Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new works by queer trans-identifying artist Alannah Farrell on view at 4859 Fountain Avenue, April 14 – May 26. This is their second solo exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception will take place Friday, April 14 from 5 – 8pm.

Portraitist Alannah Farrell paints and pays tribute to their queer friends, lovers, and neighbors in atmospheric, emotional, and brooding environments. Looking for a change of scenery, Farrell has divided their time painting between New York and Los Angeles, with the bulk of this exhibition created in LA.

Conversations around portraiture uncover questions of identity, gaze, style, and expression. Farrell’s work touches on these, but moves confidently into personal questions about the human psyche, gender dysphoria, and selfhood. Describing the emotional connection with their sitters, Farrell states, “whatever time we share in the studio filters into my excitement in doing the work, solidifying my dedication to portray people imbued with life.” The works are charged with a complex tenderness, revealing an intimacy and trust between artist and sitter. Farrell presents these queer individuals through a lens of understanding and connection, a context shielded from a society eager to erase or enact violence.

Farrell’s process is informed by art historical traditions. Each work is executed using a classical grisaille underpainting before the glazing layers introduce pastel haze and traveling light. These paintings depict more than a moment, rather time itself unfurling before our eyes—shifting light, shifting weight, the emergence of the inner world. Furthermore, Farrell paints thoughtfully and attentively from life. They describe the process of inviting sitters into the studio as an adrenaline rush—having to work with time as a restriction and the challenge of attempting to capture what is full of life and motion into a singular image.

Place plays a conceptual role in Farrell’s work for this exhibition. Their titling strategy follows a pattern of naming the sitter, followed by a location set inside parenthesis such as Study for Al (Madonna Inn), or X (Pearl Street). Although portraiture remains the artist’s primary subject matter, two works depict the artist’s empty studio—pseudo self-portraits. The distinct qualities of each spark a tension and reveal something of the inner world of the artist. A small cramped New York studio with an arched window evokes a psychological compression. Contrasted by the diptych of Farrell’s Los Angeles studio with a view toward the San Gabriel mountains nested between parking structures and buildings of downtown, the work is blanketed with light and expansive sky, evoking feelings of emergence and openness.

Alannah Farrell (b. 1988, Kingston, NY) is a queer painter who lives and works in New York, NY. Farrell completed their BFA at The Cooper Union, New York, NY in 2011. They have exhibited their work in solo and group exhibitions at galleries including Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Harper’s, New York, NY; Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; The Painting Center, New York; Theirry Goldberg Gallery, New York; and UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles. 

Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Tambourine, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Joshua Petker on view at 4859 Fountain Avenue, January 28 – March 11, 2023. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception will take place Saturday, January 28 from 5 – 8pm.

If his previous exhibition The Flirt was a comment on restraint (with color and scale in particular), Tambourine channels an opposing impulse. Debuting the artist’s largest compositions to date this exhibition unleashes Dionysian debauchery. Tambourines have been used as instruments dating to the ancient world, in religious music, and rock n’ roll, an allusion which furthers Petker’s collapsing of histories.

With these tableaus, Petker invites viewers to join the band of revelers as they promenade through hazy timelines. In these scenes of social merriment one can overhear clinking glasses, sweet serenades, and rowdy limericks. Fair maidens, musicians, chumps, drunks, and libertines are newly accompanied by a number of animals, including horses and geese.

Petker’s initial interest in art history and classical portraiture was born during a trip to Florence Italy in his 20s. At the time he was a writer and aspiring musician—looking for something he found the renaissance masters. His current works meld a continued reverence for colossal frescos and art historical painters while embracing a carefree attitude toward “covering things up.”

With a punk disregard tempered by conceptual control, Petker’s ribs formal painting conventions. In one composition he casually covers up a beautifully painted rug with hurried cartoon flowers, while in another picture he smooshes the figures all onto the same half of the canvas. His colors too break from previous self-imposed conventions primarily exploring the realm of monochrome; here the palette is playful and unrestrained, teetering on psychedelic.

