Absence, the Landscape of Objects

Absence, the Landscape of Objects
Michael Thomas Hurley, Vladimir Goryachev

November 10th - December 7th, 2018

Absence, the Landscape of Objects, brings together two artists working in the rendering of objects with connotations of portraiture and the landscape. The work displayed suggests post-human scenarios with objects standing in for the people who use them and the artists that created the work. The relationships between the objects, rendered and crafted, becomes of paramount importance. In Goryachev's work, tables transform into horizon lines, and cups, plates, and chairs serve as mountainous forms, all of which refer to a human-produced environment devoid of said humans. Hurley's work, in contrast, takes a more direct approach, using an earthbound material (porcelain). His subjects serve as monoliths in discrete compositions with like-minded human monoliths such as billboards and pallets. Like Goryachev, Hurley's work suggests a standalone vision of a new terrain devoid of people. Each artist approaches the idea of absence through the recontextualizing of objects and allusions to topography. In contrast to the idea of the sublime, these artists seek to signify the hand of man removed from its use value in terms of object, landscape, and absence.

Michael Hurley’s studio practice relies on the process of slip casting to produce sculptural forms.  Many of the molds are pulled from the stones and bedrock of the greater Omaha, Nebraska landscape and, more broadly, throughout the Midwest. Combined with the iconography of the landscape, he incorporates the relics and form language associated with the great plains. Using material he finds in the locality keeps him engaged in his immediate surroundings. Hurley creates compositions with these cast ceramic forms, combined with various other media, to react to political and societal issues.

Vladimir Goryachev uses the intimate process of direct observation to reflect on his surroundings to find illusive meaning in everyday interaction. The subject matter of his work is primarily figurative. In his last supper paintings, Goryachev depicts an aftermath of a party. The objects suggest what has transpired but the site is left abandoned. The empty space is full of small gestures, a compilation of events only left in someone's memories and now in these paintings.

Michael T. Hurley was born and raised in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He received a BFA degree from the University of Wyoming, Laramie in 2009 and an MFA degree from California State University, Chico in 2014. Hurley has been working as an artist assistant to Jun Kaneko for the last four years. Hurley’s work has appeared in Ceramics Monthly, NCECA’s National Student Juried Exhibition, and several international exhibitions.

http://michaelthurley.com

Vladimir Goryachev was born in Moscow, Russia and immigrated to Los Angeles in 1995. The medium used in his work varies between digital rendering, sculpture, drawing and painting. Vladimir earned his MFA degree from California State University, Long Beach in 2007. He teaches at California State Universities, Long Beach, Dominguez Hills, and Fullerton.

http://vladimirgoryachev.com

Field of Vision

Field of Vision

October 13th - November 4th, 2018

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to announce Field of Vision, a group exhibition organized and curated by Vancouver artist, Andrew James McKay.

Field of Vision will feature the work of the following artists:

Andrew James McKay (Vancouver, BC), Michael Alvarez (Los Angeles, CA), Emily Blythe Jones (Los Angeles, CA), Maureen Gubia (Guayaquil, Ecuador), Tracy Kerdman (New York, NY), Juan Carlos Noria (Benicàssim, Spain), a painter of unknown name working from Dafen Oil Painting Village (Shenzhen, PRC), and the 12th form students of Kitsilano High School (Vancouver, BC).

Field of Vision restructures the historical tradition of the portrait as a presentation of an image taken to be ‘authoritative’, and is a consideration of what it is to work as an artist in a variety of geographical locations and under a variety of economic systems. The exhibition takes as its locus a series of five portrait photographs which act as source material to be interpreted by a number of artists. Some of these are professional artists, some are students, and some find a position in between. Posited through the exhibition is the theory that while each artist has painted an interpretation, all of these works together form a much more comprehensive vision of the subject to the degree that once one has seen the composed whole, returning to look upon a single work in the series it is made apparent that one cannot do the job of many. Each of the five series of works is comprised of a photographic print of the subject; a painting by artist and curator Andrew James Mckay; a painting as done by Mr. Alvarez, Ms. Jones, Ms. Gubia, Ms. Kerdman, and Mr. Noria; a painting produced by a worker in the painting village of Dafen, PRC; and paintings made by the students of Kitsilano High School.

