APRIL/MAY 2010

CONTEMPORARYART
AMERICAN
 ART
CONTENTS
April/May 2010
AMERICAN
CONTEMPORARY
UP FRONT
09 Events
12 Museums

EXHIBITIONS
16 New York
17 Washington, DC
18 Philadelphia
18 Santa Fe
19 Albuquerque 16 Jackie Gendel 18 Lance Letscher 45 Mark Schoening
19 Boston
20 Portland
25 California Contemporary Art: Special Section
20 Atlanta

ARTISTS
45 Mark Schoening
46 Anthony Mastromatteo
49 Peter Sarkisian
50 Jean Kazandjian

FEATURE
22 F. Lennox Campello 30 Blythe Projects 32 Martha Otero
Previews Spring Shows in
Washignton, DC
36 Los Angeles & San Francisco Shows

Neha Choski Robert Hudson Lisi Raskin

Dorsey Dunn John Jurayj Kelly Reemtsen
Frederick Fisher Charles LaBelle Sarah Rossiter
Charles Garabedian David Levine Stephen Sollins
Jeffrey Gibson Jeff Matsuno Rowan Wood
Lawrence Gipe Robert Melee Kohei Yoshiyuki
Steve Hough Pard Morrison Lawrence Yun

Publisher: Richard Kalisher Advertising

Cover Image: Editor: Donovan Stanley advertising@acamagazine.com
Charles Garabedian, Design: Rui Vilela Richard Kalisher
Die Tote Stadt, 2009, detail, DC Editor: F. Lennox Campello 561-542-6028
acrylic on canvas, 96’’ x 66’’. Editorial Consultant: Eric Kalisher © 2010 R.K. Graphics. All Rights Reserved.

6 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010 ACAMAGAZINE.COM


Art Chicago: Bill Viola, Small Saints, 2008, color high-definition video polyptych on six OLED flat panels
(continuous running) mounted on shelf. 13’’ X 62’’ X 11 24’’.
SFFAF: Albert Contreras, Untitled, 2009-10, acrylic on panel, 20’’ x 24’’. Courtesy of Peter Mendenhall Gallery.
Art Chicago
April 30 - May 3
This renowned international fair of
contemporary and modern art will once
again bring together the world’s leading
emerging and established galleries.
Now in its 30th year, Art Chicago
will offer curators, collectors, artists
and art enthusiasts a comprehensive
survey of current and historic work -
from cutting-edge to modern masters
- in a wide variety of media including:
painting, photography, drawings,
prints, sculpture, video, and special
installations. Located on the 12th floor
of The Mart, Art Chicago will feature
events throughout the weekend, enticing
both the novice and experienced
collector.
Throughout the four days,
cutting-edge speaker programs, Art
Chicago Speaks and Converge Chicago:
Contemporary Curators Forum will
feature an international roster of artists,
writers, curators and critics, discussing
current trends and provocative issues
confronting the contemporary art
market. Perspective Texas will focus
special programming on the Lone Star
State, featuring top Texas collectors
and curators from Texas institutions. In
ART EVENTS
addition, the fair will also feature onsite
exhibitions including New Insight, an
annual exhibition of rising MFA students
from the country’s most influential art
programs, curated by Susanne Ghez of
The Renaissance Society; Partisan, a
display of works that critically explore
social and political ideas; and Survey
America, a floor-wide exhibit that
highlights extraordinary works by artists
living and working in the United States.
San Francisco Art Fair
May 21 - 23
Marking the first significant
international art fair in San Francisco
in almost a decade, the SF Fine Art
Fair includes over 50,000 square feet
of art space. Seventy internationally
renowned galleries headline this art
fair at Fort Mason’s Festival Pavilion.
From modern masters to important
contemporary offers, the show features
over $300 million of artwork by more
than 500 artists. The setting will be
designed to accentuate and highlight a
spectacular selection of paintings, works
on paper, drawings, printed editions,
photography and sculpture (both indoors
and outdoors) by the world’s leading
artists. Adding to the excitement and
quality of the Fair experience, SFFAF
organizers are resisting the current art
fair trend of ‘more is better,’ and are
instead selecting a limited number
of Fair exhibitors in order to create
a greater sense of intimacy amongst
fair attendees and exhibitors. With
nearly 85% of the SFFAF participating
galleries based in North America and
25% of these galleries located in the
Bay Area, SFFAF organizers were
inspired to earmark a portion of the
Fair’s funds towards highlighting arts
in the Bay Area.
ART EVENTS 9
MUSEUMS
Installation view of Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection. Curated by Jeff Koons.
Photograph by Benoit Pailley.
Skin Fruit
New Museum New York
[through June 6]
“Skin Fruit: Selections from the
Dakis Joannou Collection” is the
first exhibition in the United States
of the Athens-based Dakis Joannou
Collection, renowned as one of the
leading collections of contemporary
art in the world. This is also the first
exhibition curated by artist Jeff Koons,
who was invited to organize the show
by the New Museum and whose work
inspired Joannou to start his collection
in 1985. Including over 100 works
by fifty international artists spanning
several generations, the exhibition
explores the age-old preoccupation with
the human body as a vessel and vehicle
for experience, a distinctive focus of
the collection. Koons’s title Skin Fruit
alludes to notions of genesis, evolution,
original sin, and sexuality. “Skin” and
“fruit” evoke the tensions between
12 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
interior and exterior, between what
we see and what we consume. In the
exhibition role-playing games and
dramas occur: a man will stage a
religious ritual; a sculpture literally
sings out; white-chocolate monuments
tower above visitor’s heads; voracious
creatures eat themselves and each other
while bodies are buried or frozen.
Joannou’s collection is comprised
of more than 1,500 works by 400
contemporary artists, from the most
eminent to those just emerging. For
“Skin Fruit,” Koons has selected works
in many mediums including sculptures,
works on paper, paintings, installations,
and videos.
Maira Kalman
Institut of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia
[through June 6]
The first major survey of the work
Maira Kalman, Various Illuminations
Maira Kalman, Crosstown Boogie Woogie, 1995,
gouache on paper, 15.38’’ x 11.5’’. Courtesy of the
artist and Julie Saul Gallery, New York.
of a Crazy World), features a selection
spanning thirty years of original works
on paper and design production,
along with less widely seen aspects
of Kalman’s work in photography,
embroidery, textiles, and performance.
An illustrator, author and designer,
Kalman illuminates contemporary life
with a profound sense of joy and unique
sense of humor. Like a gift, her work
appears to lift the spirits, no matter how
ordinary or overwhelming circumstances
may be. As a context for this survey,
Kalman is creating a special installation.
The space will be furnished with chairs,
ladders, and «many tables of many
things»—such as fezzes, bobby pins,
balls of string, things that have fallen
out of books, lists, moss. Expressive of
Kalman’s habits as a collector, traveler,
reader, and avid walker, this installation
offers a view of how she sees the
world, both in and outside of the studio.