Transparency continues to be both a subject and formal strategy. His flat ghostly figures, phantoms unrestrained by human anatomy, these characters with distorted features, fantastical and mask-like— haunt their art historical companions—round and atmospheric counterpoints—as they fade and recede. Petker also sands down the surfaces bringing a softness to the scenes. Together with these latest works plunge viewers further into Petker’s dreamworld—a place colored by the finality of history and the haziness of memory.

Joshua Petker (b. 1979, Los Angeles, CA) completed his MFA at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2015 and his BFA at Evergreen State College in 2002. He has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Rachel Uffner, New York, NY; ASHES/ASHES, Los Angeles, CA; and Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles, CA; as well as group exhibitions at Althuis Holland, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Spurs Gallery, Beijing, China; Carl Kostyál Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; La Loma Projects, Pasadena, CA; and ACME, Los Angeles, CA. Petker lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Aloof Periwigs, a solo exhibition of new work by Norwegian artist Constance Tenvik on view at 4859 Fountain Ave, November 12 – December 17. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and in Los Angeles. A public reception will be held Saturday, November 12 from 5 – 8pm.

In 2020 Tenvik was approached by a theater in Norway about designing the sets and costumes for an upcoming production of Amadeus. Originally performed in 1979, the play gives a fictional account of the lives of rival composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. She commenced research and became “obsessed with the true life of Mozart,” drawn in particular to understanding mischaracterizations around his mythic contemporary status as a young genius and influential composer versus his reputation as an outcast and eccentric during his lifetime. Tenvik spent countless hours reading biographies and private letters, eventually making a pilgrimage to Vienna and Salzburg preparing for this job, which, in the end, she did not get. Instead she took her defeat and disappointment and turned it into a chance to explore new creative directions and return to her artistic roots in installation and performance.

Aloof Periwigs presents the culmination of Tenvik’s vision, research, and “fangirling” about the life of Mozart. Works range in media from paintings to soft sculptures and costumes. Welded steel sculptures, reminiscent of props and mannequins, transform the gallery environment into a stage, placing viewers among the ‘actors,’ activating a thousand imaginary scenarios. Tenvik upsets expectations of object and subject, bringing both ‘the cakestand’ and ‘the chef’ to life. Playing with notions of artifice and reality, she refers to these sculptures as “understudies,” stand-ins for the real thing. The exhibition examines performativity through costuming, character, and reinvention.

Meanwhile, Tenvik’s paintings expand upon the scene. She nods simultaneously to Baroque drama and decoration while embracing an exuberance and optimism in her fluid brushwork. Taking creative liberties, Tenvik embellishes the play’s narrative; by bringing in friends (including many Angelenos) to the studio to “play dress up” and sit for these portraits, she erases boundaries between her subjects and life, art, and performance. The use of wigs and costumes lends a seductive playfulness and eroticism to the exhibition. Tenvik veils and reveals emotional truths about human nature and our relationship to excess through celebrity, gossip, and madness.

Constance Tenvik (b. 1990, London, UK) received her MFA from Yale University School of Art in New Haven, CT and BFA from the Academy of Art in Oslo. With a multi-disciplinary approach spanning sculpture, performance, textile work, costume, painting, drawing and video work with an exuberant aesthetic, Tenvik is a creator of worlds within worlds in immersive installations. Solo exhibitions include 56 Henry (New York), Astrup Fearnley Museum (Oslo), Kristiansand Kunsthall (Kristiansand), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), Loyal Gallery (Stockholm), Prosjektrom Normanns (Stavanger), Fortezza Vecchia (Livorno), Deli Projects (Basel). Group exhibitions include Château du Feÿ (Bourgogne), Abrons Art Center (New York), Carl Kostyal (Malmö), Tidenes Krav (Oslo), and Charlottenborg Kunsthall (Copenhagen). Her work has been collected by institutions including Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; The National Gallery, Oslo, Norway; Gullringsbo Konstsamling, Stockholm; and AMMA collection of art, Mexico. Tenvik lives and works in Oslo.

Anat Ebgi is pleased to present Fauna, the first solo exhibition in America of Ángeles Agrela. The exhibition will be on view at 4859 Fountain Avenue, August 27 – October 15, 2022. An opening reception will take place Saturday, August 27, from 2 – 4pm.

