Over 80 Los Angeles art galleries have joined together to create an online platform to promote engagement with the local and international art audience. Each week GALLERYPLATFORM.LA will present 10 gallery “viewing rooms” and 1 curated project.
(2.18-3.3)
Galleries this week
Fahey / Klein GalleryFive Car GarageMatthew Marks GalleryNICODIMNight GalleryNonaka-HillTanya Bonakdar GalleryVISITS with LA Artists, Collectors, Gallerists
Fahey / Klein Gallery
Fahey / Klein Gallery
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Address
148 North La Brea
Los Angeles, CA 90036 -
Website
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Inquiry

Janette Beckman, Installation View, Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
The Mash - Up

Janette Beckman , FUTURA, Crazy Legs, 1983/2016
Archival Pigment Print
40 × 60 inches
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso
Janette Beckman , FUTURA, Crazy Legs, 1983/2016
Archival Pigment Print
40 × 60 inches
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso
The Fahey/Klein Gallery is pleased to present The Mash Up, the inaugural exhibition of collaborative works by British photographer Janette Beckman and some of New York’s most important graffiti artists. This series combines Beckman’s iconic portraits of influential DJs and MCs, each individually painted, drawn on, and/or collaged by many of New York’s best-known graffiti artists including Crash, Futura, Lady Pink, Queen Andrea, Revolt & Zephyr.
The Mash Up series was originally conceived and curated by artist and former Def Jam Creative Director, Cey Adams. Adams selected and curated the participating artists, with Beckman allowing each artist to select a photo from her archive to recreate in their own distinct style, producing entirely new works of art in the process.
In addition to the new collaborative Mash Up works, our exhibition features a selection of historic photography produced by Beckman during London’s seminal punk rock era, and the birth of New York City’s hip hop culture.
Janette Beckman began her career at the dawn of punk rock working for publications such as The Face and Melody Maker. She shot bands from The Clash to Boy George as well as three Police album covers and documented the youth culture of the era. Moving to NYC in 1983, Beckman was drawn to the underground hip-hop scene where she photographed the pioneers of the culture such as RUN DMC, Slick Rick, Salt-N-Pepa, Grandmaster Flash, and Big Daddy Kane.

Janette Beckman , CEY, Keith2.0, 1985/2014
Archival Pigment Print
40 × 30 inches
Edition of 10
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso
Janette Beckman , CEY, Keith2.0, 1985/2014
Archival Pigment Print
40 × 30 inches
Edition of 10
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso

Janette Beckman, LADY PINK, Queen Latifah, 1990/2016
Archival Pigment Print
24 × 20 inches
Edition of 15
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso
Janette Beckman, LADY PINK, Queen Latifah, 1990/2016
Archival Pigment Print
24 × 20 inches
Edition of 15
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso

Janette Beckman, CLAW MONEY, Salt N Pepa, 1987/2014
Archival Pigment Print
60 × 40 inches
Edition of 8
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso
Janette Beckman, CLAW MONEY, Salt N Pepa, 1987/2014
Archival Pigment Print
60 × 40 inches
Edition of 8
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso

Janette Beckman, CES, Big Daddy Kane, 1988/2015
Archival Pigment Print
40 × 30 inches
Edition of 10
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso
Janette Beckman, CES, Big Daddy Kane, 1988/2015
Archival Pigment Print
40 × 30 inches
Edition of 10
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso

Janette Beckman, MORNING BREATH, Slick Rick, 1989/2014
Archival Pigment Print
40 × 30 inches
Edition of 10
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso
Janette Beckman, MORNING BREATH, Slick Rick, 1989/2014
Archival Pigment Print
40 × 30 inches
Edition of 10
Signed, titled, dated, numbered verso
Five Car Garage
Five Car Garage
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Address
Santa Monica CA 90405
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Website
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Inquiry
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Five Car Garage was established in 2013 by owner and Healer/Dealer and Garagist, Emma Gray. The space, an actual five car garage, situated 18 blocks from the Pacific Ocean, evolved out of her first space EGHQ on La Cienega Blvd.