Stephen Shore, West Ninth Avenue, Amarillo, Texas, October 2, 1974. Chromomeric print, 8 x 10 in. © Stephen
Shore. Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York. Permanent Collection Cincinnati Art Museum, Acquired with The
Edwin and Virginia H. Irwin Memorial Fund.
Starbust
Cinncinati Art Museum
[through May 9]
Garish, pedestrian and commercial -
that’s how critics characterized color
photography in the 1970s. It was in fact
an explosion of color and the beginning
of a new form of art. Starburst: Color
Photography in America 1970-1980 is
the first survey of a burgeoning period
in photography. Through the work
of artists such as William Eggleston,
Stephen Shore, and Mitch Epstein,
conventions of the snapshot are turned
into high art. Starburst offers the first
historical survey of what critics of
the 1970s called “The New Color
Photography,” a loose artistic movement
that generated much controversy and
excitement in a multitude of exhibitions
and publications throughout the decade.
Addressing various themes, such as
the technological factors contributing
to color’s emergence, cultural biases
against color photography’s use as
an art form, and shifting attitudes
between formalist and conceptual
practices, the exhibition explores
color’s role in the transition between
modern and contemporary approaches
to art photography during the 1970s.
The Anniversary Show
SFMOMA
[through January 2011]
Celebrating the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art’s impact on modern and
contemporary art, the exhibition The
Anniversary Show traces the art and
individuals that have made SFMOMA
the institution it is today. Throughout
the anniversary year, SFMOMA will
present a series of exhibitions under the
heading 75 Years of Looking Forward
MUSEUMS
illustrating the story of the artists,
collectors, cultural mavericks, and
San Francisco leaders who founded,
built, and have animated the museum.
The exhibition mines the depth and
breadth of SFMOMA’s collection—
the soul and long-term memory of
the museum—and constitutes the first
complete reinstallation of the second
floor galleries since the museum opened
its doors on Third Street in 1995.
Jasper Johns, Land’s End, 1963, oil on canvas with
stick, 67’’ x 48.25’’. Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Harry
W. and Mary Margaret Anderson. © Jasper Johns /
Licensed by VAGA, New York.
Paintings, sculptures, works on paper,
photographs, video works, architectural
models, and design objects will be
supplemented by archival material
orienting visitors to the timeframe and
context in which these works were first
shown and acquired. From mounting
Jackson Pollock’s first solo museum
exhibition in 1945 to championing
the emerging Mission School scene in
the mid-1990s to exhibiting snapshot
photography in 1998, SFMOMA has
consistently broken new ground and
challenging conventional wisdom.
MUSEUMS 13
EXHIBITIONS
Chuck Kelton & Shelton Walsmith
Causey Contemporary Brooklyn
[through May 17]
Chuck Kelton, I Can See Right Through It, 2010,
gold-toned silver gelatin print, 16’’ x 20’’.
These solo exhibitions display the
black and white silver gelatin prints
of photographer Chuck Kelton in Run
From View and the latest paintings
by Shelton Walsmith in Day for
Night. Drawn from autobiographical
experiences, Kelton’s work celebrates
the chaos and fragmentation of life.
He constructs abstracted images that
become narratives saturated with
metaphorical structure. Inspired visually
by landscapes these images tend to
be more mythological than temporal.
Demonstrating classical black and
white techniques, each photograph will
be executed as editions of three with
the prints within each edition having
slight variations. Day for Night features
three distinct new series of paintings by
Walsmith. The series, La Perambulati,
Ill Corallo, and The New Phonetic each
play with polarity. Sheldon extends
the expanse between black and white,
between opposing forces. His paintings
represent this practice; like a waking
16 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
dream, they are the fractaling seconds
between dawn and dusk, fact and fantasy,
experiencing and remembering.
Michael Behle
Hogar Collection Brooklyn
[through May 24]
Michael Behle, Constructed expulsion, bronze,
wood and paint, 58’’ x 18’’ x 20’’. Courtesy of
The Hogar Collection
In his debut New York solo exhibition,
Animal Faith, Behle will present new
cast bronze and toothpick sculptures
along with collage-based works
on paper. Taking its name from the
writings Skepticism and Animal
Faith by George Santayana, the
exhibition explores the dichotomy
between knowledge gained through
pedagogical academia and knowledge
gained through a more intuitive and
phenomenological approach. The
works reference recognizable imagery
– ranging from the human figure,
architecture, and advertising – while
proposing a reconfiguration of open-
ended, metaphorical narratives in which
ambiguity supports the anti-absolute.
Tweaked into a reality of subconscious
thought, the works often deface the
subjects: metaphorically by imposing
appendages awkwardly protruding and
creating surreal predicaments; literally
by directly defacing and marking
upon the subjects to alter the definable
imagery. With an honest and forthright
manner, the metamorphosis Behle
transposes upon his subjects offer the
viewer unexpected encounters into new
perceptual experiences that question
established thought patterns and the
implications of our societal typifications.
In his efforts, Behle poses a steadfast
opposition to a world where absolutes
can serve only to stifle and hinder pure
thought and radical exploration.
Jackie Gendel
Jeff Bailey Manhattan
[through May 8]
Jackie Gendel, Fog, 2010, oil on panel, 22’’ x 28’’.
Combining the names of two vibrant
pigment hues, Rose Madder and the
Ultramarines, Jackie Gendel chose the
title of her new show to reflect the social
drama within her figurative compositions
and the material exploration inherent in
her painting process. Linking all of the
work is the artist’s concentration on all-
over composition and color. Some of the
paintings are overt in their depiction of a
figure or scene, while others veer toward
total abstraction. The paintings suggest
an elusive narrative, in which the figure/
ground relationship that establishes
the identity of the subjects is also that
which disguises them. Gendel moves
almost effortlessly between different
modes of painting, using painting both
as code and material experimentation.
Gendel’s mining of various source

materials (portraits from different eras,
New Wave films, found photographs or
depictions of her friends) inspires this
exploration of identity.
Karel Funk
303 Gallery Manhattan
[through May 15]
Karel Funk, Untitled #29, 2008, acrylic on paint.
Courtesy of artist and Hemphill Fine Arts.
For his latest body of work, Karel Funk
continues his progressive abandonment
of the narrative of realist portrait
painting. As his subjects become further
enshrouded in the contours of their
synthetic overgarments, they become
channels for the amorphous color
fields, shadow, and light interplay that
is typical of Flemish and renaissance
painting. Funk’s practice, however,
creates in each hyper-real detail an
abstracted element of a larger, extrinsic
level of consciousness. The paintings are
generally larger than life-size, rendering
them disorienting in their overwhelming
reality. Each subject is portrayed against
a stark white background, typical of
Funk’s work, and befitting of his dry,
taxonomic approach. They face away,
revealing little to none of their facial
features. If any features are revealed,
the subjects are androgynous, as the
identity conventionally associated with
portraiture is completely stripped away.
The crevices and folds of the hoods and
jackets begin to appear as worlds within
themselves.
Charles Cohan
Curator’s Office Washington, DC
[through May 1]
Charles Cohan, MGP09.I-IX, from the 2009
MotoGP Motorcycle Series of 18 Races, 2010,
collagraph print, 46’’ x 40’’. Curator’s Office.
Charles Cohan’s new exhibition,
Circuits, includes two distinct bodies
of work. Tracks includes muscular
collograph prints, each printed from
3 plates. Cohan continues his interest
in typologies imposed by humans
upon the land and researched Google
Earth for aerial views of his racetrack
subject matter. He then visited racetrack
websites to develop his imagery for
Tracks. According to Cohan, all the
tracks are represented to an approximate
scale of 17 inches = 1 kilometer. The
racetrack circuits are layered according
to a particular season of races. The
resulting mysterious tangle of lines
evokes a knot gone awry or a pile of
unwound paper clips. Peaks includes
ethereal 24 color/layer screen prints.
Cohan, who grew up in the Cascade
EXHIBITIONS
Mountains of Oregon and Washington,
also translates the physical activity of
mountain-climbing to his art practice.
According to essayist Jaimey Hamilton,
“Instead of producing intimate sketches,
he used topographical maps. In these
views we see no trademark cliff faces,
no indication of the unique geography
of the land, no outstanding profiles
from amazing altitudes.” On view in the
exhibition are the ghostly and delicate
topographies of Mount Hood and Mount
Rainier.
Steven Cushner & William Willis
Hemphill Washington, DC
[through May 28]
William Willis, House with Stones, 2005, mixed
media on paper, 6.5’’. x 8.5’’.
Steve Cushner’s new paintings offer
a revelatory and engaging experience
for the viewer. The large format
canvases convey Cushner’s unique
visual language, rich in a vocabulary
of pattern, color, symmetry, and
repetition. Through this vernacular, he
is able to perfect a balance between
fleeting gestures and concrete forms.
In his new body of work, Cushner
experiments with new applications of
color and metamorphoses geometric
forms into more robust, undulating and
fluid patterns. The result is an energetic
exhibition that invites the audience
to join Cushner on an emotional and
EXHIBITIONS 17
EXHIBITIONS
physical journey. It is during the
process of drawing, meanwhile, that
William Willis feels most liberated and
impassioned. His works on paper are
imbued with the same freshness and
spontaneity found in all of his drawings.
They are a continuation of the works on
paper presented in 2004 and reflect the
inspiration he has found in artists such
as Giorgio Morandi and Pablo Picasso.
The notion of art as a continuous journey
with no final destination is evident
in these pieces as Willis experiments
with and repeatedly refines forms and
patterns.
Susan Jamison & Susana Raab
Irvine Contemporary
Washington, DC
[through Apri 24]
Susan Jamison, Doe in Heat, 2010, egg tempera on
panel, 36 ’’ x 36’’. Courtesy of Irvine Contemporary.
Working with egg tempera on panel,
Susan Jamison reflects on many
traditions of imagery to create dream-
like portraits and figures that question
gender conventions. Like dream images
and memories, the paintings traverse the
realms of desires, fantasies, and myths,
while maintaining a playful innocence.
Reflecting back on sources like fairy
tales, Renaissance portraiture, botanical
illustration, Persian miniatures, and
18 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
Kama Sutra manuscript paintings,
Jamison composes startlingly original
female figures adorned with vibrant pink
embroidery patterns and heads exposed
with early medical illustrations. Her
imagined characters, male and female,
are are often surrounded by symbolic
and sympathetic birds, animals,
butterflies, insects, and domestic objects
that reference culturally familiar stories
and images. In Jamison’s words, the
animals, plants, and objects are carefully
chosen for their symbolic meanings and
give the Snow White-like female figures
a contemporary, feminist point of view.
Also on display is Susana Raab’s first
solo exhibition in Washington, DC,
American Vernacular. It will feature a
selection of the artist’s photographs that
represent her distinctive approach to
capturing the often overlooked places,
people, and events in daily American
life.
appropriate manipulate duplicate
Gallery Joe Philadephia
[through April 24]
William Betts, 03-08-2006 18:07:21, 2009, acrylic
paint on mirror acrylic, 11.25 ’’ x 15’’.
Departing from the gallery’s regular
program, this show s one in series of
four exhibitions at the gallery curated
to run concurrently with Philagrafika
2010, a citywide event in Philadelphia
celebrating print-making. Computers
have increasingly been incorporated
by artists into the development of their
artwork. Whether gathering data from
the internet or writing complex software,
they are experimenting and mastering
this versatile tool. This exhibition
features five artists who use digital
technology in the development of their
artwork. William Betts gathers source
material from surveillance cameras,
then, using an automated system he
developed he recreates thousands
of pixels to replicate the images on
mirrors. Gil Kerlin uses targeted
searches on Google to mine hundreds
of digital images that he then culls, re-
sizes, and organizes to create a kind of
visual compendium. Ati Maier digitally
animates her drawings incorporating a
sound track of her own music. Andrew
Millner draws images of plants and
trees with a stylus and graphics tablet,
using digital images shot from different
perspectives as reference material.
Eva Wylie explores the nature of the
connectivity of the Web, developing
imagery which she then silk screens
directly on a wall in the gallery.
Lance Letscher
Eight Modern Santa Fe
[through May 15]
Lance Letscher, Day and Night, collage, 22.25’’ x
35.25’’.
Lance Letscher harvests defaced
textbooks, children’s readers, vintage
album covers, magazine clippings,
handwritten notes, recipe cards, business