The show additionally functions as a fundraiser for the students of Kitsilano High School. Their contributions are included primarily by way of introducing the dialogue of the project as a whole to their own nascent practices, thus developing the scope of possibilities for these students.

Speaking of the financial aspects however, each of the five sets of four works (a mounted photograph; a painting by either Michael Alvarez, Emily Blythe Jones, Maureen Gubia, Tracy Kerdman, and Juan Carlos Noria; a painting by Andrew James McKay; and a painting by the artist working from Dafen, respectively) are for sale at a sum of $1500 apiece. The proceeds of these sales to be remitted to the arts department of Kitsilano HIgh School to facilitate field trips and to provide additional material support outside state funding streams. For sales inquiries, please ask the staff at Monte Vista Projects should you be reading this at the venue, or contact via andrewjmckaystudio@gmail.com if you are reading of this via post or at andrewjamesmckay.com

Jeffrey Atherton - SLEEPWALKER

September 8 – September 29

LOS ANGELES—Monte Vista Projects presents Jeffrey Atherton: SLEEPWALKER, a solo presentation of new work by this celebrated Los Angeles-based artist. An important figure in interdisciplinary avant-garde work in Los Angeles for two decades, Atherton will be displaying nine of his haunting photographs chosen from the full set of 44 that make up Sleepwalker: A Journal of Five Events, accompanied by: 10 Rules for Better Sleep. Continuing Atherton’s explorations of the boundaries between photography, fiction and performance—for example, Notes for a Lost Play (1998) and Liddy (2004)—Sleepwalker presents a series of images arranged as journal entries outlining five sleep events. Accompanying the images, the text—10 Rules for Better Sleep—challenges our presuppositions in compelling ways. The dreamlike images represent mementoes of the visions seen during a state of disturbed sleep that has been manipulated by some outside force. The text serves as an open framework for the images, shifting their context. Atherton is interested in the displacement of the object by its photographic representation. This displacement creates issues of fragmented narrative, bibliographic ghosts, signifier/signified slippage and the photographic split between photo documentation (the photojournalistic impulse) and poetics of the photographic image (Bachlelardian concepts of image and reverie). The dizzying effects of this image/text draws the viewer into new ways to relate to experience, revealing fresh capacities of the photographic medium.

Andres Payan-Estrada - BLUE APOLLO

August 4 – August 26, 2018

LOS ANGELES—Monte Vista Projects presents Andres Payan-Estrada: BLUE APOLLO, a solo presentation of new works by the Los Angeles-based artist. For BLUE APOLLO, Payan-Estrada uses LGBTQ nightlife aesthetics to connect the 1969 lunar landing and space exploration with historic and contemporary forms of queer liberation. The exhibition includes drawings, collage, textual pieces, and an immersive installation composed of ceramic sculpture, scent, and lighting. BLUE APOLLO is on view at Monte Vista Projects (1206 Maple Ave #523, Los Angeles, CA 90015) from August 4 through August 26.

In considering the current political climate and onset of a New Space Era, Payan-Estrada’s new body of work urges a dismantling of hetero-patriarchal, colonial, and militaristic histories that define how outer space is understood in the greater American consciousness. He presents the possibility of a space imaginary that poetically mutates these narratives into boundless queer explorations. 

Many of the works make poetic associations between these seemingly disparate themes. Downtown LA 1969 and Downtown LA 2018 are charcoal and color pencil drawings that depict the locations of LGBTQ bars as stars in a dark sky—functioning as both geographic maps and imaginary constellations. For Light of a Thousand Moons (Blue), Payan has collaged onto a deep black surface numerous disco ball photographs he has taken at gay bars throughout the U.S. Disassociated from their original context, the group of objects floats without relation to a physical space.

The immersive installation Last Call anchors the exhibition space, consisting of a fifty-foot black velvet curtain with a glowing blue spotlight cast onto the gallery floor and an installation of 500 lbs of loose porcelain. The blue light acts as the only light source in the gallery and evokes the imagined aesthetic of a gay club in a lunar environment. The installation includes objects such as a porcelain-tiled disco ball and a scent that mimics the smells of a bar.

“I am fascinated by the way memory, meaning, and value are placed onto objects and spaces and how these LGBTQ spaces offer the possibility to transport you into a safe reality,” says Andres Payan-Estrada. “One of my fondest memories growing up in Mexico is going to a gay bar for the first time. It was quite a stupefying moment- a sloppy bar night that allowed me to experience the boundlessness of queerness." 