Installation view The Forest and the Sea Five Car Garage
A show in support of and to raise awareness for Climate Change - benefitting LA Waterkeeper, TreePeople and Habits of Waste.
Artists: Ashwini Bhat, Forrest Gander, Rema Ghuloum, Anja Salonen, Allegra Jones, L, Ross Caliendo, Charles Irvin, Max Jansons, John Bucklin, Rebecca Farr, Suné Woods, Justin Ortiz, Isabelle adams, Lindsay Preston Zappas, Max Maslansky, Amelia Lockwood
and Matt Goldberg.
In lieu of a press release we offer this poem by Pulitzer winning, eco poet Forrest Gander. "Postfire-Forest" is from his upcoming book "Twice Alive" to be published later this year.
"Post-fire Forest"
by Forrest Gander
Shadows of shadows without canopy,
phalanxes of carbonized trunks and
snags, their inner momentum shorted-out.
They surround us in early morning
like plutonic pillars, like mute clairvoyants
leading a Sursum Corda, like the excrescence
of some long slaughter.
All that moves
is mist lifting, too indistinct to be called
ghostly, from scorched filamental
layers of rain-moistened earth. What
remains of the forest takes place
in the exclamatory mode. Cindered
utterances in a tongue from which
everything trivial has been volatilized,
everything trivial to fire. In a notch,
between near hills stubbled
with black paroxysm, we spot
a familiar sun, liquid glass globed
at the blowpipe’s tip. If this landscape
is dreaming, it must dream itself awake.
You have, everyone notes, a rare talent
for happiness. I wonder how
to value that, walking through wreckage.
On the second day, a black-backed
woodpecker answers your call, but we
search until twilight without finding it.

Anja Salonen, Vesica, 2021
Oil on Canvas
30 × 24 inches
Anja Salonen, Vesica, 2021
Oil on Canvas
30 × 24 inches

Ross Caliendo, Leaf Heart, 2021
Oil, and acrylic on canvas with artist made frame
32 1/2 × 27 1/2 inches
Ross Caliendo, Leaf Heart, 2021
Oil, and acrylic on canvas with artist made frame
32 1/2 × 27 1/2 inches

L, 444-555-666 Portal, YEAR (Left)
Airbrushed pigment on canvas
62 1/2 × 62 1/2 inches
L, Spell for Fae Portal Access, YEAR (Right)
Glass, oil, mixed materials
12 7/32 × 12 7/32 x 24 13/32 inches
L, 444-555-666 Portal, YEAR (Left)
Airbrushed pigment on canvas
62 1/2 × 62 1/2 inches
L, Spell for Fae Portal Access, YEAR (Right)
Glass, oil, mixed materials
12 7/32 × 12 7/32 x 24 13/32 inches

Suné Woods, Suite Number Seven, 2020
Video
RT: 4 min. 28 sec.
Suné Woods's commissioned contribution to Meshell Ndegeocello's project: Chapter & Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin (A co-production of Bismillah, LLC & Fisher at Bard; co-commissioned by Live Arts Bard, UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre, and Festival de Marseille)

Lindsay Preston Zappas, Tangle Weaving (rust and blues), YEAR
Weaving, collage, and photograph
51 × 64 inches
Lindsay Preston Zappas, Tangle Weaving (rust and blues), YEAR
Weaving, collage, and photograph
51 × 64 inches

Max Jansons, Light in the Forest,2020 (Left)
Oil on linen
24 x 20 inches
Max Maslansky, Three fishes vase, 2021 (Right)
Glazed ceramic
15 × 16 × 9 inches
Max Jansons, Light in the Forest,2020 (Left)
Oil on linen
24 x 20 inches
Max Maslansky, Three fishes vase, 2021 (Right)
Glazed ceramic
15 × 16 × 9 inches
Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks Gallery
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Address
1062 N Orange Grove Ave
West Hollywood, CA 900467818 Santa Monica Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90046 -
Website
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Inquiry
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Matthew Marks Gallery represents twenty-eight artists of different generations working in a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, and printmaking.

Newspaper (detail) 1993
In the early 1990s, Robert Gober began making artworks that resemble newspapers, seamlessly interspersing his own fabricated stories and images between pre-existing articles and advertisements. First shown in his 1992 exhibition at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York, the sculptures of bundled newspapers are among his most iconic works.
Gober has been exploring sexuality, politics, religion, and the natural world in meticulously handcrafted work since the 1970s. In his art, even the most seemingly commonplace object contains multiple meanings and implications. The foundation of his practice is the physical act of making, which for Gober can entail learning a new craft, sourcing materials and knowledge, and enduring long periods of trial and error. While his work addresses universal themes of loss, longing, and acceptance, his personal experiences deeply inform his art, charging each work with an acute sense of intimacy.