ledgers, and other bits of found paper
from closeout bins, yard sales, and the
dumpster behind a nearby used book
and record store in his native Austin. In
his studio, the artist winnows through
and organizes these odds and ends, cuts
them into strips and shapes and then
pieces together the scraps of paper into
remarkable collages.
Letscher’s works are largely abstract and
characterized by dense texture, color
and pattern. They are rich and vigorous
and compellingly complex. The formal
appeal of the work is enriched by the
memories and emotional associations
evoked by the artist’s raw materials.
Fragmented illustrations and dissected
words and phrases hint at potential
narratives. The works in this latest
exhibition,The Perfect Machine, reflect
his shift to a «storybook perspective.»
Letscher’s colorful and dazzling
abstractions have expanded to include
more recognizable forms and childhood
imagery, coinciding with the publication
of a children’s book about invention that
he wrote and illustrated.
Jumble
Richard Levy Albuquerque
[through May 14]
This show includes a sampling of the
wide range of printmaking processes
being utilized today. It features an an
eclectic mix of editions by some of the
most influential contemporary artists of
the twenty-first century.World-renowned
German photographer, Thomas Ruff,
uses appropriated mathematic and
physics renderings to produce his
most recent series of pigment prints,
Zycles. Matt Mullican put himself into
a trance before composing a portfolio
of etchings, Eight Dead Two’s. Alex
Katz silkscreens on cut aluminum to
Ed Ruscha, Cold Beer Beautiful Girls, 2009, three
color lithograph hand colored Coventry Rag,
40.75 ’’ x 31’’. Richard Levy Gallery.
create his editioned sculpture, Sunny,
a bright faced hairy dog. Rings, a
glossy silkscreen print by Sara Morris
is inspired by architecture and urban
environments. Thorsten Brinkmann
uses discarded urban materials to mask
his identity in his classical photographic
self-portraits. Works by Richard Serra,
John Baldessari, and Ed Ruscha will
also be exhibited.
Lauren Fensterstock
Walker Contemporary Boston
[through April 30]
For Laura Fensterstock, the act of
making art is more a byproduct of her
research. A self-proclaimed research-
historian, she spends hours pouring over
historical texts. Whatever title you want
to give her, Fensterstock is undeniably
an artist. Working in the past with ruby
and diamond encrusted rotten potatoes
and silver cherries, she creates a visual
language that forces us to both look and
see differently. For this exhibition, she
EXHIBITIONS
presents an installation of large black
boxes, filled with charcoal and quilled
black paper. She expands upon the ideas
of Cicero’s writing about the relationship
between God-created nature and the
creations of humanity. The emphasis on
this “third nature” is on Man creating
in his own image, of conceiving, ruling
and controlling nature.
Lauren Fensterstock, An Arrangement of
Hydrangeas, paper & charcoal under glass, 60 ’’ x
36’’. Courtesy of Walker Contemporary.
Fensterstock is completely seduced by
this idea and pushes the definition even
further. She doesn’t take actual natural
objects or a natural landscape and alter
them. She makes her own nature; flowers
& grass made from black-quilled paper
and charcoal in place of soil. Although
her environments appear to thrive, the
lack of color and absence of real living
matter becomes unnerving, causing the
viewer to ask if these landscapes are
truly thriving or symbolic of a grim
future.
EXHIBITIONS 19
EXHIBITIONS
Julia Mangold & Donald Judd
Elizabeth Leach Portland
[through May 1]
Julia Mangold, New Work, installation view, 2010.
Photo credit: Dan Kvitka. Elizabeth Leach Gallery,
Portland.
Julia Mangold’s austere wax and
graphite-coated sculptures are
fundamentally experiential. Presented in
a subdued palette of black and grey, the
softness of the wax surfaces contrasts
dramatically with the hard, rectilinear
forms, at once seducing the viewer,
and provoking rigorous consideration
of the formal qualities of the objects.
The works’ precise placement, both in
the room, and in relationship to one
another, creates a palpable tension.
Attention is drawn to the architecture of
the gallery, as well as one’s own, often
overlooked, physical relationship to
other objects in space. These volumes
are accompanied by a group of related
graphite and wax drawings on paper
and board. Donald Judd was a seminal
Minimalist sculptor, known for his
total commitment to formal exploration
as well as his intensity of color and
the sensuousness of his surfaces.
Though originally a painter, Judd made
extremely little two-dimensional work.
This exhibition of prints from the 1960s
offers an extremely rare opportunity to
catch a glimpse of this lesser-known
aspect of his practice.
20 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
Michael Abrams
Emily Amy Atlanta
[through May 5]
Michael Abrams, Lighter Windham, oil on panel,
14’’ x 11’’. Courtesy of Emily Amy Gallery.
The setting of Michael Abrams’
childhood affected the artist more than
he realized at the time. Growing up
in Rensselear County in upstate New
York, Abrams’ bedroom window gave
him a view of Hudson River Valley
that would become deeply engrained
in his subconscious and that has since
become the predominant subject of his
work. His landscapes are loosely based
on these Hudson River Valley vistas
he remembers but are also partially
fabricated in his imagination. The
combination makes for atmospheric,
luminescent, and ethereal paintings
created from layering glazes from semi-
transparent to opaque. The result is a
beautifully rendered edenic nature of
Abrams’ own personal invention.
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Brett Smith
Sandler Hudson Atlanta
[through May 15]
Brett Smith, 15 seconds, 2009, spray paint on paper,
15’’ x 11’’.
To go along with his show, Brett Smith
conducted an interactive conceptual
performance piece during the opening
reception of his exhibition entitled, 15
Seconds. Based on Andy Warhol’s notion
of everyone having their 15 minutes of
fame, and on the instantaneous nature
of a technology-based society, Smith
used viewer participation, in order
to determine if a work of art could be
created in 15 seconds, a shortened
version of Warhol’s construct. The
performance included forty people,
who used florescent spray paint in
combination with a black light, so that
at night only their work will be seen.
Facebook was also integrated into the
experience to give each participant
their 15 minutes, in reward for their
15 seconds. Smith feels that this
performance piece will lead the viewer
“to understand conceptual art as well as
the importance of accident in abstract
expressionism.”
Spring Brings Great New Art to the Nation’s Capital
BY F. Lennox Campello

