BEST PICTURES: Oscar Weekend Art Openings in L.A.

The Oscars may have gotten top billing this weekend in Los Angeles, but with the throng of art openings that also took place around the city, there were plenty of other "best pictures" worth checking out.  Below, (not) straight from the Academy, are the winners of this year's first annual Painting In L.A. Oscar Weekend Gallery Opening Awards.  Or the PILAOWGOA's for short.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTORS

Richard Prince
Cowboys
Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills
On view through April 6, 2013

This show was a shoe in to win as soon as the actual best supporting actor nominee Tommy Lee Jones showed up at the opening.  Prince's cowboy themed paintings were nice but it was so packed on opening night that getting a good look at them proved challenging.  Instead, the main attraction ended up being the star-studded crowd itself.  We aren't going to name names lest we tarnish our reputation as a serious, intellectually rigorous art publication.  We will, however, post a picture.

Richard Prince, Cowboys, opening night at Gagosian Gallery.  Several of those heads are super famous, promise.

Painting by Richard Prince from Cowboys at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

BEST PICTURES, BEST ANIMATED FILMS

Allison Schulnik
ex.pose
Laguna Art Museum
On view through April 28, 2013

Our top award goes to the very talented Allison Schulnik who definitely knows how to craft a memorable picture.  The basement gallery at the Laguna Art Museum is a perfect setting for Schulnik's lightly menacing graveyard-inspired paintings.  Three of her animated films, Hobo Clown (2008), Forest (2009), and Mound (2011) are also being screened in an adjacent room.  The soundtrack from the films, made up of Grizzly Bear songs, can be heard softly throughout the entire exhibit, adding nicely to the atmosphere of the show.

Allison Schulnik, Green-Wood #2, 2012, oil on linen, at Laguna Art Museum

Allison Schulnik, Cemetery Boo, 2012, oil on linen, at Laguna Art Museum

Installation view, paintings by Allison Schulnik at the Laguna Art Museum

Installation view, paintings by Allison Schulnik at the Laguna Art Museum

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN / SET DECORATOR

Henry Taylor
Blum & Poe
On view through March 30, 2013

Henry Taylor ran away with this one, turning Blum & Poe's main gallery space into a "formal" dining room complete with a crystal chandelier and a groomed dirt floor.  But despite the theatrics, Taylor's large paintings still managed to steal the show.

Installation view, Henry Taylor at Blum & Poe

Installation view, Henry Taylor at Blum & Poe

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Karen Woods
Driving Rain
George Billis Gallery, L.A.
On view through March 30, 2013

If you had a rag with you at Karen Wood's show this weekend, you might have been tempted to wipe the water droplets from her small, beautiful paintings - they look that real.  But Wood's paintings are more than just Tromp l'oeil special effects.  They manage to imbue quite, everyday scenes with a weighty importance.

Karen Woods, Next Exit, 2013, oil on canvas, 10 x 15 inches, at George Billis Gallery

Paintings by Karen Woods in Driving Rain at George Billis Gallery

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Mara De Luca
Cruise Collection 2013
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
On view through March 30, 2013

Mara De Luca had the best-dressed paintings on view this weekend.  Part of her process involves collaging actual translucent fabric onto the surface of her paintings, visually mimicking the "minimal atmospheric effects of the California Light and Space movement" among other historic modes of abstraction.

Paintings by Mara De Luca in Cruise Collection 2013 at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Left: Mara De Luca, Elegy I.II (SV), 2012, acrylic and collage on canvas, 48 x 42 in, at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
Right: Mara De Luca, Elegy IV.I (SV), 2012, acrylic and collage on canvas, 48 x 42 in, at Luis De Jesus Los Angles

BEST. . . SOMETHING

Noah Davis
The Missing Link
Roberts & Tilton
On view through March 30, 2013

Honestly, we couldn't think of a cutesy, Oscar-themed category for Noah Davis' show at Roberts & Tilton.  But it was a good painting show and we wanted to include it anyway.  So there.

Noah Davis, The Missing Link 4, 2013, oil on canvas, 78 x 86.123 inches at Roberts & Tilton

Noah Davis, The Missing Link 1, 2013, inkjet print and oil on canvas, 54 x 45.375 inches, at Roberts & Tilton

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Kirsten Everberg Likes To Lose Control

"I started using enamel in school," answered artist Kirsten Everberg during her lecture at Otis College this past January.  She was responding to a question from an audience member about when she started using the material in her paintings.  "I started pouring it and drawing with it and it was really a way for me to have a lot of control and no control at the same time."