Robert Gober, Newspaper, 1992
Photolithography on archival Mohawk Superfine paper, twine
6 × 16 1/4 × 13 1/4 inches
Edition of 10
Robert Gober, Newspaper, 1992
Photolithography on archival Mohawk Superfine paper, twine
6 × 16 1/4 × 13 1/4 inches
Edition of 10
The advertisement seen here is a direct critique of the negligent refusal of the Reagan administration to appropriately address the AIDS epidemic.
From a 1992 Washington Post article:
“AIDS health groups have ridiculed the CDC’s advertisement showing a man putting on a sock with the caption: ‘Putting on a condom is just as simple.’ They countered with an ad showing a sock and the message: ‘Ten years into the AIDS epidemic, this is the closest our government has come to showing a condom. It’s time to get real about AIDS education.’”

Robert Gober, Newspaper, 1992
Photolithography on archival Mohawk Superfine paper, twine
6 × 16 1/4 × 13 1/4 inches
Edition of 10
Robert Gober, Newspaper, 1992
Photolithography on archival Mohawk Superfine paper, twine
6 × 16 1/4 × 13 1/4 inches
Edition of 10
Newspaper features the table of contents from an issue of The Village Voice published shortly after artist David Wojnarowicz’s death from AIDS-related illness.
“The newspapers are all printed with photolithography on archival paper […] some pages were re-created exactly as I found them. Some were altered by editing as I wanted to see certain articles and topics juxtaposed. And some articles and photographs were fictions that I created, all typeset and graphically arranged to a create a seamless collage of what looked like found bundled newspapers.”
— Robert Gober

Robert Gober, Newspaper, 1992
Photolithography on archival Mohawk Superfine paper, twine
6 x 16 1/4 x 13 1/4 inches
Edition of 10
Robert Gober, Newspaper, 1992
Photolithography on archival Mohawk Superfine paper, twine
6 x 16 1/4 x 13 1/4 inches
Edition of 10
Gober’s newspaper stack includes a page from the Weddings section of The New York Times with an advertisement featuring the artist modeling a handcrafted wedding dress. It appears next to ads announcing a liquidation sale at the Girl Scouts headquarters, a 40% reduction on summer suits, and Tiffany & Co. engagement bands.
“I was putting stuff together, pasting it up, the idea of America and the reality of America. Consumerism and humanism. Campaign promises and selling pots and pans. People leaving their babies in the trash and family values. The Times would never put these items side-by-side. I saw the Times and the way they juxtapose their articles as not insidious in a bad way, since it’s mostly unconscious, but as revealing about certain attitudes. Some things would never appear on a wedding page, for instance. Never.”
— Robert Gober

Robert Gober, Untitled, 1993-1994
Photolithograph on paper
22 3/8 × 11 7/8 inches
Edition of 75
Robert Gober, Untitled, 1993-1994
Photolithograph on paper
22 3/8 × 11 7/8 inches
Edition of 75
This print was made to resemble a newspaper circular for a grocery store. The image of the roasted pig was staged and photographed by Gober in his New York studio.

Robert Gober, Untitled, 2010-2011
Photo etching on copper, hand-printed on Shikoku paper, hand-distressed
1 1/4 × 1 3/4 inches
Edition of 30
Robert Gober, Untitled, 2010-2011
Photo etching on copper, hand-printed on Shikoku paper, hand-distressed
1 1/4 × 1 3/4 inches
Edition of 30
This etching is based on a clipping of a 2005 article from the New York Post’s “NYPD Daily Blotter” column. The newspaper fragment has been reproduced actual size and each copy has been distressed by hand to mimic the slightly crumpled appearance of the original clipping.
NICODIM
NICODIM
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Address
1700 S Santa Fe Ave, #160
Los Angeles, CA 90021 -
Website
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Inquiry
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Mihai Nicodim opened his gallery in 2006 with a focus on exposing emerging and overlooked American, African, Asian, and European artists to an international audience. The artists share an interest in reassessing art history from an outsider's perspective and challenging its established framework.