Andres Payan-Estrada (b.1987, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico) received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and BFA from The University of Texas at El Paso. He is currently the curator of public engagement at the Craft & Folk Art Museum and visiting art faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. His work as an artist, educator, and independent curator champions contemporary craft and ceramic practices. He aims to create accessible ways to understand materiality, object theory, making, and the role they have in adding value to the everyday. 

Andy Fedak - The Crystal Spirit Or: How I Became An Anarchist

This exhibition explores Anarchist thought through the eyes of George Orwell’s time in the Spanish Civil War. Probing into anarchism’s altruistic roots, it ties together a diverse group of connections from contemporary neuroscience, to spirituality and politics, on into the current uprising in the Rojava region of Kurdistan where the same anarchist practice is going on today that Orwell discovered in Spain. A deeply personal work, it also reveals the artist’s own journey to find alternative ways of seeing the world after recovering from a mental illness.

A combination of a surrealistic narrative film and virtual reality installation, the work utilizes state of the art visual effects, 3D animation, and interactive virtual reality techniques to immerse the viewer inside the worldview of the anarchist.

Andy Fedak was born in 1978 and lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from New York University and his MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His work has been shown at the Palace of Fine Art in Mexico City, the Luckman Gallery in Los Angeles, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Laguna Art Museum, and other venues around the world. Andy is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at California State University, Fullerton.

Nick Loewen and Rimas Simaitis - Optic Treatment

Monte Vista Projects is proud to present Optic Treatment. This exhibition features two Los Angeles based artists: Nick Loewen and Rimas Simaitis. The exhibition explores the relationships between image and form, surface and color, process and content, light and shadow, and their friendship.  The work, made by both mechanical and manual means, uncovers similarities between organic and automated processes of production. The two artists first met in graduate school at UCSB, and since their graduation, have reflected on each other’s work. They initially didn’t intend to show together, but circumstance has brought them together. Call it coincidence or chance, it’s clear that they share similar wavelengths.

Nick Loewen creates all over composition paintings using found lenticular imagery. He then meticulously cuts the lenticulars into small squares then reassembles them into mesmerizing and hypnotic mosaics. His randomized method of generating images obscures the content and meaning of the found imagery. From landscapes to still lifes, Nick Loewen splices imagery, color, and movement to make subtle moments that call for interaction on the part of the viewer.

Rimas Simaitis takes inspiration where science intersects moments of mysticism. This is when his work crystallizes. His cast aluminum objects resemble patterns that were left on a sandy beach or in a sandbox. The objects reflect the moments of focused energies or patterns, revealing the possibility and mystery that shapes Simaitis's worldview. 

Nick Loewen (b. 1984) lives and works in Los Angeles. He received a BA from Goshen College in 2006 and an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012. His work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Wonder Valley, CA. 

Rimas K. Simaitis was born in Coeur d’Alene, ID (1983), and currently lives and works in Venice Beach, CA. He completed his MFA in Spatial Studies at the Univeristy of California, Santa Barbara in 2012.  His work has been exhibited around the country, and has been included in biennial exhibitions at the Boise Art Museum (2010) and at the New Wight Gallery at UCLA (2012).  He has completed residencies at the Ox-Bow School of Art, Wave Farm, and on Andrea Zittel’s Indy Island at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  

Philip Newcombe - ODEON

April 14th - May 13th, 2018

Philip Newcombe subtly alters everyday objects, creating through the manipulations he makes in relation to their original function, a whole host of possible narratives / alternative realities. Like a deflating beach ball filled with air from the lungs of a dying man or a folded up piece of paper of the most beautiful place in the world, carried around in his back pocket, these objects go beyond the exhibition’s space / time-frame. Some are erected as performative monuments, like the fact of sucking a gobstopper to create a universe or dipping a piece of thread from a fallen button, in perfume. Although at times the work appears elusive, it is nevertheless still concerned with a form of intimate and direct communication with the onlooker.

