Ming Ying: Runway
Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Chinese artist Ming Ying, the first for the artist in Los Angeles and with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view at 4859 Fountain Avenue, from September 23 through November 4, 2023. An opening reception will take place Saturday, September 23, 2-5pm.
In vibrant jewel-tones, Ming Ying captures romantic and psychedelic scenes of desire within social gatherings—picnics, parties, dinner. These compositions, primarily group portraits, veer at times into the realm of abstract, dreamy, and non-real. Heavily impastoed in oil paint, Ying is ever prodding us into psychological and emotional territory. She begins, holding a character in her mind, then zeros in on a situation, say having tea. This all leads to color choices and churning on the canvas until she achieves just the right balance between atmosphere and narrative. The opulent application of paint is echoed in the choice of attire–frills and lace and flouncing hair recalling centuries past. Likewise Ying engages compositionally reminiscent motifs of late-19th century French painting.
Her subjects retain a layer of anonymity with blurred, indistinct faces, symbolizing complex tensions between presence, absence, alienation, and interiority. In other words, my body is here, but my mind is elsewhere. Ying’s mannequin-like figures, adorned in theatrical dress, situated in dramatic environments remain faceless, nameless, emotionally adrift—illuminating a tension between feelings of enjoyment and detachment.
Born in China, living and working in London, far from home, Ying’s works contemplate unfamiliar environments and personal experiences of marginalization; she expresses a yearning, a longing for social connection through her depictions of cheerful sociality. Scale introduces uncertainty as well. Exceptionally ornamental and sensual, these are paintings you can hear: prattling coquettes, clinking stemware, hired musicians—the whispers, toasts, gossip, and jokes—if only pictures could talk.
Ming Ying (b. 1995, China) received her MA degree from Royal College of Art in 2020. Since completing her education, Ying has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Perrotin Gallery, New York, NY; Cob Gallery, and London, UK; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; JD Malat Gallery, London, UK; and Longstoryshort, New York, NY. In recent years her work has been awarded and shortlisted for a number of prestigious prizes including: First prize of “Effect Edge” International Juried Exhibition (2019); Winner of Khojaly Peace Prize for Art (2017); Chadwell Award (2020) Lynn Painter-Stainer Prize (2018); Ashurst Emerging artist prize (2018). Ying lives and works in London, England.
Cosmo Whyte: Hush Now, Don’t Explain
Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Hush Now, Don’t Explain, a solo show of new work by Jamaican-born artist Cosmo Whyte on view at 4859 Fountain Avenue, July 27 – September 16. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, July 27 from 5 – 8pm.
Please join us Saturday, July 29, at 1pm for a conversation at the gallery between artist Cosmo Whyte and curator Hamza Walker.
For Hush Now, Don’t Explain, Whyte continues his engagement with ‘the archive.’ From his drawings based on journalistic photographs to a large metal structure based on his father’s archive of architectural drawings, the exhibition is a story of public and private accumulation, remembrance and preservation, and the borders between those distinctions. Whyte views this relationship between personal and the public archives as symbiotic—mutually supportive in searching for and constructing identity. His works weave personal narratives with larger considerations of colonization of the Caribbean, as well as contemporary social and political circumstances of the region, with a particular focus on Jamaica.
If time and its passage is measured as the period between events, Whyte’s practice collapses and reorders these sequences. His work destabilizes assumptions about colonization, migration, and the ongoing struggle for racial justice through oblique references and historical imagery. Whyte’s practice engages photographs from a range of Black diasporic archives depicting various forms of agitations taking place in spaces of gathering including documentation of the West Indies cricket team to scenes of protest in Ferguson to Jamaican dancehalls. He offers complicated juxtapositions with intentionally slippery legibility as a way to interrogate the role of photography in shaping discourse around particular events, regions, or periods—especially as they relate to interpretations of the colonial project in the Caribbean and its postcolonial diaspora.
For his large drawings, called ‘the Agitation series,’ Whyte introduces a new formal element of pixelation, a gesture that can be read as obscuring or protecting an individual’s identity and shifting the focus to the events or gatherings represented instead. It is a process of simplification and reduction through which Whyte contrasts what is known against what is unknown; viewers are left to ponder their uncertainty. Redaction continues to figure into his paper works through the process of scraping the paper, cutting ‘spanish lace’ into the paper, and now through blurring and pixelating.
Situated in the middle of the gallery, sits a minimal metal structure from which Whyte has suspended his signature beaded curtains. This display apparatus is based on a combination of unrealized architectural drawings made by Whyte’s late father. The blueprints Whyte worked from consist primarily of domestic spaces that each have a centralized gathering space or yard. Whyte’s translation of his father’s structures remains incomplete and permeable by viewers. A skeletal frame, the gesture is a postmortem collaboration between artist and father—bridging generations and creating a temporary site of inquiry around absence and presence. The structure evokes both interior and exterior components of domestic architecture, merging communal and private—a recurring motif in the exhibition.