Spring generally brings to the Greater

Washington, DC area hundreds of
thousands of tourists seeking the beauty
of the famous cherry blossoms along the
shores of the Potomac. It also delivers
one of the highest pollen counts in the
nation, packed museums and long lines
outside nearly every tourist attraction in
the city.
Spring also brings new shows to
the area’s many art galleries, and this
season has also brought the surprise of
several new galleries which are already
making a noticeable impression on the
area’s art scene.
Located in the architectural
award-winning gallery space at 625-27
E Street, NW which had been empty
for years and formerly housed another
gallery, “a pop up project” made its
debut this spring with a powerful
group show titled “I Dream Awake”,
which runs through May 28. Curated
by the gallery’s effervescent young
owner, Amy Morton, the show explores
original artistic expressions of awakened
realities and unconscious dreams.
Exhibition includes New York artists,
Mikel Glass, Kenichi Hoshine and
Margaret Bowland; Los Angeles artists Margaret Bowland, Thorny Crown,charcoal & pastel on rag paper, 60’’ x 48’’.
Vonn Sumner and Susan Burnstine;
and DC artists Rosemary Feit Covey, the sheer scale of her works, but fall and has already become a destination
Laurel Hausler, Lizzie Newton and Tim also an enviable mastery of a deep for the area’s art aficionados. May
Tate. The two large pastels by Margaret psychological agenda that she delivers brings” Perception Altar,” a solo show
Bowland (whose work was a finalist with pinpoint precision. by Jeramie Bellmay.
for the Outwin Boochever Portrait The Fridge DC is not just an art In Brentwood, just over the
Competition and is currently also on gallery, but also a performance space, District line with Maryland at 3901
display at the National Portrait Gallery) music venue and classroom located Rhode Island Avenue, the brand new
dominated the show. Bowland’s works on Barracks Row (Rear Alley, 516 8th Gateway Arts Center opened to a
show not only a remarkable technical St SE) in the historic Eastern Market packed reception in March, and brings
facility made even more remarkable by neighborhood. The space opened last an attractive exhibition space, as well as

22 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010

artists’ studios and classrooms.
In the District itself, Conner
Contemporary moved to a new location
(1358 Florida Ave, NE) and offers Mary
Coble’s third solo exhibition (May 15
– July 3). Titled “Source,” Coble will
present three new videos, mixed media
work, and a live endurance performance
(to occur in the gallery courtyard during
the exhibition opening ). In all of these
pieces, Coble addresses themes of
purification and renewal in endurance-
based actions focused on the element
of water. The exhibition demonstrates
the depth and dimension of Coble’s
art, which ranges from personal
introspection to experience shared
through public interaction.
Barnaby Whitfield, Bird Girl, 2010, pastel on paper,
40’’ X 33’’. Courtesy of Irvine Contemporary.
Also in the District, Irvine
Contemporary (1412 14th St, NW)
will have collaborative exhibition of
new paintings by Aaron Johnson and
DENVER’S ART DISTRICT ON SANTA FE DISTRICT * GALLERY INQUIRIES WELCOME * FEATURE
Barnaby Whitfield, “Don’t Be Scared; Covey, who is slowly but surely bringing
You’re Supposed to Be.” This exhibition, the traditional genre of printmaking
which opens May 1st, presents works to new frontiers, exhibited a sexually-
that have developed from an ongoing charged show of light boxes and peep
creative dialog between these two New boxes titled “Peep Show” which married
York-based painters. her exceptional printmaking skills with
the display schemes of a pornographer’s
darkroom. Fierce Sonia, a well-known
local art model, has over the years
been picking up a photographic thread
where she uses her own body to capture
exceptional images that blur the line
between nude photography and the
mind of the voyeur. Through May 3rd.
Finally, in neighboring Bethesda,
Gallery Neptune has a three-person
show in May: Joan Belmar, Cameron
Petke and Jared Ragland. All three artists
favor a straight forward intimacy in their
work created with transparent acetate,
porcelain clay or Polaroid photographs.
Andrea Luria, Roseate Spoonbill, oil on linen,
Look for Belmar’s work to stand out.
60’’ x 72’’. Courtesy of Cross MacKenzie. His work alternates between paintings
on paper to structured acrylic paintings
In Georgetown, Cross Mac- using Mylar and acetate which create
DARLENE KUHNE
Kenzie (1054 31st Street, NW) offers optical illusions as you pass in front of
the large-scale paintings of California each
855 Inca St.work.
Denver CO 80204
artist Andrea Luria, in an exhibition 720 935 2596
titled “Big Birds.” Widely shown on the www.darlenekuhneart.com
west coast, this will be Luria’s first show
in the DC area. The opening reception
is May 21st. Also in Georgetown, at
Addison Ripley (1670 Wisconsin Ave,
NW), where the recent solo show by
District favorite Amy Lin received rave
reviews and sales, and continued Lin’s
love affair with the DC art world, do not
miss Dan Treado’s solo show in May.
Across the river in Old Town
Alexandria, the Art League’s (105
N. Union Street) recent shows by
printmaker Rosemary Feit Covey and
photographer Fierce Sonia seemed to
mark a new departure point for one of Joan Belmar, Alchemy XI, acrylic and ink on
the area’s most traditional spaces. Feit
canvas. Courtesy of Neptune Gallery.
23
C
APRIL 2010

alifornia
ontemporary ART

Schoening @ Blythe Projects

CALIFORNIA NEWS

Blythe Projects: A New Gallery in Culver City

Under the gales of January’s El Nino greatest inspirations traveling paths a new imagery that stirs the unconscious.
rains, Culver City welcomed their that weave between the spiritual and They live in big, beautiful worlds and
newest gallery, Blythe Projects and material worlds. “I revel in works that really explore their capacities for being
director, Hillary Metz. are beautiful, curious and sometimes human…a truly wild task in today’s
Shaped by her formal strange. I welcome having an artwork environment.”
museum training and two Blythe Projects focuses
gallery directorships, fueled on mid-career artists, but Metz
by her passion for painting, also lends support to emerging
community and rock & roll, artists and serves on the MOCA
Metz founded Blythe Projects Contemporaries Board and the
as a freewheeling hybrid of Los Angeles Art Association
painters, designers, filmmakers Advisory Board.
and musicians. “I believe you Her Inaugural show will
have to learn ‘the rules’ and introduce Cloudcuckooland
work within ‘the rules’ before by mixed media painter and
you can successfully work sculptor, Mark Schoening.
beyond them,” she says. Cloudcuckooland is an
“Moving to Los Angeles unrealistic state where
was an experiment,” Metz everything is seemingly
recalls. “I left my directorship perfect; yet the truth
with a prominent gallery in remains…instability and
Santa Fe, New Mexico to chaos have become the 21st
shake things up…to expand century norm. Schoening’s
my art field, really. At the time, palette of neons and metallics,
I didn’t realize I had signed on layered and encased in
for such an incredible ride!” resin, capture ‘information
Preferring to work explosions’ and reflect the
deeply with a small group of world we have created for
artists, rather than juggle a ourselves: a world where on
hectic rotation of exhibitions, must remain partially unaware
Metz has a thoughtful of reality in order to exist.
schedule planned for 2010.
Each exhibition, on view Hillary Metz, Blythe Projects. Blythe Projects is located
for 8 to 10 weeks, will be at 5797 West Washington
complemented by interactive events, knock the wind out of me, but I choose Boulevard in Culver City. Gallery
lectures, and receptions. Aligning with to exhibit works that offer a slow trip hours are Tuesday through Saturday
her community spirit, Metz keeps her down the rabbit hole. Whether it be in 11am to 6pm and by appointment.
program approachable and accessible. the art world or the world-at-large, I Cloudcuckooland, new paintings and
“It’s all about maintaining a balance seek out meaning and connection, not sculptures by Mark Schoening will be
of demystifying and mystifying,” she simply information or commentary. on view March 11th through May 1st.
muses. The artists I work with combine the For more information call (310) 990-
Metz and her artists find their representational and abstract, creating 3501 or visit blytheprojects.net.