Everberg's talk was part of Otis' visiting artist lecture series and given in conjunction with an exhibition of her work at the Pamona College Museum of Art.  The exhibition, titled In A Grove, presents four new paintings by Everberg inspired by Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon.  In the film, the same story is told from the point of view of four different characters and Everberg has named the four new paintings in the show after them - Wife, Bandit, Woodcutter, and Ghost.  But knowledge of the source material isn't necessary to enjoy Everberg's work as her paintings are as much about the act of painting as they are about anything else.

Kirsten Everberg, Wife, 2012, oil and enamel on canvas over wood panel, 72 x 108 inches

Kirsten Everberg, Wife, detail

A lot of painters claim to investigate the gulf between abstraction and representation but Everberg actually does with this work.  Her images, while giving the impression of a wooded grove, remain perpetually in flux.  Each mark is open to the possibility of representing shadow, object, or reflected light but not certainly any of those things and possibly none of them - maybe it's all just pools of paint.  By now, some other writer must have already pointed out the references in Everberg's work to Pollock's drip paintings but it's worth mentioning anyway because it's especially present in this work.

Everberg had plenty of interesting things to say about painting in general and her work specifically during her lecture at Otis.  Below are some excerpts from the talk.

On her use of enamel paint:

"I use two kinds of paint.  I use Japan Color and I use enamel.  All the paint on top is a really glossy enamel.  I like the lack of control that I get with it because it's very viscous and it continues to move and be fluid so I can only control that a certain amount.  I think for me that's truly something that I love to push against, that sort of tension between abstract and representation is perfectly suited for that material."

"I started using enamel in school.  When I was in undergrad we all wanted to be Laura Owens so we were all using, you know, as much masking tape as we could and painting on the edge...and when I started using enamel it was a way of getting a really clean line but losing the line at the same time.  So I was able to kind of draw with it and paint with it at the same time."

"I should also say it's an industrial paint so I don't get the huge advantage of artist's colors. I don't get all of the rich browns and great blues.  I have to mix everything.  So I mix everything off the panel and then apply it premixed."

Kirsten Everberg, Ghost, 2012, oil and enamel on canvas over panel, 72 x 108 inches

On how she develops her paintings:

"I paint on the wall at [the underpainting] stage and then I lay it down and I paint it flat.  Sometimes I use brushes or I pour it or use my hands, or any way I can get the paint to move around the way I want to."

"Because I make most of the work flat on a table, I need some map to follow.  So this is what I would call the transition part of the painting for me.  I take my source material and I feed that through my computer and mediate it and then I translate it on the painting with this very loose underpainting.  And then there's the interpretive part of the painting, which is a bit more intuitive, where the source material falls to the side and I end up developing what I might call and internal logic for the painting.  So at some point the painting has this internal logic and you set it up and you can answer your own questions within the framework of that logic.  You might know when you get to that point when you're making a film or a drawing, but at some point you arrive at this point where you're able to answer the questions...that come up in the painting, like a language."

Kirsten Everberg, Ghost, detail

 On the use of photography in her work:

"I have this photographic practice that works its way into my painting practice and for me photographs are the way of organizing or seeing things and they give me something to shuffle around, to reassemble, to dissect and unpack.  I also have this very analog way of using photography.  I'm not super tech-y and super digital.  I kind of cut them up with scissors and things like that."

On how long it takes her to complete a painting: 

 "It depends on how much time I have.  It can take several months.  I've taken three months to make a painting and it's not always better for having taken that much time.  I can also make a painting pretty quickly and it's also not always better for having been made so quickly."

Outside the Pamona College Museum of Art

Project Series 45: Kirsten Everberg: In A Grove is on view at the Pamona College Museum of Art through April 14, 2013.

(Image at top: installation view of In A Grove at the Pamona College Museum of Art.  Paintings by Kirsten Everberg.)

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The Best Painting In L.A. Right Now

If you were wondering what the best painting in Los Angeles is right now, it's Johannes Vermeer's Woman in Blue Reading a Letter currently on view at the Getty Museum.  And that isn't just some subjective opinion.  It's a fact.  Look it up.  The painting is on loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and will spend six weeks at the Getty before returning home.