Agrela was born in Úbeda, a small historic city in the south of the country and UNESCO World Heritage Site. She received a degree in Fine Arts in Granada—another city with an extensive historical heritage—where she was immersed in classical art, and simultaneously introduced herself to languages of contemporary art.

The artist began exhibiting professionally in the mid-1990s, establishing early-on her interests in the body, identity, masks or camouflage, and often using her own body or self-portraits to make sense of the experience of being a female artist in an art world focused primarily on men.

Her most recent work, on view in Fauna, includes references to fashion, graphic novels, illustration, advertising, and pop culture, as well as to classical masters. In recent years Agrela has turned focus to developing a pictorial technique rooted in classical portraiture, while combing manifestations of femininity in contemporary culture, including popular media and social networks.

The title of the exhibition refers to a colloquial expression in Spanish referring to a heterogenous group of people, who are unconventional and act in unusual and distinct ways—like animals that live together in a region, each behaving according to their instincts. It is true, there is something of an animalistic metamorphosis in some of Agrela’s works. 

Through the pattern and shapes of hair and hairstyles, these female figures connect with an extravagantly civilized side of our culture, while alluding to ‘the animal’ through certain forms of camouflage and adaptation to the environment, as a metaphor for the construction of identity.

As the artist puts it, “I think that sometimes distracting attention from the features of the face has an effect of generating extra attention to the other traits or characteristics of a person—toward the things we [as individuals] have consciously chosen to create our image.” Mining tropes of classical portraiture, Agrela imbues her subjects with a mysterious ambiguity, questioning standards of beauty and the performance of identity.

Ángeles Agrela (b. Úbeda, Spain, 1966) is one of the most recognized artists of her generation in her home country, exhibiting in some of the most important museums and galleries. Recently presented solo projects include Art 021 (Shanghai, 2021), Zona MACO (Mexico, 2020) and Art on Paper (Brussels, 2019) with Yusto/Giner Gallery. Her work by her has recently been included in group exhibitions and fairs such as Facial Recognition, Fabien Fryns Fine Art (Dubai, 2022), Art Busan, Yusto/Giner Gallery (Busan, South Korea, 2022), Art Dubai. Yusto/Giner Gallery (Dubai, 2022), Disembodied, Nicodim Gallery (Bucharest, 2022), Summer Nights, Stems Gallery (Paris, 2022), Around the world, Woaw Gallery (Hong Kong, 2021), Without warning, Avenue des Arts (Los Angeles, 2021), Le Regard, Perrotin Gallery (Dubai, 2022). Agrela lives and works in Granada, Spain.

Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce If you forget my name, You will go astray. The exhibition will be on view June 25 – August 6, 2022 at 4859 Fountain Avenue. An opening reception will take place, Saturday, June 25, from 5-8 pm.

Alison Hall
Carmen Neely
Claire Colette
Erica Mao
Gwen Hollingsworth
Gwen O’Neil
Hannah Brown
Inka Essenhigh
Jen Hitchings
Jenny Morgan
Joani Tremblay
Julia Jo
linn meyers
Michelle Blade
Mónika Kárándi
Samantha Thomas
Sarah Ann Weber
Sarah Lee
Sigrid Sandström
Soumya Netrabile

Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Forbidden Fruit, a solo exhibition of new ceramics by Polish artist Krzysztof Strzelecki on view at 4859 Fountain Avenue, opening Saturday, April 30, 2022. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. An opening brunch will take place Saturday, April 30 from 11am – 2pm.

Beginning in the jungle and journeying to the ocean, Forbidden Fruit captures scenes of sexual freedom, erotic temptations and playful roaming men as they explore each other and the paradise around them. Growing up isolated and homosexual in rural Poland, Strzelecki’s series of works called ‘Cruising Fantasies’ emerges from the longing for an erotic and romantic escape. Surfing the web, browsing apps, and his own personal archive of photography, the artist preserves these images of men on his captivating vessels.

Strzelecki’s works encompass a range of influences. Looking to the canon of Western art, he draws upon fantasy of the exotic and projection seen in Rousseau’s wild landscapes and Hockney’s swimming pools. Christian iconography and ancient mythology also appear. Themes of creating and inhabiting his own world continue in the exhibition with a suite of works called ‘Origin of the World.’ These four ring-shaped nearly monochromatic vessels interpret the biblical depiction of the creation story—sea, sky, sand, and jungle—the foundation for his own ‘gay garden of paradise.’