Devendra Banhart in studio, photograph by Lauren Dukoff, 2021
The Grief I have Caused You
“Nothing is more gall-bitter than suffering, nothing more honey-sweet than having suffered.” — Meister Eckhart
Devendra Banhart’s barbarous, nonlinear nomenclature is savage in its nonaggression, and completely at peace with its perverse audacity. The recursive abstracted forms within his canvases are a non-hierarchical alphabet of allegories for the diminishment and destruction of ego. Each mouth, prick, eye, and ass breaks apart and reconstructs itself until they become a collective commune of equally all-important, yet weightless pieces of the tantric universe. They are a cycle of mala beads through the fingers of time.
The Grief I Have Caused You, Banhart’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, is a survey of recent paintings and drawings mostly completed during a year when the Grand Pendulum neglected to swing back to “having suffered.” Though they were sowed in a moment of near-universal hurt, each composition manifests an equal, harmonic measure of joy: grotesque figurations of comedy and tragedy embrace and approach fellatio in “Nyima & Dawa,” 2021; a fat-bottomed, high-heeled hiker rejoices at a finally flat stretch of terrain while a behemoth of a feline looms menacingly overhead in “Twilight Hiker,” 2021; “Offering,” 2021, is a total deconstruction of the elements represented within the first two, a Buddhist garden partially digested by the biome of infinity. (Banhart’s flora includes the cubist and surrealist tendencies of Paul Klee, the expressionistic poetry of Helen Frankenthaler, and the violent gestures of Ethel Schwabacher, to name a few.)

Devendra Banhart, Barbarous Nomenclature, 2020
Oil on canvas
33 1/2 × 25 inches
Devendra Banhart, Barbarous Nomenclature, 2020
Oil on canvas
33 1/2 × 25 inches

Devendra Banhart, Nyima and Dawa, 2021
Oil on canvas
16 1/2 × 15 inches
Devendra Banhart, Nyima and Dawa, 2021
Oil on canvas
16 1/2 × 15 inches

Devendra Banhart, Widow, 2020
Oil on canvas
16 1/2 × 13 inches
Devendra Banhart, Widow, 2020
Oil on canvas
16 1/2 × 13 inches
If time is a circular property, then the human condition is a perennial state of suffering and having suffered, often and increasingly all at once. The Grief I Have Caused You is the artist’s rumination on the uniquely personal, yet absolute universality of this push-and-pull. His grief is your grief, but so is his ecstasy.

Devendra Banhart, To Wander in Fearful Places, 2020
Oil on canvas
20 × 16 1/2 inches
Devendra Banhart, To Wander in Fearful Places, 2020
Oil on canvas
20 × 16 1/2 inches

Devendra Banhart, Other Flowers Part 1, 2019
Oil on canvas
10 × 7 1/2 inches
Devendra Banhart, Other Flowers Part 1, 2019
Oil on canvas
10 × 7 1/2 inches

Devendra Banhart, Disco Tummo, 2020
Ink on paper
15 × 11 1/2 inches
Devendra Banhart, Disco Tummo, 2020
Ink on paper
15 × 11 1/2 inches
Devendra Banhart (b. 1980, Houston, Texas) lives and works in Los Angeles. An internationally renowned musician considered a pioneer of the “freak folk” and “New Weird America” movements, Banhart has toured, performed, and collaborated with Vashti Bunyan, Yoko Ono, Os Mutantes, Swans, ANOHNI, Caetano Veloso, and Beck, amongst many others. His musical work has always existed symbiotically alongside his pursuits in the other fine arts. In addition to painting and drawing most of his own album covers (the album artwork for his 2010 album What Will We Be was nominated for a Grammy), he has contributed to Doug Aitken’s multimedia Station to Station project. He has performed at MoMA (New York), MoCA (Los Angeles), The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), LACMA (Los Angeles), and The Broad Museum (Los Angeles). Exhibitions include Voglio proprio vedere, Mazzoli, Modena, Italy (2017); Sphinx Interiors & Other Works, Mazzoli, Modena, Italy (2014, solo); Abstract Rhythms: Paul Klee and Devendra Banhart, SFMoMA, San Francisco (2007–2008); Music is a Better Noise, MoMA PS1, Queens, New York (2007); and Devendra Banhart, Mazzoli, Modena, Italy (2006, solo). His monograph of drawings and paintings I Left My Noodle on Ramen Street (2015, Prestel) features essays by Jeffrey Deitch and Beck. The Grief I Have Caused You is Banhart’s first solo exhibition with Nicodim, and his first in Los Angeles.
Night Gallery
Night Gallery
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Address
2276 E 16th St
Los Angeles, CA 90021 -
Website
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Inquiry
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Night Gallery, founded by Davida Nemeroff in 2010, currently represents twenty-seven of the most exciting voices in contemporary art.