By 10:30 a.m. this past Saturday (the first day the painting was on view in Los Angeles) a long, snaking line of visitors had already formed to wait for the tram to transport them up to the Getty's hillside locale.  The museum was packed, but surprisingly this did not lead to prohibitive crowds or long waits to see Vermeer's painting.  Small to medium-sized clusters of onlookers gathered around the work in waves, the group refreshing every 60 seconds or so with new viewers.

Visitors waiting in line for the tram to take them up to the Getty Museum

Though the crowd changed frequently, the conversation around the work remained remarkably similar. The most popular topic, by far, was whether or not the woman in the painting was pregnant.  Opinions were mixed on the matter.  The possibility that she was with child had been suggested in a Los Angeles Times article that morning which people cited repeatedly.

Other topics of conversation revolved around information from the wall text posted next to the work - Vermeer's use of light and color, the intelligent composition, the pearls on the table.  Also of note to many viewers was the painting's small size.  It was only around 18 x 15 inches.  Two people asked the security guard whether the large mark on the woman's face was her hair or an earring.  One person speculated that it was a birthmark.  By far, the adjective most used to describe the work was "stunning."

A view from the Getty Museum.

But were people really stunned?  Or did the fanfare that often surrounds exhibits like this, and painters like Vermeer, condition people towards stunned-ness?  Did crowds single out this painting in a museum full of other significant works because it was truly a masterpiece?  Or did they consider it a masterpiece because it had been singled out by the museum?  Was it the painting's soft glow and sturdy composition that drew viewers instinctively over to it?  Or was it the big signs in the museum's lobby that led them there?

Perhaps the hype that surrounds a specific artist or artwork may end up shaping a viewer's opinion of it before they have a chance to form one on their own.  Who knows?  Either way, Vermeer's Woman In Blue Holding A Letter is the best painting in Los Angeles right now.  You should go see it.

Johannes Vermeer's Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles until March 31, 2013.

(Image at top: Viewers looking at Johannes Vermeer's Woman in Blue Reading a Letter at the Getty Museum)

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Panel and Paradox at the Torrance Art Museum

"If you make a painting with oil on canvas no one's going to question 'why is this oil on canvas?'  If you make a painting that's menstrual blood on snake skin, now we're talking about the materials."

Quote-worthy moments such as this abounded last Saturday at the Torrance Art Museum where the current exhibition Paradox Maintenance Technicians served as a perfect backdrop to a panel discussion about contemporary painting and its place in Los Angeles.  Panelists included Catlin Moore, Max Presneill, Christopher Pate, Grant Vetter, and moderator Jason Ramos.  Kevin Appel was also listed as a participant but didn't make it, which was a bummer as he more than likely would have had some interesting thoughts to contribute.

Kevin Appel, Salton Sea (Room 2), 2012, acrylic, oil, and UV cured ink on canvas over panel, 77 x 66 inches,  at Paradox Maintenance Technicians

Ramos structured the dialog around a few loose themes - the death of painting, the characteristics (if any) that define paintings made in Los Angeles, and the effects of the art market on painters and their work.  A number of interesting questions came up organically during the discussion as well.  What is a painters' painter?  How have JPEG images affected the way people make and view paintings?  In other words, it was a total painting geek out.

Viewer looking at Tom LaDuke's, Long, silent drives, 2010, oil and acrylic on canvas over panel, 45 x 60 inches, in Paradox Maintenance Technicians 

Tom LaDuke, Long, silent drives, detail

"Death of painting?  It absolutely died...right around the 80's," declared Vetter, a painter himself, among numerous other things.  His view was a bit more nuanced then he first let on, however.  He argued that painting, as it was known for most of modernity, was based on a very specific set of learned skills that took years to develop.  This "esoteric knowledge" has been mainly lost as painters today are trained more in the discourses around painting than in its material practice.  That, according to Vetter, is the death of painting.  "It is, at the material level, a completely different age.  It is, at the knowledge-base level, a completely different age," Vetter concluded.  "Every painter that is alive right now is reinventing everything."

Presneill, Curator at the Torrance Art Museum, found the question regarding painting's death "ridiculous."  He suggested that a more interesting discussion could be had concerning the differences between abstraction and figuration and why one is often seen as more progressive than the other, even today.  That did indeed seem like an excellent topic, but unfortunately, it wasn't discussed further.