The beaded curtains partition off sections of the steel structure. These works are based on beaded partitions found in domestic spaces in the Caribbean, oftentimes separating the kitchen from the living room. Viewers are momentarily confronted with the choice and chance to question themselves spatially—to consider their own body and presence, to push through the curtain and feel the piece, the weight of the beads, to pierce the archive and disrupt the legibility of the image. As one moves through the curtain, the beads clang together and over time chip away, recording movements, leaving traces, forming an archive of movement. This instance of intimate bodily engagement shifts the viewer from passive observer into active participant, implicating the audience as more than spectators by allowing them to distort the image themselves.
Cosmo Whyte (b. 1982, St. Andrew, Jamaica) received a BFA from Bennington College, a post-baccalaureate at Maryland Institute College of Art, and a MFA from University of Michigan. In 2020 he had solo exhibitions at MOCA Georgia and ICA San Diego. Whyte has exhibited in biennial exhibitions including Prospect.5 New Orleans (2022) 13th Havana Biennial, the Jamaica Biennial (2017), and the Atlanta Biennial (2016). His work has been included in exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; The Somerset House, London, UK; Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles, CA; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; and the National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica. His work is in public museum collections including the High Museum, Atlanta; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; International African American Museum, Charlotte, NC; Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia; National Gallery of Jamaica; and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. In 2022 he joined the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture as an assistant professor. Whyte lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Mónika Kárándi: Remember where we started out
Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Remember where we started out, a solo exhibition by Hungarian artist Mónika Kárándi. The exhibition will be on view from June 3 through July 15, 2023 at 4859 Fountain Avenue. An opening reception will take place at 4859 Fountain Avenue on Saturday, June 3 from 2 – 5 pm.
Mónika Kárándi’s paintings are characterized by the artist’s connection to transcendent nature, which she describes as “vitalizing and stifling at the same time.” The exhibition title Remember where we started out—implies a togetherness, a collective search to understand our present through examining our shared origins. This phrase is lifted from a lyric by electronic band Hot Chip. Kárándi frequently sources her titles from music lyrics as a way to draw upon the poetry of language to visualize abstract emotions and ideas.
Kárándi proceeds in search of new shapes and new poses. Each work examines the extension of the body to the sky, while simultaneously rooting it to the earth. Her paintings depict hair-like bodies, which morph and develop into different iterations of themselves. The tendril-esque forms were born through the fusion of human figures with an ancient desert plant called Welwitschia Mirabillis. These living fossils existed during the time of dinosaurs and can survive for 1500-2000 years. Growing continuously and slowly, the two-leafed specimen pretends, as it is torn with increasing age, to have several leaves, or even heaps of leaves, wearing their frazzled histories as markers of time and fortitude. They operate in the paintings as symbols of timelessness and in joining them together—plant and human, Kárándi presents an ideal act of endurance and survival. She explains, “even if I did separate them, they would again and again long to merge with each other.”
The figures in Kárándi’s paintings appear tethered to the ground. Earth-bound woodland creatures, or forest dwellers, whose spirits are quickened by sky, water, and earth. Rendered through long sweeping gestures and liquid in their movements, they frolic, bathe, and lounge across the canvases. Captured in landscapes situated in seemingly tropical and imaginary oases. The artist explains that they “emerge from memories of travels to southern Mediterranean places.” These precious visitations trigger the desire to return to and reimagine them through her paintings.
Describing something, while simultaneously searching for it, Kárándi articulates a vision of a parallel world where hills seem as soft as bodies, and sky and water like colorful pieces of silk, where plants and humans have merged into a joint creation. The exhibition conjures allegorical narratives on love, protection, and pleasure derived simply from experiencing life.
Mónika Kárándi (b. 1990, Debrecen, Hungary) received her degree from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest, HU; and studied at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca, ES and Eszterhazy Karoly University of Applied Sciences, Eger, HU. Recent solo exhibitions include I come home in the morning light, Ojiri Gallery, London, UK; Just a perfect day! with Attila Bagi, Longtermhandstand, HU; I saw you in a dream, Ojiri Gallery, London, UK; Stunning Beaches, Hungarian Consulate in London; Splash, Art Kartell Project Space, Budapest, HU; Blue Lagoon, Telep Galéria, Budapest, HU; Dancing in the moonlight, Klauzál13, Budapest, HU; and Lagoon, PINCE Project, Budapest, HU. Kárándi has also exhibited wildly in group exhibitions including Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Torula, Győr, HU; Erika Deák Gallery, Budapest, HU; DoubleQ Gallery, Hong Kong; K11, Budapest, HU; Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong, among many others. Kárándi lives and works in Budapest, Hungary.
Alannah Farrell: Serenade
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.
Joshua Petker: Tambourine
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.
Constance Tenvik: Aloof Periwigs
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.
Ángeles Agrela: FAUNA
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.
If you forget my name, You will go astray
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
Krzysztof Strzelecki: Forbidden Fruit
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: Beside the Sun
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.
WOMANHOUSE
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.