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Where the Hood At: A Conceptual Performance Assemblage, live performance at Night Gallery, August 2020.
Where the Hood At: A Conceptual Performance Assemblage
Night Gallery is pleased to present a viewing room documenting Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack’s Where the Hood At: A Conceptual Performance Assemblage, a performance presented at Night Gallery in Summer 2020. Gaitor-Lomack is a Los Angeles-based sculptor and performance artist whose work has been included in our group exhibitions Grey Garden and MAJEURE FORCE.
Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack’s work contemplates the social and spiritual codes inscribed into everyday objects. The idea of reincarnation animates his approach to the traditions of the readymade and the assemblage, as objects are reclaimed, reinterpreted, and given new life. While his readymade sculptures destabilize artifacts of the everyday, Gaitor-Lomack’s objects are not wholly ridded of their social associations. Instead, abstracted from their conventional uses, he opens his sculptures up to new contexts for communal engagement. His performances put these sculptures into practice, activating the works’ imaginative potential while revealing a great and mystical interconnectedness of artist and audience.

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Where the Hood At: A Conceptual Performance Assemblage, live performance at Night Gallery, August 2020.
Where the Hood At: A Conceptual Performance Assemblage was presented at Night Gallery on August 29, 2020. The performance was concurrent with MAJEURE FORCE, Night Gallery’s ten-year anniversary exhibition, which included Gaitor-Lomack’s sculpture “Where the Hood At,” 2020. The sculpture, which consists of two parts, is made up of entirely found objects: a rusted pole lodged into a block of concrete; two beer cans fused together; a tennis ball; and a sweatshirt nailed to the wall, its hood cut off. These objects evoke not only human activity but the human body, speaking to our understanding of material goods as extensions of ourselves. The last of these is an explicit homage to, and inversion of, David Hammons’ seminal 1993 work “In the Hood.” Of this lineage Gaitor-Lomack writes,
“Where the Hood At” is an elevated metaphorical response to David Hammons’s “In The Hood” artwork. It continues the conversation. Rather than the average reference, it builds an experiential equation. A stream of street philosophy that’s taboo and revered to the surface level mind frame. If you are like me, then you look for the hood in everything you do. The hood is in my heart like the memory of a sacred ground. It’s far from concrete. It’s a question and an answer to the commercial platform and broad misplacement of Black/Brown geography and essence, which tends to lack the many nuances that are deeply rooted in the prophetic natures of the Black/Brown communities.

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Where The Hood At?, 2019
Found mixed media
Dimensions variable
Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Where The Hood At?, 2019
Found mixed media
Dimensions variable

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Eye of Midas, 2020
Found mixed media
11 1/2 × 4 × 2 1/2 inches
Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Eye of Midas, 2020
Found mixed media
11 1/2 × 4 × 2 1/2 inches

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Where the Hood At: A Conceptual Performance Assemblage, live performance at Night Gallery, August 2020.
Gaitor-Lomack’s performance at Night Gallery presented an activation of “Where the Hood At” alongside a new work, “Eye of Midas,” made for the exhibition. This work featured a magnifying glass duct taped in a glove-like construction to the artist’s hand, appearing as a cyborgian appendage to the artist’s body. The performance found the artist crawling on all fours, inspecting the feet of his audience members. One can detect in the performance documentation a growing ease among the audience, whose confusion morphs into willing participation. If Gaitor-Lomack’s work is an act of redefinition, his performances demonstrate this process in real time, mapping his audience’s gradual understanding and acceptance of the new terms his work creates.
Following this act of communal imagining, Gaitor-Lomack engaged his sculpture from the exhibition, wearing its headless hood and using its pole as a walking stick, a climbing implement, and a divining rod. Stills from the performance reveal tableaux that evoke Biblical narratives as much as contemporary life, placing his act of myth-making on a continuum with society’s most enduring narratives.
In addition to the works included in Gaitor-Lomack’s performance at Night Gallery, we are pleased to present several of the artist’s recent sculptures, which were created in a similar process of retrieval and reinvention.