30 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010

CALIFORNIA NEWS
Martha Otero Charts Her Own Course
Martha Otero.
Los Angeles art gallery Otero Plassart
has changed ownership. Art dealer
Martha Otero, formerly the director
and co-owner of the gallery alongside
entrepreneur Melanie Plassart, will
now be the gallery’s sole owner and
Director. The gallery will continue
doing business as a new entity aptly
titled, Martha Otero, and will remain at
its current location.
Martha brings a wealth of
experience in the contemporary art
markets to her first solo gallery venture.
Before Otero Plassart, she worked as a
sales consultant for Gagosian Gallery
in Beverly Hills prior to consulting
independently in the secondary market.
Her breadth of knowledge of the art
32 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
Martha Otero exhibition space.
business, and of the Los Angeles
art markets specifically, can also be
attributed to her time as the director of
the Jack Hanley gallery and working for
Regen Projects. Martha has also spent
a significant amount of time assisting
artists and organizing curatorial projects
throughout Los Angeles.
Before beginning her existence
as a gallerist, Martha graduated from
New York University with a Bachelor’s
degree in Fine Arts, Film and Television.
It was here that she laid the groundwork
for her profession by interning with the
legendary Leo Castelli gallery in New
York. Her admiration of artistic talent
continues to be a motivating factor in
her work today.
Martha Otero plans to continue
with new exhibitions featuring artists
Diana Al-Hadid, Chris Beas, Konstantin
Bojanov, Miguel Calderon, E.V. Day,
Rob Fischer, Jacob Hashimoto, Kathryn
Garcia, Luis Gispert, Jin Meyerson,
Jose Parla, Aaron Spangler, and Jeff
Sonhouse.
Martha Otero is located in at 820
North Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood.
The gallery will reopen on May 1st
and will have the following hours:
Tuesday thru Saturday from 11:00am to
5:30pm and by appointment. For more
information, call (323) 951-1068 or
visit marthaotero.com.
EXHIBITIONS
John Jurayj5 Prospect
& CharlesAve.
LaBelle returning
White Plains,
NY 10607 In other works in the series, Fisher
Walter Maciel Los287
Tel: 914 Angeles
0303 and 287
Fax: 914 inverting
7305 them into photographic
[through May 15]
Untitled (Undead), a new set of projects
by John Jurayj, continues his exploration
of the aftermath and destruction created
by the Lebanese Civil War. The series
consists of life-size interpretations of
dead bodies silkscreened onto polish
stainless steel with ink and gunpowder
taking cues from an earlier series, 15
Untitled Men.
Margaret Bowland, Thorny Crown.
John Jurayj, Untitled (Undead), installation view.
Using photos of dead bodies
appropriated from journalistic sources,
Jurayj attempts to enliven the mortality
of each victim through the disposition
of imagery and the process of making
the image. Jurayj attempts to free each
casualty from his or her constraint by
36 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
them to a vertical position
reevaluates the traditional museum
negatives. Charles LaBelle will present structure by investigating the recycling
a significant new group of over thirty and transformation of abandoned office
drawings from his ongoing project, buildings and industrial facilities into
Buildings Entered. Begun in September potential museums, inserting this
1997, the project documents every repurposing into the process of urban
building the artist has physically entered growth and decay.
since the start date.Part diary, part
historical document, the project archive
currently lists over twelve thousand
buildings, with additional locations
added almost daily. By foregrounding
the act of “entering” these buildings,
LaBelle’s project engages a broader,
phenomenological framework: one that
investigates the relationship between
architecture and the body, between
urban space and the construction of the
subject. The buildings, with their dates
andwww.donnachambersdesigns.com
times, can be seen as a “body of
evidence” and, individually, the scenes
of various, untold, “crimes.”
Frederick Fisher
Frederick Fisher, Wells, 2010, watercolor and
Edward Cella Los Angeles graphite on paper, 12.2’’ x 9’’.
[through May 22]
Neha Choski
This exhibition of new and recent
Carl Berg Projects
watercolors explores the form-making
West Hollywood
process and composition strategies [through May 7]
that renowned West Coast architect
Frederick Fisher employs when
envisioning and creating proposals for
a wide variety of potential architectural
commissions. Surprisingly, this is
Fisher’s first solo exhibition in Los
Angeles and is the gallery’s first solo
exhibition for an architect. Entitled
“Frederick Fisher: Thinking by
Neha Choksi, Anesthetizing Black Goat (Bodies are
Hand, his work includes a variety of just tragic), 2009-2010, mixed media & archival
imagined public and private spaces pigment print on paper, framed size,17’’ x 26’’.
through a series of elemental and
geographic watercolors, exploring Combining video installations with
exciting and novel living/working related drawings, paintings, and
spaces that connect art with nature. photographs, this new exhibition by
 EXHIBITIONS

Neha Choksi is a follow-up to her works on unadulterated Styrofoam, the and cataloguing discarded, unsolicited
successful exhibitions in India. It is artist plays with the hierarchical roles portfolios. Levine has assembled this
also her first solo show in the US in five assigned to material goods, elevating a material to analyze cultural waste in
years. Continuing her long-standing precisely machined material, formerly a tangible way, while also displaying
use of absurd and traumatic as poetic protection for a more significant object, human-scaled statistics in an industry
devises, she unpacks the foundations into that which is now prized. where everyone is trying to be
of existence. In her videos, largely discovered.
unscripted performances form the
basis to explore presence as created
by absence. Minds to Lose, a six-
channel video work, exploits the hand-
held home-video format to create a
forced familial commonality between
humans and animals as they submit to
anesthesia and the subsequent loss of
consciousness. They are paired with
a series of small-format drawings that
sketch the absented personality of the
sedated creatures, human and animal.
Leaf Fall, meanwhile, records a single
day’s work of stripping a rural peepul
tree of all its leaves, save an autumnal
sprig at the tip of a single high branch.
This lyrical sunrise-to-sunset look at
a process of laying bare, of stripping
away everything until the ordinary is
made singular, is a picture of severe loss
DARLENE KUHNE
Jaime Scholnick, In All Ion, 2010, sytrofoam, gesso
and acrylic paint, 168’’ x 48’’ x 48’’.
David Levine, Hopeful, 2010.

855 Inca St. Denver CO 80204

as a starting point for life’s renewal.
Axis Mundi
CB1 Los Angeles
[through April 18]
Appearing in many forms around the
globe, the Axis Mundi takes shape
in unique ways in the work of the
three artists. Timothy Nolan explores
and interprets fundamental patterns,
geometry, and systems of order that
occur naturally and unnaturally. While
nearly everything we experience today
is digitized, each convergence of shapes
echoes back thousands of years through
multiple iterations, revealing the
building blocks of life and civilization.
In Jaime Scholnick’s current series of
The drawings of Osvaldo Trujillo are Los Angeles is the mecca of the
720 935 2596
mysteries, begun with a vision during American dream, where actors migrate
www.darlenekuhneart.com
a dream and elaborated upon by the to reach their success, yet ninety-nine
artist, adding details that bring the percent of the estimated twenty-five
image into focus for both the artist and thousand headshots submitted to talent
the viewer. Structures of all kinds are agencies weekly are routinely thrown
the recurring subject in the work, some out. The number of those few who
are architectural or anatomical or other succeed is minute when compared to the
broader systems—underlying forms millions who try and fail. The images of
of this world expressed in images of this exhibition all differ in proportion,
another. pose and appearance, but collectively
contain the same underlying desire to
David Levine succeed. Ironically, Levine offers the
François Ghebaly Los Angeles actors the access to voyeurism that they
[through April 25] strive for, exposing the conventions
and pretensions of creative professions
“Hopeful”, a project by New York-born
across the cultural field.
and Berlin-based artist David Levine, is
the result of several years of collecting

EXHIBITIONS 37
EXHIBITIONS
Rowan Wood
Steve Turner Los Angeles
[through May 22]
Rowan Wood, Bubble Solution 08 and 09, 2010, oil
on linen, 36’’ x 36’’.
The boundaries of visual language
and the varieties of experience that art
provokes are central concerns running
throughout Rowan Wood’s work. In his
series titled Copy, Wood investigates
the use of simple mark-making in an
attempt to communicate without relying
on familiar or pre-conceived forms. His
Cage series paintings are statements
on the limitations of human thought
and the role words play in human life.
Wood’s newest work will be featured
in For the Benefit of Humanity, and
in it, he has concentrated on several
standard categories of expression
within the discipline of painting. This
body of work consists of a single visual
message that is repeated in a spectrum
of shifting compositions and protean
categories, including autobiographical/
psychological; formalism; and pop art.
Defining the values of a visual symbol
that result in it falling under one category
or another is fraught with problems and
38 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
exemptions to the rules. Nevertheless,
these boundaries present the possibility
of control over expression while pre-
determining elements that affect the
experience of the work. Wood explores
the use of control and manipulation in
an attempt to evoke different, new, or
undefined experiences.
Robert Melee
David Kordansky Los Angeles
[through April 17]
Robert Melee, installation view.
New works by Robert Melee transform
elements of modernist and classical
formalism into the building blocks for his
own irreverent, kitsch-filled language.
Melee has always sought to relocate
the formal debates of the Western art
historical tradition in the psychological
realm of the suburban home, and he
situates his practice in a place where
high and low not only interact but cross-
pollinate. After working on short films
almost exclusively for a period in the
1990s, Melee shifted toward making
physical works that work encompass,
abstractly, the same issues he tackled
in the films: class, obsessive, behaviors,
nostalgia, and humor. In this new work,
he uses of beer bottle caps – found
objects that accumulate as a result of
drinking – as both a formal gesture and
a sociological one. Melee’s paintings
can also be seen as sites where urban
and suburban attitudes enter into
both conflict and collaboration, while
his formal experimentation finds its
psychological analogues in the blurring
of beauty and grotesquerie, nostalgia
and critique. This conflation of high and
low awakens the mind and eye to the
possibility of intense aesthetic potential
in the suburban environment.
Lisi Raskin
The Company Los Angeles
[through June 19]
Lisi Raskin, Container, 2009, collaged paper, archival
adhesive, graphite, acrylic paint, 28’’ x 22’’.
Lisi Raskin’s first solo exhibition in Los
Angeles, Mt. Disappointment, makes
use of the main gallery and garage to
create a immersive play environment
that the artist has staged. Over the past
ten years, Raskin has explored the
nuclear-powered sublime on a first hand
basis and used her findings in the field to
develop artwork. This show’s narrative
begins in the garage where Raskin
has installed a large collage to serve
as a stand-in for the incoming bomber
threat that the Nike/Hercules2 missile
program was designed to thwart. In