In an array of shapes and colors, occasionally evoking wave forms, Strzelecki’s work explores themes of erotic desire and the relationship between sex and nature. Before they are fired, he paints his scenes onto the vessels with colored slip (thin liquid clay). Next he incises the drawings into the surfaces, intensifying his subjects through defined outlines. These lines extend outward like ripples, eventually bumping into each other—combining and transforming energies. When they are finally fired with a transparent glaze, the pots are transformed into gleaming compositions, tempting the viewer to draw near and peer inside their open mouths.

Krzysztof Strzelecki (b. 1993, Świdnica, Poland) earned his BFA in photography from the University of the Arts London (UAL), Camberwell. He works in a variety of media, including ceramics and photography. Strzelecki recently exhibited his work in the group exhibition It’s Much Louder Than Before, at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA. His sculpture Olympia (2020), was recently acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) permanent collection from our presentation at the Dallas Art Fair 2022. Strzelecki lives and works between Poland and London, UK.

Angela Lane paints postcard-size landscapes, aligning herself with the art historical tradition of depicting environments of celestial and mysterious phenomena. Robust pastoral beauty, bathed in soft light or cloaked in fog, is offset by dramatic eclipses, comets, or twin suns. These phenomenons suggest a range of mirages and visions open to broad interpretation, which in Lane’s words “leave the events in the paintings to be their own messengers.”

The intimate scale of Lane’s oil on wood paintings, compels viewers to draw quite near in order to see them properly—giving the sense that these visions are your very own. Despite this commitment to the diminutive, the artist achieves a magnetic sense of drama and verdant solitude. Occasionally certain phenomena are repeated either in title, or through shared compositional elements, suggesting passage of time, or varying moods and emotional states.

At times informed by recorded accounts of unexplained meteorological events from the early medieval period, the artist also channels her mystical forms through automatism. Her loose brushwork and painterly articulations register gradually. Lane’s interest in spontaneity and inspiration emerges from the desire to look at the spirit and essence of the world, rather than record its surface details.

Angela Lane (b. 1974, United Kingdom) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary and expand upon narratives surrounding the historic environmental art installation and performance space, we are pleased to present WOMANHOUSE. The exhibition will be on view at 4859 Fountain Avenue, February 18 – April 16, 2022. An opening reception will take place Friday, February 18 from 5-9pm, with performances at 7pm.

As the first female-centered art presentation of its kind, Womanhouse opened in January 1972 paving the way for new subject matter, new techniques, new ideas and a new way of looking at art. This exhibition examines the spirit of experimentation and collaboration that defined west coast Feminist Art and traces the period that immediately preceded and succeeded Womanhouse from 1970 to 1976. Tracing the narratives, origins, and legacy of this historic period through Fresno Feminist Art Program, Womanhouse, Womanspace, and The Woman’s Building allows for a multi-faceted conversation about the energy and trajectories that this period of art history unleashed.

Instead of recreating historic installation works, which could serve to retrench what is already known, this exhibition looks at the larger practices of these artists—what was made before, during, and coming out of this experience. Taking a cue from the original Womanhouse invitation there will not be an artist list. Instead throughout the exhibition, we will crowdsource the names of artists who were active during this period in order to produce a living archive and digital monument.

On view will be historic works alongside ephemera and photographs from the original Womanhouse installations that explore the roots of central core imagery, collaborative practices, and performance and costuming. The exhibition aims to situate Womanhouse within a larger conversation about this underhistoricized and productive experimental period of Southern California Feminist Art History.

Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) will serve as a cultural partner, led by Laura Hyatt, Executive Director and Hugo Cervantes, Curatorial Associate, they organized a dynamic performance and events series that will include restaging of historic performances, consciousness-raising sessions, and film screenings. These performances and events will include participants from the original Womanhouse alongside emerging artists in order to reimagine and complicate ideas relevant to our contemporary moment.

This exhibition is organized by Stefano Di Paola and Anat Ebgi Gallery and planned in close collaboration with the many participating artists as well as the following galleries: Eric Firestone Gallery, Lyles & King, and Jessica Silverman.