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Dodge The System, 4EVER, 2020
Found mixed media
Dimensions variable
Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Dodge The System, 4EVER, 2020
Found mixed media
Dimensions variable

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Henry St.'s Finest; Nimbus for A Martyr, 2020
Found mixed media
Dimensions variable
Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Henry St.'s Finest; Nimbus for A Martyr, 2020
Found mixed media
Dimensions variable

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Where the Hood At: A Conceptual Performance Assemblage, live performance at Night Gallery, August 2020.
Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack (b. Neptune, NJ, 1988) opened his first solo exhibition at Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York, NY in January 2021, and will present a solo exhibition at Lyles & King, New York, NY, in March 2021. In addition to Night Gallery, Gaitor-Lomack's work has been included in group exhibitions at BBQLA, Los Angeles, CA; ltd, Los Angeles, CA; LAXART, Los Angeles, CA; Transmission, Glasgow, Scotland; and the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA. Gaitor-Lomack is the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant and the NXTHVN Fellowship. He lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and New Haven, CT.
Nonaka-Hill
Nonaka-Hill
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Address
720 N Highland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038 -
Website
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Inquiry

Sea Change entrance gallery with works (L-R) by John Zurier, Keita Matsunaga, Kunié Sugiura, Kentaro Kawabata and Kunié Sugiura.
Nonaka-Hill in Collaboration with Ratio 3
Featuring artists from each galleries' program, as well as artists who have not previously exhibited with either gallery, the exhibition presents an immersive experience of Japanese ceramics, sculptural objects, minimal painting, and photography. Taken together, the artworks that comprise Sea Change emphasize the sensibilities shared among a diverse group of international artists working across disparate media and artistic traditions. Participating artists include: Miriam Böhm, Miho Dohi, Patrick Hill, Kentaro Kawabata, Keita Matsunaga, Barry McGee, Tomohisa Obana, Mitzi Pedersen, Ben Peterson, James Sterling-Pitt, Laurie Reid, Kunié Sugiura, Masaomi Yasunaga and John Zurier.
To visit the exhibition in San Francisco, please make an appointment at: www.ratio3.org

Sea Change second gallery with works (L-R) by Miho Dohi and James Sterling-Pitt
Sea Change second gallery with works (L-R) by Miho Dohi and James Sterling-Pitt

Sea Change second gallery with works (L-R) by Laurie Reid, Masaomi Yasunaga, Miho Dohi, Laurie Reid and Patrick Hill. Following artworks: Laurie Reid, Patrick Hill
Sea Change second gallery with works (L-R) by Laurie Reid, Masaomi Yasunaga, Miho Dohi, Laurie Reid and Patrick Hill. Following artworks: Laurie Reid, Patrick Hill

Sea Change entrance third gallery with works by Masaomi Yasunaga, Ben Petersen, Keita Matsunaga, Tomohisa Obana, Kentaro Kawabata, Patrick Hill, Kunié Sugirua and Barry McGee. Following artworks: Masaomi Yasunaga, Tomohisa Obana
Sea Change entrance third gallery with works by Masaomi Yasunaga, Ben Petersen, Keita Matsunaga, Tomohisa Obana, Kentaro Kawabata, Patrick Hill, Kunié Sugirua and Barry McGee. Following artworks: Masaomi Yasunaga, Tomohisa Obana

Artworks (L-R) by Kentaro Kawabata, Ben Petersen, Keita Matsunaga
Artworks (L-R) by Kentaro Kawabata, Ben Petersen, Keita Matsunaga

Artworks (L-R) by John Zurier, Barry McGee, Kunié Sugiura
Artworks (L-R) by John Zurier, Barry McGee, Kunié Sugiura

Sea Change fourth gallery with works (L-R) by Miriam Böhm, Keita Matsunaga and Mitzi Pedersen. Following artworks: Miriam Böhm, Mitzi Pedersen.
Sea Change fourth gallery with works (L-R) by Miriam Böhm, Keita Matsunaga and Mitzi Pedersen. Following artworks: Miriam Böhm, Mitzi Pedersen.
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
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Address
1010 N Highland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038 -
Website
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Inquiry