response to this bomber collage, Raskin
constructs a crude replica of a Browning
M2 machine gun, a versatile, firearm
usually mounted to tanks. However,
in this case, Raskin has mounted the
machine gun to a sculpture instead. Over
the course of the exhibition, the garage
space will also be the site for various
performances that Raskin will stage. In
the main gallery space, Raskin retrofits
an architectural gesture/framing device
for various smaller scale collages that
both describe the Nike/Hercules sites
that she visited on her research trip and
use abstraction to loosen the semantic
attachment to the nature of the sites,
bringing to the foreground ideas of
form, composition, color and geometric
abstraction.
Kohei Yoshiyuki
M+B West Hollywood
[through April 24]
Kohei Yoshiyuki, Untitled, 1971, From the series The
Park, gelatin silver print. © Kohei Yoshiyuki. Courtesy
Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, and M+B Gallery, Los
Angeles.
First exhibited in 1979 at Komai
Gallery in Tokyo, Kohei Yoshiuki’s
The Park captured couples meeting for
clandestine trysts in the park. A public
uproar surrounded the show, and it was
moved from public viewing for the next
28 years. This West Coast premiere of the
recently unearthed exhibition presents a
series of black and white photographs
shot in three Tokyo parks in the the
early seventies. Yoshiyuki first came
upon this hidden sexual underworld
while photographing skyscrapers in
front of Chuo Park in Shinjuku. There,
he witnesses a couple having sex and
quickly discovered an entire subculture
of young lovers – and their peepers.
Returning with an inconspicuous 35
camera, a filtered flash, and infrared
film, he documented these coupling and
the spectators lurking in the bushes.
The combination between sexual acts,
which avoid graphic depiction, and
the voyeurs, all immersed in the night-
scape, provide a complicated, dense
tableaux. On top of this, the snapshot-
like quality of these images implicated
the photographer, viewer, and subject,
making for both intriguing and poignant
work. In addition to the Park collection,
the exhibition also includes work
from Yoshiyuki’s Love Hotel, a group
of video stills pulled from un-erased
videotapes made at hotels famous for
prostitution.
Sarah Rossiter & Dorsey Dunn
den contemporary
West Hollywood
[through April 30]
Working together for the first time.
Sarah Rossiter and Dorsey Dunn present
a large-scale installation of sound
and image, Illuminating Devices, that
transforms the gallery into an elevated,
floating landscape. The installation
consists of a 36-channel sound field
by Dorsey Dunn and multiple large-
scale photographic murals by Sarah
Rossiter, with additional smaller works
also on display. Expansive floor-to-
ceiling photographs that share a low
and continuous horizon line create a
panorama that places the viewer in an
unexpected observatory. The sound
EXHIBITIONS
field take the shape of an outstretched
bird wing, with custom-designed
speakers arranged in long strands
throughout nearly 3,500 square feet.
Via this sculptural array, rhythmic, self-
generating tone structures sonically
unfurl in the gallery.
Illuminating Devices: Dorsey Dunn, Illuminating
Devices (Garden), 2010, custom 34-channel sound
installation with speakers and software, and Sarah
Rossiter, Illuminating Devices (Horizon), 2010, color
photograph on fabric, 108’’ x 444’’.  Photo:
Courtesy of den contemporary art, Los Angeles.
lluminating Devices opens up an
imagined audiovisual arboretum
that is outside of time: the piece is
visually mixed and hourless, and the
accompanying soundscape continues to
wander and develop itself endlessly –
just as the photographic horizon implies
an extent far beyond the confines of the
walls. The work provides an intensely
immersive experience.
Kelly Reemtsen
Skidmore Santa Monica
[through May 15]
“I’m not falling for you” is Los Angeles
artist Kelly Reemtsen’s first one-person
show in LA in four years. Her paintings
explore the role of the modern woman
in contemporary society and focus on
the contrast between how a woman
views herself as opposed to how she is
viewed by others. Some of Reemtsen’s
paintings depict women clothed in
EXHIBITIONS 39
EXHIBITIONS
vintage party dresses. Though the artist
makes no overt allusions to film or
television, one can’t look at Reemtsen’s
paintings without thinking of classic
television icons of femininity from
the 50’s and 60’s in bright, sumptuous
dresses.
Kelly Reemtsen, I’m not falling for you, 2010, oil on
panel, 36’’ x 36’’. Skidmore Contemporary Art.
Despite the seeming optimism, a dark
undertone is conveyed by the presence
of an ambiguous tool in her hands, ones
commonly associated with masculinity:
a coiled hose, a pair of bolt cutters, a
chain saw, a pair of lawn shears, a
crow bar. Contrasted with her attire
and jewels, the tools holds more than a
hint of menace. The tools, though, can
also be seen as symbols of feminine
empowerment, the women ‘doing it all.’
The titles like “The load I carry” affirm
the dark humor of the work. Reemtsen’s
luscious, thick paint, meanwhile, push
the confectionary quality to the point of
dark humor as well as perhaps tempting
the view to taste the paint.
Lawrence Gipe & Jeff Matsuno
Lora Schlesinger Santa Monica
[through May 15]
Lawrence Gipe’s latest paintings and
drawings are derived from photographic
40 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
images published in 1962 by the Soviet
Union. Many of the source photos
originally came from U.S.S.R.
propaganda tracts written in German
and aimed at Eastern Bloc audiences to
promote and celebrate its achievements
and influence. In 1962, the Soviet
Union reached its greatest extension
of territorial control and morale of its
people was high, having just sent the
first man into space the previous year.
Jeff Matsuno, Fire Escape (detail), 2010, mixed
media, 30’’ x 40’’ x 5’’. Lora Schlesinger Gallery.
Lawrence Gipe, No. 11 from 1962 (Factory), 2010, oil
on canvas, 33.5’’ x 53’’. Lora Schlesinger Gallery.
What intrigues Gipe about the year
1962 is how a totalitarian power
decided to portray itself through a
self generated photographic record.
Choosing a variety of genres – bucolic
and industrial landscapes, portraiture
and magazine journalism – Gipe
re-presents them as paintings and
drawings, creating a new, critical
context for the images. Jeff Matsuno’s
urban themed wall reliefs depicting
Downtown L.A. will be featured in
the East Gallery. After years in Italy,
Matsuno returned to Los Angeles and
revisited the streets of Downtown
L.A. Fascinated with the city’s history,
architecture and life, Matsuno began to
photograph the graffiti facades of the
many buildings that were once lived
in or part of a bustling company, now
abandoned and decayed. Searching
for new ways of resurrecting these old
buildings, he has taken his photographs
and turned them into three-dimensional
clay reliefs, a historical documentation
of what was once but now is gone.
Lawrence Yun
Sarah Lee Santa Monica
[through May 15]
Lawrence Yun, Palm in Bond (Green Berries II), 2010,
watercolor on paper, 13’’ x 13’’.
Lawrence Yun’s latest watercolor series
“Hybrid Romance” delivers a seemingly
natural, yet imaginative oddity beneath
the surface aesthetic of his meticulously
orchestrated floral compositions. In the
style of realism, Yun focuses on the
manipulation and manufacturing of
nursery culture as both artificial and
natural hybridizations between man
and earth. These paintings represent an
observation of universal technological
and evolutionary living patterns, which