HK Zamani, Untitled #10, 2011, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, in Paradox Maintenance Technicians

HK Zamani, Untitled # 10, detail

Despite some disagreement about whether painting was dead as a medium (or whether that was even a relevant question anymore) all the panelists did seem to agree that a resurgence of painting was taking place today in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

"I think the reason why painting still makes this resurgence time and time again is because it really confirms our humanity in a unique way that no other material can," said Moore, Director at Mark Moore Gallery, Co-Director at 5790projects, and a writer with too many credits to list here.  "In the end, we crave something that really has a human touch or a human element to it...I think that's a reason why Los Angeles specifically is moving the way that it is, simply because there are so many avenues and mediums that are diluting that experience.  It seems natural to migrate back towards painting...in a society that is so technologically saturated."

Matthew Choberka, I Wasn't Really Very Scared, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 84 inches, in Paradox Maintenance Technicians

Laura Krifka, Tyger! Tyger!, 2012, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches, in Paradox Maintenance Technicians

Sarah Awad, Saints and Thieves, 2012, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, in Paradox Maintenance Technicians

One of the more interesting points in the discussion came when Ramos asked the panelists if they could detect a style or quality specific to paintings made in Los Angeles.  According to Presneill, he may have been able to detect a specific style when he first moved to L.A. back in the 90's, but not any longer.  He cited the massive influx of artists to Los Angeles as a main reason - a trend spurred by the growth of professional art schools, the availability of space, and the affordability relative to New York.

"I don't think you can detect a style because it's everyone from everywhere doing whatever the hell they want," said Presneill.  "And I think that's a really good thing.  The one thing, maybe, I can say about L.A. is that it values the intuitive.  Even when a painting adopts a conceptual position it still values and has space for the intuitive without that being somehow deadening, which is how it might well have been seen in the past."

Both Moore and Vetter also cited the the availability of large, affordable studio space as having an impact on the artwork that gets made in Los Angeles.  Moore, who does her share of studio visits, suggested that Los Angeles painters seem interested in narrative.

"It could just be the artists that I'm visiting but...I think L.A. has a certain fascination with the idea of the narrative and having a narrative quality to the painting that's being produced,"said Moore.  "That could be as much a reaction to the entertainment industry as anything else."

Vetter pointed to "crazy plurality" in Los Angeles and the possibility that painting in L.A. is not as "intellectually overwrought."

Aaron Smith, Deevie, 2012, detail

Summer Wheat, Dirty People, 2011, detail

Viewers at the Torrance Art Museum's exhibition Paradox Maintenance Technicians

As mentioned above, the term "painters' painter" popped up a few times during the discussion, prompting Ramos to ask the panelists for their definitions of the term.  The responses were relatively short but interesting, ranging from "any project that has the potential to be symbolically meaningful," to "Philip Guston," to "paintings that make me want to eat them."  My favorite answer actually came from Ramos himself.  "I like to look at paintings that look like they were made by someone who looks at paintings."

Paradox Maintenance Technicians: a comprehensive technical manual to contemporary painting from Los Angeles and beyond, is on view at the Torrance Art Museum through March 9th.

(Photo at top: installation shot of Paradox Maintenance Technicians at the Torrance Art Museum)

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Storage Wars: A Group Exhibition By 5790projects

5790projects, a rad curatorial partnership devote to providing opportunities for emerging artists based in Los Angeles, opened their first exhibition of 2013 this weekend at the Beacon Arts Building in Inglewood.  The show's title, Storage Wars, refers to both the venue's origins as a moving and storage company and the show's theme of evaluating the way in which we store and archive personal histories.  It's only up for a week, so get your hustle on if you'd like to see it in person.

At least two of the artists in the show are painters, two others might be, and one probably isn't.  But who really knows?  Trying to classify artists or their work into such specific categories is growing progressively difficult and increasingly pointless.  (But that's a post for another day).  Regardless, the show has a good number of paintings that are definitely paintings and several paintings that might be paintings and overall it's a nice glimpse into L.A.'s emerging artists scene.

Paintings by Justin John Greene in Storage Wars

Artist Justin John Greene has several strong, painterly works on display that, according to the press release, "recall our tendency to romanticize our experiences with a cinematic flair."  Greene shows a nice control of the medium in his work.