Philip Newcombe (b. Germany 1970. Lives and works in the UK).Recent selected exhibitions include solo exhibitions at 'ATTIC', Brussels (2018), ‘A+’ Berlin (2017), Maria Stenfors, London (2015, 2014), CAPC Musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux (curated by Alexis Vaillant, 2013) and group shows at MUDAM, Luxembourg (2016) MuHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (2014), Tripode, Rezé, Nantes (2014), Neon Parc, Melbourne, Aus (2013), CAPC Bordeaux (2012), Stuart Shave / Modern Art, London (2009), New York Art Book Fair with Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco (2008), Centre d'art Contemporain, Chamarande. Paris (2008). Newcombe recently completed a residency in 2017 at CCA Andtratx, Mallorca.

Alex Robbins - Complements

All photos by Ruben Diaz

Alex Robbins
Complements

March 17 - April 8, 2017

 

Monte Vista Projects presents a continuing series of works by Alex Robbins called “Complements.”

Meticulous copies of early modernist paintings, these works are executed in the complementary colors of the originals. The paintings on exhibit here concentrate on the female nude as painted by artists Christian Rohlfs (1849 - 1938), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919), Walter Sickert (1860-1942), and Willem De Kooning (1904 - 1997).

The nude painting has historically been an object of desire, titillation, and ownership. It is perhaps only through the history of painting that a naked body can be considered nude. As the nude became cemented as a standard motif, the painters color sense concurrently emerged as arguably their most irreducible subjective quality, a foothold for individuality. Inverting the narrative space of the paintings color by color, brushstroke by brushstroke, Robbins’ “complements” destroy and fetishize the subjective process developed by the original artists. The nudity is laid bare, unprotected by natural light.

Also included is a non-color inverted replication of a work by society painter John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925). “Mrs. Carl Meyer and her Children” is a famed family portrait in the collection of the Tate Britain. The exacting replication acts as a kind of inane but playful doubling whereby artifice investigates art. Next to the inverted nudes, this work seems uncannily protected by clothing and light.

Alex Robbins is an artist and educator working in Los Angeles, CA. Recent exhibitions of his work have appeared at Atlas House (Ipswich, UK), Commonwealth and Council, (Los Angeles, CA), Luckman Fine Arts Complex - CSU LA, (Los Angeles, CA). He is also the curator of a small experimental exhibition space called The Window located at 1909 7th Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90016.

Cell, Share, Swivel Chair

Cell, Share, Swivel Chair
Lynne Marinelli Ghenov, Justin Michell, & Adrian Paules
January 6-28, 2018
 

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to announce Cell, Share, Swivel Chair, a three-person exhibition featuring works on paper by Lynne Marinelli Ghenov and Justin Michell and sculptures by Adrian Paules.

In what ways can the infinite possibilities of a specific practice or space be aligned with a finite gridded structure? We often think of structures as rigid constraints, but perhaps a necessary flip side to this can be found in children's playground equipment. In this case, the grid functions as a space of open-ended play, where users continually re-invent new ways of interacting within these forms. In ‘Sade, Fourier, Loyola’ Roland Barthes considered three different authors as what he called “logothetes,” the founders of new discourses. Each began by breaking down their subject matter into discreet units or logical possibilities, and then proceeding to put those pieces to use and make choices among them in a combinatory - a field with its own set of rules or grammar. As Wittgenstein might have put it, logothetes are inventors of new language games.

Structure can take the form of a strict self-imposed method of production, an organized visual code found in source materials to be mutated or reacted against, or a visual syntax within which to arrange a set of elements. The resulting production invites us to ‘read’ it according to its own terms, at the same time that it resists attempts to translate it into speech or written words. This structuring exists independently from the kind of linear, propositional logic found in verbal or written statements - enacting itself directly in space. Each of the artitsts in this exhibition explore these themes in distinct ways.

Lynne Marinelli Ghenov uses graphite on found ledger paper that evokes vivid childhood memories of her parents’ home office. The relic becomes both the site and implement for the artist to invent with and compose new amalgams of forms and objects. The results are akin to a child's inventive mimicry of adult activities like bookkeeping.

Justin Michell employs a purposely limited set of elements in his diagrammatic drawings. Colored blocks, comic strip speech bubbles, and wiry lines of acrylic squeezed from syringes suggest interlocutors engaged in imaginary conversations. These noisily mute rebuses tempt us to decipher while resisting straightforward narrative.

Adrian Paules uses stacks of sawn and finished boards as a three dimensional record of movements and thoughts. Each stack functions as a record of its own making, as well as the logic and subjective decsions attached to these changes. In relation to each other, each scuplture becomes one enactment or iteration selected by the artist from an endless virtual series.