appear as genetically-modified and
biologically-enhanced experiments
practiced throughout all aspects of
life—a “miracle grow” sensation that
is beyond real. The paintings are meant
to be aesthetically pleasing, yet the
deliberate awkwardness of the structured
subject matter conveys subtle messages
that trigger the audience to question the
imagery. Yun is aware of art historical
precedents and accordingly tries to
depart from the tradition with a modern
interpretation.
Charles Garabedian
L.A. Louver Venice
[through May 8]
Charles Garabedian, Hippolyta, 2009, acrylic on
paper, 48’’ x 44.25’’.
Diversity of form and image is the
hallmark of Charles Garabedian’s
idiosyncratic paintings, a dozen of which
are presented at this exhibition of new
work. Mythology and reality intermingle,
time collapses, and surreal imagery is
born. His lively compositions, both raw
and whimsical, belie the serious content
of the conveyed narrative. Painting in
vibrant colors in acrylic on canvas or
paper, Garabedian continues to mine
literary and mythological sources for
his inspiration. Adam and Eve, 2009,
portrays Eve defenseless and open, with
arms raised above her head, while Adam
has an exasperated pose, presenting an
oppositional balance with a central tree
dividing the composition. The largest
painting in the exhibition Die Tote Stadt
(The Dead City), 2009, harkens to the
opera of the same title by Erich Wolfgang
Korngold. It presents an accumulation
of imagery in foreshortened space: a
panoply of architecture derived from
different cultures and ages, trucks and
cars (one on fire), and an image of three
dancing figures through a window that
references Matisse’s great 1910 painting
La Danse. In his indefinable and
singular manner, Garabedian addresses
the human condition with lightness of
touch and in disarming fashion.
Jeffrey Gibson & Steve Hough
Arin Contemporary
Laguna Beach
[through May 30]
Towering over the gallery is Jeffrey
Gibson’s 7’ x 10’ painting, Submerge
(2007), accompanied by many smaller,
recent collaged works on paper. In
this painting, Gibson layers seemingly
endless amounts of oil and spray paint
onto the oversized canvas, juxtaposing
a brilliant neon color pallet with an
omnipresent black cloud. These layers
are equally dynamic and symphonic,
intensively and intentionally enveloping
the entire space of the canvas. Although
nonrepresentational, the graffiti-
like drips of spray paint mixed with
the precision of his brushstrokes
never break from continuity; its
dimensions are transporting yet
controlled, portentous and still lyrical.
To accompany Submerge is a new
series of acrylic and collage works on
watercolor paper. A master of duplicity,
EXHIBITIONS
Steve Hough’s carved Plexiglas works
defy the perceived inelasticity of their
medium. Carved in monochromatic
hues, they are reminiscent of a familiar
sheen, eventually revealed as everyday
auto paint.
Jeffrey Gibson, Submerge, 2007, oil & spray paint on
canvas, 84’’x 120’’.
The soothing coats of car enamel are slick
and streamlined, and never wavering
from Hough’s characteristically
rhythmic dimensions. Each piece
exemplifies the actual pliability of its
plastic medium. A shift in lighting
combined with the viewer’s shadow
reveal hidden complimentary colors,
almost as if two or three paintings in one.
Introductions 2010
Art Zone 461 San Francisco
[through May 30]
This show of new artists and their fresh
works include five new oil painters,
forming a cohesive and complimentary
group. Jhina Alvarado works in oil
and encaustic and calls herself a
figurative abstract artist. Within an
ethereal, ambiguous environment, she
transforms individuals into anonymous
“everyman”. Randy Beckelheimer
documents the urban landscape, mixing
luxurious color scenes with black &
white pieces. Holly Downing brings
thirty years of solo exhibition experience
to her work, which uses mezzotinting.
EXHIBITIONS 41
EXHIBITIONS
Randy Beckelheimer, Hunter’s Point 27, 2010, oil on
canvas, 72” x 96”. Courtesy of ArtZone 461.
Heidi McDowell’s paintings are
contemplative and quiet. She sketches
and photographs locations before
painting, paying careful attention to
quality of light and surface texture.
Ryan Reynold creates images of the
dirty industrial shore and suburban
sprawl of the East Bay, documented a
specific place and time fragmented by
the artist’s memory and perception. [The
works on Gorgon Cook, a painter who
elevated household items to sublime
elegance during his long run in the Bay
Area, will also be presented in the Side
Gallery.]
Stephen Sollins & Pard Morrison
Brian Gross San Francisco
[through May 1 & June 25]
In his work, Stephen Sollins transforms
mundane objects into works of art,
exploring ideas of family, memory,
communication and non-communication
in our daily lives. Sollins’ use of precious
materials and re-contextualization of
everyday objects forces us to reconsider
the mundane. Sollins’ collages feature
images of utilitarian objects, such as
office chairs and filing cabinets, affixed
to either blueprint paper or foil; isolated
within expansive metallic fields and
rigid delineated spaces, the small images
conjure feelings of loneliness and
42 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
anonymity. His highly conceptual works
are alternately stark and impersonal,
and seductively beautiful, yet all evoke
feelings that are profoundly human.
Stephen Sollins, Detail of Nine Small Monuments,
2008-2010, 24K gold leaf and ink on hydrocal.
Colorado artist Pard Morrison’s works
feature repeating blocks of solid
colors, applied through an enameling
process that results in surfaces durable
enough to withstand permanent outdoor
installation. The simplicity of form and
gridded structure of his work builds
on the Minimalist tradition; however,
in place of the cold, quiet austerity
associated with the movement,
Morrison’s work boasts a bold, colorful
palette, and the subtle texture of the
oven-fired surfaces lends a painterly
element to the rigid geometric forms.
Juxtapositions of neutral and vivid
colors create dynamic, rhythmic color
fields that make for a unique optical
experience. On view will be four new
wall reliefs created specifically for the
show.
Robert Hudson
Patricia Sweetow San Francisco
[through May 15]
Robert Hudson is celebrated as one
our foremost American sculptors.
His painterly sculptures and complex
constructions incorporating found
objects, paintings on canvas, and
works on paper, referenced not only the
political environment, but also echoed
his Pacific Northwest origins. For this
exhibition, Robert Hudson exhibits
work from the last 2 years. From modest
scale, to over 5 feet, the sculptures have
resolved into inventive elegance. The
welded cast iron, porcelain enamel, and
stainless steel sculptures offer graceful
interaction of form with color and the
playful spin of kinetic energy. Hudson’s
pen and ink drawings mirror the strength
of his sculpture, with repetitive spiraling
forms that force the eye to trace their
voyage on paper.
Robert Hudson, Cross Cut (detail), 2005, mixed
media sculpture, 77”. x 34” x 24”.
This exhibition coincides with unveiling
of a major commission of his work at One
Hawthorne, a residential highrise in San
Francisco. The exterior installation,145
feet tall by 12 feet wide, is a vertical
mural comprised of multiple porcelain
enamel panels, reproducing series of 30
x 23 inch pen and ink drawings created
by Hudson for this project. Spanning 16
floors, it is located on the eastern facade
of the building and is appropriately
titled Landmark.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
Mark Schoening, Untitled 15, 2010, mixed media on
panel, 17’’ x 14’’.
A strong theme that has been at the
forefront of my work for the last several
years has been the aesthetic generated
by the high-speed flash photographs
that were being produced by Harold
Edgerton at MIT in the 1950’s. For
the first time we were given a chance
to see a moment in time that had
previously been impossible. Through
modern technology, time was frozen.
What seemed to be simple physical
interactions and relationships soon
resembled a series of magnificent
complexity and at times ordered chaos.
The paintings are constructed
around a similar idea of this controlled
chaos. Initial gestural marks are made
and are then photographed. These
marks are then recomposed in the
computer using a series of self generated
Auto CAD drawings that I begin to
construct and deconstruct around each
composition. The computer generated
image is then applied directly over the
ARTISTS
MARK SCHOENING
initial painting mark and the process me as the artist another opportunity
then repeats itself. The painting mark to view the work in a new way and
is frozen and reinforced with a graphic continue to push the direction of the
structure. The final image attempts final sculptures.
to convey the idea of an information This result speaks of a current
explosion. This is achieved by the world where instability and chaos have
densely layering each moment between become the norm. Creating a situation
multiple coats of resin. The resin acts as in which one must remain partially
a lens allowing the viewer to experience unaware of reality in order to exist.
these multiple worlds simultaneously.
In late 2009 after working in
a strictly monochromatic palette for
the previous four years, I reintroduced
color into the work. A palette of neon’s
and metallic distracts, attracts, and
separates multiple layers within each
composition. The result creates a more
active range of possibilities within each
viewing. This expansion in palette also
pushed me to generate the paintings
three dimensionally for the first time. I
created a series of rules that would be
followed throughout the process that
would best emulate that of the creation
of the paintings. Cube formations were
constructed to best follow the constraints
Mark Schoening, Untitled 13, 2010, mixed media on
of working within the boarders of panel, 16’’ x 20’’.
a two dimensional composition. I
began stretching and manipulating
spandex forms within each space to
produce larger constructions. Treating
the sculptural process as that of the
painting allowed me to make constant
and sweeping changes to the direction
of each piece. I photographed the
cube forms in a staged area. Each time
I changing the angle and view of the
form thus producing a moving image
where the structure remained static and Mark Schoening, Sculpture Installation View, 2009,
the composition within began to shift. mixed media.
Turning the series of photographs into
a stop motion moving image, allowed
ARTISTS 45
ARTISTS
A N T H O N Y M A S T R O M AT T E O
A PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST
Anthony Mastromatteo, detail of The American
Dream, 2009, oil on linen on board, 30 ’ x 40’’.
Anthony Mastromatteo’s sometimes
crumpled, ragged and torn sheets are
actually intricately detailed, nuanced,
stunning treatises of American
culture. His luscious and somewhat
provocatively edgy still lives, shadow-
less and full of light, are paradoxically
hyper-realistic. His paintings
simultaneously capture contemporary
thoughts, provoke analysis and pull on
the viewers’ heartstrings.
As high school senior – a brilliant
student and first team high school
soccer All-American – it was viewing
of JMW Turner’s painting, The Burning
of the Houses of Lords and Commons,
16 October,1834, at the Cleveland Art
Museum that dramatically changed
Mastromatteo’s course. With plans set in
motion to study International Relations
at Princeton University, Mastromatteo
opted instead to study Art History. The
painting was the catalyst, and in a case
of serendipity, a class that covered
JMW Turner was among Princeton’s
46 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
Anthony Mastromatteo, The Superman, 2010,
oil on linen on board, 30.5’’ x 27’’.
first semester offerings. The course’s
examination of master paintings,
including a special viewing of Vincent
van Gogh’s, Self-Portrait as a Buddhist
Monk, at the Fogg Museum at Harvard
University would prove pivotal to his
development.
Mastromatteo had an epiphany:
whatever it was that made van Gogh
conceive of himself in that way, was
something he too had in himself. The
combined access and exposure to
New York City museums provided
an abundance for Mastromatteo to
explore and embrace. It was not be until
the Fall of 1996, at the Art Student’s
League in New York, that 27-year-
old Mastromatteo began to paint.
Mastromatteo weaves his proud,
noble, triumphant and sometimes sexy
narratives, intending to tug at our
memories and address our collective
sensibility, while challenging, quite
literally, our very sense of reality. In his
trompe-l’oeil paintings, Mastromatteo
painstakingly seeks and chooses
the iconic, wrinkled and worn, and
haphazardly tapes these found pieces
of American culture, casting stunning
shadows. He presents these once
prized morsels, now on the verge of
discarded, and persuades and teases
the viewer to see an unreality as reality.
Mastromatteo’s lovely come hither
still-lives, washed in seductive color
and form, taunt with an intensely
fierce reality that belie their freedom
from shadowy constraints. Bright and
gleaming, Mastromatteo serves up these
visually sculpted delectibles on a platter.
Mastromatteo’s work begs a
multitude of questions. The pop artists
of the 60’ forward, vow, almost as a
religion, to reinterpret and re-translate
our childhood stuff into a new vision.
Their re-spinning of our culture in their
own image declares that American
art, culture, commerce, beauty and
sex are inextricably intertwined. It is
in these new visions and reflections,
Mastromatteo provides a bright new
perspective for us to contemplate our
heroes and legends – and the sweetest
of innocent treats – pursuing, dissecting
and thus challenging our purest of
childhood memories. Ultimately,
Mastromatteo’s process is one of
deconstruction and reconstruction, and
it is his intent to build a painting with
a vision, which is at once, beautiful,
intellectual and uncanny.
Anthony Mastromatteo’s paintings are
available from Adler & Co. Gallery in
San Francisco. For more information,
visit www.adlerandco.com.