Justin John Greene, Scenes That We've All Seen Before, 2011, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches

Paintings by Justin John Greene in Storage Wars

Etienne Zack's contribution to the show - several large oil paintings - seem to riff on the traditional painterly categories of still life, landscape and figure painting in an interesting way.

Etienne Zack, Downward Records, 2012, oil on canvas, 74 x 66 inches, in Storage Wars

Etienne Zack, Underlining, 2012, oil on canvas, 74 x 66 inches, in Storage Wars

Etienne Zack, Fitting, 2013, oil on canvas, 74 x 66 inches, in Storage Wars

Natalie Labriola's Cracked Screen v.2.1 consists of holographic paper that has been painted over with dark acrylic paint to create a glistening web-like crack pattern.  (A possible Duchamp refrence?)

Natalie Labriola, Cracked Screen v.2.1, 2012, acrylic on holographic paper, 49 x 24 x .75 inches, in Storage Wars

Emily Silver's work in the show is primarily sculptural - made up of an eye-pleasing cacophony of detritus - but one of the works, Just Go, is installed on the wall and I'm not certain but I think I spotted some paint among the mixed media debris.  Sculpture? Mixed media painting? You decide.

Emily Silver, Just Go, 2013, mixed media, 26 x 10 x 20 inches, installed in Storage Wars

Emily Silver, Just Go, detail

Even the prolific artist collective Finishing School had some paintings to display in Storage Wars - this suite of small black monochromes on linen.

Finishing School, 54: The Lagoon Is Always Darkest Before Daybreak, 2012, oil on linen, each 10 x 10 inches installed in Storage Wars

Storage Wars is on view through Friday, February 15th at the Beacon Arts Building, 808 N. La Brea Ave, Inglewood, CA 90302.  Hours are Monday-Friday, 11AM-6PM.

5790projects.com
Beaconartsbuilding.com

(Image at top: Installation view of Storage Wars at Beacon Arts Building.)

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Jonathan Wateridge At L&M Arts

If you have ever accompanied a painter to a museum or art gallery, then you've probably witnessed the strange but common behavior of "side-viewing" - that is, the tendency of artists-who-paint to eschew the normal viewing position in front of a painting and instead press awkwardly up against the gallery wall next to the work and stare probingly at it from the side.

A security guard might guess that people looking at art this way are casing the joint - checking to see just how securly the paintings are fastened to the wall.  But in fact, the main reason painters look at paintings this way is because, from a technical standpoint, the side of a painting is often just as interesting as the image on the its surface.

Jonathan Wateridge, Panel, 2012, oil on linen, 13 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches, at L&M Arts

Jonathan Wateridge, Panel, 2012, side view, at L&M Arts

Since the side of a painting is usually not intended for viewing it is often left in a raw state, exposing the telltale marks of its creation.  What type of canvas was used?  How was it fastened to the stretcher bars?  Was it store bought or hand-made?  What type of ground was used to prime the surface?  How thick was the paint applied?  What colors are hidden underneath the colors seen?

All paint is to some degree transparent, so the colors underneath those actually seen on the surface can dramatically effect an image.  And often times the only place to see a hint of what colors may lie beneath is in the subtle bleeding that happens on the painting's edge.

Jonathan Wateridge, Lift I, 2012, detail, at L&M Arts

Jonathan Wateridge, Inter, 2012, detail, at L&M Arts

Not only can "side-viewing" give you insight into how a painting was made, it may also give you some insight into the artist who made it.  Were they a neat freak? A slob? Somewhere in between?  Are the corners of the canvas folded as tight and perfect as an army recruits bed?  Or are they awkwardly fastened, smudged with fingerprints and drips of paint?  These interesting tidbits can be clues into the artist's intention or at least hint at what they found important enough to focus on.  You can learn quite a bit from the side of a painting.

Jonathan Wateridge, Blind, 2012, side view, at L&M Arts

Jonathan Wateridge is a painter worth learning from.  His show Inter + Vista is currently on view at L&M Arts in Venice, CA through March 2nd.  Check it out if you're in the area or follow the link to the L&M Arts website where they have a wonderful suite of installation shots from the show.

(Image at top: Viewer observing Jonathan Wateridge's Fog, oil on linen, 111 x 158 inches, at L&M Arts)

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