2016.  Stop by on St. Patrick's Day as a super mitzvah. 

The exhibition by definition is a humorous look at humans love for their dogs and cats.  As a cat owner, I know how "schmaltzie" I can get when taking about my "pussygato", however this exhibition is also about the value of inter-species relationships, love, friendship, support, art history, altruism, politics, and most important-metaphors. 

Paul Koudonnaris

"Straight Outta Kitten" 2015 inkjet

Nat De Jesus, Sol Id Gold, Cindy Santos Bravo

"Cat Call To Action" 

Performance, mixed media 2016

Nat De Jesus, Sol Id Gold, Cindy Santos Bravo

Cat Call to Action 

Performance, mixed media 2016

Jon-Loren Brazan

"I'm going to a town that has already burnt down"

mixed media

Larry Caveney

"Boris the Cat"

Wick Alexander

"Retrato del Gato

Mosaic 2016

Sandra Vista

"Plantman Cat" 2009

mm/acrylic

nine lives

A TAKE-AWAY of CARDBOARD - NEO-DADAPOP - DOSSHAUS

DOSSHAUS- ZOEY TAYLOR & DAVID CONNELLY
Residency Feb 10-21, 2016
Reception Feb 19, 2016

Gregorio Escalante Gallery
978 Chung King Rd
Los Angeles, CA 90012

by Sandra Vista

Partial Installation of cardboard "supper" table

at gallery reception/residency

David Connelly, one of the creative partners of DOSSHAUS, told me that the cardboard table could provide a space for large dinner parties. The chairs, however, would not be as cooperative.  Diligent-whimsy of Claes Oldenburg's Store 1961 prevails throughout the exhibition.  Connelly and Taylor work continually on creating familiar objects from cardboard, black and white paint and paper.  Similarly to Oldenburg, they are finding alternative ways to promote their cardboard world.  The exhibition consists of small items like wristwatches to musical instruments (guitars, violins), vintage guitar speakers, drum set, to 11' dining table, compact car and clothing designed and worn by the artists. Also, there are framed documenting photographs.  Like Oldenburg (1961), the prices are modest right now.  Hindsight is better left for philosophers instead of wise art collectors with future anecdotes to share. 

The Balinese proverb: "We have no art we do everything as beautifully as we can."

 Such is the artful existence of DOSSHAUS.

Artists' reception, February 19, 2016

Musical styling in the environment...

Art Director/patron Gregorio Escalante (center)

watches inside & out

"Garage Band"

EMS Nude Survey #4- This Is A Way to Run a Country

EMS Nude Survey #4
 curated by: Eric Minh Swenson
February 5-March 5, 2016

featuring artists: Ben Brough, Simone Gad, Wyatt Mills, Lilli Muller, Dante Orphilla
                              Ammon Rost, Diedre Sullivan-Beeman & Chuck Swenson

Jai & Jai Gallery
648 N. Spring St.
Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA

Tues-Sat 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM 

This Is The Way To Run a Country- EMS Nude Survey #4

The fourth installment of Eric Minh Swenson's curatorial journey flashbacks to the late l970's through the mid l980's when Chinatown welcomed and safeguarded many young creatives to experiment.  The excitement for long-time art veteranos/anas like me is seeing artists of various ages harmoniously exhibiting together.  There seemed to be a sharing of wisdom, knowledge of the art world, visions, memories, desires-all equally valid.

Wyatt Mills and Ammon Rost share gestural styles and dynamic figures designed with fervent  investigating marks.  Mills' "nude figure" consists of transparent marks that rush upward creating an image of a woman thrusting through shredded ribbons of colors highlighting the prideful stance of a woman's form. Mills reminds us of the vital contribution of the female image to the world of art.  The" Venus of Willendorf" in perpetual motion.  Additionally, 
Rost's painting-Internal Dialogue and print-Print Observer, are influenced by his Japanese heritage via his intentional use of gold, red, and black as foundations for his work.  Rost mentioned that he was inspired by the work of Picasso and Kandinsky; that also appears evidently by the delineating black marks.

Lay Lady Lay, 2016 Wyatt Mills

The Observer 2016, Ammon Rost

Ammon Rost

Notably addressed, in the exhibition, is pornography as art and art as pornography by Lilli Muller and Simone Gad.  These seminal artists are altruistic women who heroically contribute to the local, national, and international art world. Lilli Muller's exhibits two plaster sculptural forms of a woman's breasts (breastplate) and vulva.  These works are called Braille Porn because of the textural Braille dots throughout the sculptures.  Muller has been involved in creating art to support women who have experienced the pain of breast cancer.  She selflessly  invites women to dignify their heroic experiences by immortalizing their bodies through the art of sculpture  The braille pulsates on the surface of the forms.  It isn't necessary to understand the translation, the viewers are open to interpret their own storyboard.  I personalized it by remembering my aunt Aurora, an avid reader, that developed severe arthritis that caused blindness.  She learned to read braille with her gnarled- almost desensitized fingers. The braille is an additional layer of defining diligence, options, and alternatives.

Braille Porn - Lilli Muller

Simone Gad's collage installation consists of provocative female pinup photographs of women from the l850's, to l960's and l970's, who are saved  by rescued pets. Inter-species relationships can provide comfort for the human and the animal. However, these collages politically stand for women's rights to use their bodies in alternative livelihoods.  The collages can also be viewed with 3-D glasses to remind the viewers that these captured images were real women.

Chat Orange Avec pinup 3-D 2016 (oil, pastel, collage) (c)2016 Simone Gad

Eric Minh Swenson, the " peripatetic photographer", continues to create "neo-art happenings", with his Nude Survey Series.  He said that his nude theme comes from his personal interest in the study and portrayal of the nude.  Because of his ubiquitous-Delorean-. time traveling energy, Swenson's life is surrounded by artists traveling at different speeds of

light. In one evening he can self-propel from an exhibit at LACMA to a fledgling show at "My Mother's Garage Gallery".  All exhibits and artists are equally treated with respect and acknowledgement.  This sentiment is obvious by the roster of artists that contributed to the exhibition through their art and presence to the "art for art's sake" environment.

Live model, April Flores was a bonus to remind us of the beauty of a sensuous, voluptuous, courageous female. Participating artist, Chuck Swenson created a cautiously descriptive and respectful painting of April.  The live model was also reminiscent of the art performances of the 70's and 80's in Los Angeles.

The exhibitions runs through March 5, 2016.

Contributing artists of Nude Survey #4

Chuck Swenson at the easel...

April Flores, Jai & Jai Gallery  2/5/16-Opening night
in front of Simone Gad's 3-d Nude Pinup Collage Installation (c) 2016