DECONSTRUCTING THE FOUNDATIONS OF VIDEO
Peter Sarkisian, Extruded Video Engine, Large Shape 1, Version 3, 2008, vacuum formed thermal plastic and
video projection, 39’’ x 40’’ x 8’’, unique in a series. Courtesy of I-20, New York.
In Extruded Video Engine, series 2007-
2008, Peter Sarkisian imagines how
video itself might look: a clinking,
cartoon-like facade through which
snippets of text scroll in random burst.
Here the text element is derived from
audio recordings in which friends and
colleagues recall personally significant
experiences. By transcribing these
memories, dynamic events are reduced
to passing references, which then
function as mere information within the
imaging device. In this way the Video
Engine parodies the world of media,
transforming real-life content into a few
inconsequential bylines.
An allegory for media in general,
the Video Engine catches us in the act
of watching TV; only here TV is not
confused with narrative or storyline,
rather it is the mechanism itself. To
watch TV is to stare into a cartoon-like
medium totally bereft of experiential
ARTISTS
PETER SARKISIAN
value. Intent on deconstructing his own Peter Sarkisian is represented by
methods and tools, Sarkisian asserts I-20 in New York. For more information,
that our own collective experience, visit i-20.com or petersarkisian.com.
as it exists within media, has become
cartoon-like as well.
Sarkisian’s video engine has a
contoured screen that was designed
using 3D modeling software, and which
was sculpted by machine from slabs
of mahogany using computer-guided
technology. He combined hundreds of
film clips together to form cohesive
images that match the contours of the
shaped surfaces. Sarkisian has created
a futuristic work that leans on the past
at the same time: the film clips gears,
pistons, and ball bearings in vivid colors
are Cold War remnants that were filmed
at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
Surplus facility in New Mexico, which
granted the artist access. The final work
is a vacuum-formed thermal plastic and
video projection.
ARTISTS 49
ARTISTS
JEAN KAZANDJIAN
EXPLORING THE DEPTHS OF PERFECTION
BY JOHN LAVITT
Jean Kazandjian, Spiral in Five Movements, oil on canvas, 57’’ x 45’’.
Jean Kazandjian moved to Paris in
1963 during the height of the artistic
revolution of the 20th century. As a
consequence of the Diaspora brought
on by the Armenian genocide in Turkey,
Kazandjian’s family of Armenian
descent lived in Beirut, the city often
referred to as the “Paris of the Middle
East.” Discovering his creative voice in
the real Paris, Kazandjian’s paintings
evolved in an ongoing engagement to
transcend the boundaries of perception.
This evolution has continued in a
multitude of dimensions since the artist
moved to Santa Monica, California in
2000.
The selection of works in the
two-part exhibition at Galerie Anais
50 A | C | A APRIL | MAY 2010
Jean Kazandjian, Woman Walking in a Garden, oil on canvas, 57’’ x 45’’.
emphasizes the multiple layers of
Kazandjian’s work, ranging from the
three-dimensional screen paintings to
playful interpretations of American
popular culture. Not tied to a single
form of expression or a dominant art
movement, Jean Kazandjian embraced
the freedom of his own visual journey
while living in Paris. Since moving to
Southern California, the interplay of
surrealism and popular cultural has
become an ongoing part of his work.
As Kazandjian so clearly
expresses in his own words:
“Perpetually, like Sisyphus, I embark
on a quest for an ultimate, but even
more elusive reality, yet each time I
draw near, it appears slightly different
to me.” Unlike Sisyphus and the despair
of forever rolling the rock up the hill
in Hades only to have it tumble back
down before ever reaching the top,
Kazandjian’s vibrant paintings are
characterized by both a wondrous sense
of play and an ongoing investigation
of shadows and depth, dimensions and
movement.
By painting in oil, Kazandjian
embraces a dynamic rhythm in his work
that leaves a lasting visual sensation
of spontaneity. The play of infinite
variation becomes a quest with the
living traditions of modern painting.
Rather than be defined by any specific
movement, each painting is a separate
part of his ongoing visual quest.

Jean Kazandjian, Sequences -Seated Woman - Nine Rectangles, oil on
canvas, 36’’ x 28’’.
In Venus in Disneyland, the largest
painting in the first show at Galerie
Anais, Kazandjian mixes the classical
sensuality of the European reclining
nude with silhouettes of Mickey Mouse,
the ultimate image of American popular
culture. With a playful expression, a
modern Olympia beholds the consumer
kitsch of the new world. As Kazandjian
once said, “My work constantly rouses
and goads the demons of illusion and
absurdity.”
In his screen paintings,
Kazandjian creates an intriguing depth
through the interaction of shadows and
silhouettes. The images on the screen
often hide parts of images underneath
while at the same time revealing a
Jean Kazandjian, Sequences - Freeway, oil on canvas, 60’’ x 48’’.
new aspect of the painting. As one
image is revealed another vanishes in a
sequence of rhythmic visual movement.
The repetition of images in the Screen
Paintings is about recording the fleeting
moments that are passing away. In the
first exhibit at Galerie Anais, the Screen
Paintings foster an aesthetic experience
where the revealed and the unseen
interact to unveil a realm of infinite
possibilities. Kazandjian illuminates
the evolution of the process: “Things
don’t have to appear immediately.
I want to show a part of it so someone
can discover the rest.”
The exploring of such a three-
dimensional interplay creates a visual
dynamism that is reminiscent of film.
ARTISTS
JEAN KAZANDJIAN
The screen paintings use the kinetic
process to present an array of aesthetic
interactions, ranging from historical
commentary and thematic jousting
to architectural depth and shadowy
movements. Jean Kazandjian provides
his audience with the unique sensation
of freeing Sisyphus from his repetitive
fate as we join him on an endless creative
quest to reveal the depths of perception.
After all, as the painter recently said,
“The canvas is not the frontier line of
the work because the possibilities of
reality are infinite.”
For more information about Jean
Kazandjian, visit galerieanais.com.
ARTISTS 51