Jeffrey Vallance, installation view, Tanya Bonakdar, New York, 2019
Enamel Paintings
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to present a selection of enamel paintings by Jeffrey Vallance. For over thirty years Vallance has been known for his drawings, sculptures, installations and performance-based works which make reference to his childhood in California, voyages to the Polynesian Islands and Iceland, residences in Las Vegas and the Arctic, sojourns to the Vatican, and his celebrated Blinky the Friendly Hen project in 1978, when he held a funeral service for a frozen supermarket hen at Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park. Vallance’s diverse practice offers a unique perspective on the vernacular that is intrinsic to our notions of faith, celebrity, ritual, populist language, and villainy. This selection of enamel paintings highlight political figures, actors and personalities, writers, and even other artists such as Mike Kelley (the drawing is featured below and the enamel painting is in the collection of The Hammer Museum). With both humor and an analytic eye, Vallance examines how symbolism and idolatry can shape our past and present understandings of “cults of personality,” both good and evil, horrific and heroic.

Jeffrey Vallance, Temple Grandin: Autistic Slaughter House Designer, 2012
Enamel on board with decals
16 × 20 inches
Jeffrey Vallance, Temple Grandin: Autistic Slaughter House Designer, 2012
Enamel on board with decals
16 × 20 inches

Jeffrey Vallance, Nils Nilsson Skum: Lapp (Sammi) Artist, 2011
Enamel on board with decals
15 3/4 × 19 3/4 inches
Jeffrey Vallance, Nils Nilsson Skum: Lapp (Sammi) Artist, 2011
Enamel on board with decals
15 3/4 × 19 3/4 inches
“In the late 1970s and early 1980s I produced a series of paintings featuring images of reptiles and amphibians, Polynesian Tikis and television personalities. These works were painted with Rust-oleum and Krylon industrial enamels, which were not designed for fine art purposes, as the paint is too viscous to easily render fine details. Each brushstroke must be forced onto the painting surface. This gives the works an oddly stiff and awkward appearance. I also started applying decals to the surfaces of the paintings, often using graffiti decals intended for use on professional model-train dioramas. I had used the same basic technique in my childhood, when I built model hot rods.”
— Jeffrey Vallance

Jeffrey Vallance, Tich Nhat Hanh: Zen Masteri, 2011
Enamel on board with decals
15 3/4 × 19 3/4 inches
Jeffrey Vallance, Tich Nhat Hanh: Zen Masteri, 2011
Enamel on board with decals
15 3/4 × 19 3/4 inches

Jeffrey Vallance, Leonard Nimoy: Actor, Collector and Philanthropist, 2012
Enamel on board with decals
16 × 20 inches
Jeffrey Vallance, Leonard Nimoy: Actor, Collector and Philanthropist, 2012
Enamel on board with decals
16 × 20 inches
“This series makes use of these same decals, which I’ve preserved all these years. Many were produced during the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 to 1981, so they include such political slogans of the time as “Nuke Iran” and “A Weenie for Kohmeenie.” As well, I find it fascinating how knee-jerk populist jargon during a crisis situation found its way into a seemingly apolitical hobby. To me, these decals are ridiculous — while I’m working, I like to imagine middle-class, middle-aged men delicately applying “I’m Dusted” or “LSD” or gang-slogans like “Crips Rule” decals to their train layouts.”
— Jeffrey Vallance

Jeffrey Vallance, Mike Kelley, 2011
Enamel on paper
16 × 20 inches
Jeffrey Vallance, Mike Kelley, 2011
Enamel on paper
16 × 20 inches

Jeffrey Vallance, Connie Chung #2, 1981
Enamel on board with decals
15 3/4 × 20 inches
Jeffrey Vallance, Connie Chung #2, 1981
Enamel on board with decals
15 3/4 × 20 inches
“This work begins where I left off in the early 1980s, with such historical political figures from the period as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Of particular influence was one painting I made in 1981, when I graduated from art school and first started exhibiting professionally: a portrait of television news personality Connie Chung, who was very popular at the time. The Chung painting essentially functioned as a template for the new work, which, while featuring the same enamel-on-board-with-decals format, has been extended to include more contemporary subjects — Kim Jong Il, Thich Nhat Hanh, Temple Grandin, Leonard Nimoy, the kings of Sweden and Tonga, Mike Kelley and Satan. As with many of my projects that feature eminent personalities, this series came to focus on two opposing categories: pop-culture heroes, artists and writers versus dictators, despots and scoundrels.”
— Jeffrey Vallance