Art Hound

Claire Nereim has a show at Jancar Jones in LA. Claire’s installation includes some fascinating materials: stacked newsprint, velvet ties, plaster, chromed metal, pyrite and plums. The plums are fantastic.

“Utilizing practical materials, these works map the areas between utility and impracticality, and history and temporality. Often inspired by dreams, they straddle the line between the real and the imagined. Analogous points of tension between interrelated, opposing states — between surface and depth, conscious and unconscious — serve as touchstones.” – Jancar Jones 

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Scale 5 (Muscle Beach)

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Images from Jancar Jones and artist’s website.

Devon Tsuno works on handmade paper from Japan and India. The artist’s bio reads: “Los Angeles-native Devon Tsuno paints with spray paint and acrylic. His recent body of abstract paintings on handmade papers focuses on the LA landscape’s non-native vegetation.” The layering of 2-D vegetation in Devon’s work has a really awesome effect. To me these pieces are evocative of the setting sun and the shadows created at different levels as the sun disappears into the horizon.

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Japanese-American artist Yoskay Yamamoto’s show at LeBasse Projects called The Joke’s On Me opens today. Yamamoto’s sculpture, with its mix of Japanese and American pop culture influences, is utterly charming, isn’t it?

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Sara Escamilla is a crush of mine – an LA-based artist who works in a variety of media. She is this week’s artist on Buy Some Damn Art and her work, a series of masks inspired by Picasso’s Saltambanque, is just stunning! Sara seems like a old soul – which is something I admire in people. Below are excerpts from the Q/A which you can read here.

Tell us a bit about this series.

It all started around the simple concept of “masks”, but as I started working on it, I kept on drawing these saltimbanque (Picasso) like characters. so, these circus performers kept reappearing and I finally stopped fighting it, and let them in.

Who are the boys and girls in your portraits? are the drawings based on actual people? 

This question made me smile. When I was a kid, my sister always asked me the same thing! They’re never anybody in particular. Just drawings I draw. Informed by everything i see, but conceived from my own brain.
I think it’s funny how no one asks this about someone’s drawing of a tree, “is this a tree you know?”.
Somehow, people want to attach a particular person to a drawing of a human image, but it’s the same thing you know, people and trees. You see so many in your lifetime, you know the willows from the oaks and you can recall them on command..

Any thoughts on our youth-obsessed culture?

I turned 30 this year and live in Los Angeles. It’s sometimes a frightening place – with so many people trying to run away from their aging selves (either in the way they dress, or injectables, etc). But it’s only frightening because they don’t realize it’s a facade they’re trying to hold on too so desperately.

On the other hand, some people wear that mask with such joy de vivre and good humour because they know and you know – it’s a mask. I think this is the secret, to why male transvestites seem to enjoy their sense of being a woman more than women do! We (women) just (falsely) take that mask for the real thing.

The truth is, no one really has a good idea of what they look like to other people (much less, to themselves) you can get a glimpse of people’s true selves every now and then when you encounter someone for the first time. But the shocking truth of that initial impression usually washes away quickly, after you start conversing with them, and all their self-monitoring and affectation distorts that first impression.

I think maybe our culture would be healthier if we all could stop trying to control our image so fervently. It’s so painful, to anyone with any sensitivity, to watch someone struggle to maintain a mask. Or maybe, if you do wear one – do so with a wink to the absurdity of it.

Ana Serrano’s amazing, mind-blowing, kaleidoscopic work in Salon of Beauty at Rice Gallery.

Ana Serrano is a first generation Mexican American born in Los Angeles, California in 1983. Her work bears reference to those in low socioeconomic positions, with particular interest in the customs and beliefs, as well as the architecture, fashion, and informal economies present within this segment of society.

Serrano saw the title, Salon of Beauty, hand-painted on the side of a small beauty salon. She was struck by the phrase’s slightly awkward, yet poetic quality. Later she realized it was a literal translation of the Spanish phrase, Salón De Belleza, which normally would be translated into English as “Beauty Salon.”  – Rice Gallery 

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How much would I like to see this show in person? A lot. Realms opened April 16th at Giant Robot’s LA location and features the work of three fantastic West Coast female artists: Yellena James, Ako Castuera, Elsa Mora.  While these three artists might not appear to have that much in common, there is an interesting, if unexpected, visual dialogue that I tried to capture here.

(clockwise from top left: Yellena James: Lola, Ako Castuera: Floating Temblor, Yellena James: Particle)

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(clockwise from top: Ako Castuera, Elsa Mora: Without Face, Elsa Mora: The Wound)

(clockwise from left: Elsa Mora: A Forest In Her Mind, Elsa Mora: La Espalda, Ako Castuera: The Foundry)

Source: All photos from Giant Robot 2 (where artwork is also available for purchase).