(in conjunction with Dean Styers' Solo exhibition)
Bergamot Station Art Center
2525 Michigan Ave,
Building D4
Santa Monica
CA 90404 USA
T: 310.315.9502
E: contact@jamesgraygallery.com
Tuesday-Saturday, 11am - 6pm
Sunday & Monday by Appointment
Works from selected artists at Keystone Fine Art Studios will be shown in Gallery 4 of the James Gray Gallery at Bergamot station February 16th - March 10th 2013.
Artists Included are Melanie Mandl, Tim Hussey, Krista Machovina, David Yow, G Mack Hill, and Jesse Vogel.
Keystone is a Fine and Industrial Art studio space located in Glassell Park, Los Angeles. For more information go to keystoneartspace.com
|
|
Ghetto Bird, Mixed Media on wood, 25”x 48”
|
Melanie Mandl works in a variety of medias, including painting, sculpture and video installation. Her paintings are typically three-dimensional. The viewer is encouraged to see them from different angles, so that the imagery is revealed to them as they move past. Using stop motion animation, she has created site specific video installations in a similar format.
An accomplished filmmaker, Melanie has made film shorts like Silent Moon and her music-inspired project, Run, an animated narrative about loneliness, and anxiety. Run would go on to receive an honorable mention at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, the White Sands Film Festival, and would win the award for Best Music Video at the LA Film Festival.
Melanie's work is dark and quirky, often exhibiting a wry sense of humor. There is a subtle, whimsical note that underpins her pieces creating a feeling of wonder and loneliness. These emotions are seen in the palette she chooses and her sculptor's sense of texture. Her cinematography is deliberate and methodical. Stop-motion animation and puppeteering contribute to Melanie's general storytelling aesthetic; her work has the quality of fairytales that collide with technology.
Melanie lives in Los Angeles, and is a founder of Keystone Fine Art Studios in Glassell Park.
|
|
Simple Division 3, mixed media on paper, 29.5 X 42”, 2010
|
Tim Hussey was born in Dover, Delaware in 1970 and grew up in Charleston, SC. He received his Bachelors in Fine Arts in 1992 from Rhode Island School of Design, spending his junior year at Parsons, Paris.
Shortly after graduating, he moved to New York City and landed a job at MTV, producing large-scale paintings during live programming. The exposure launched a fifteen-year editorial illustration and art direction career, showcasing his art and design in everything from Rolling Stone and GQ to The New York Times and Esquire, UK. He has received numerous awards from American Illustration, Print Magazine and The Society of Publication Designers, meanwhile teaching related courses at The School of Visual Arts, NY.
In 2000, Hussey made a conscious decision to shift his career toward contemporary painting. His art utilizes various media and contrasting subject matter to cross-pollinate and suggest a bigger picture, a narrative that has no end or beginning but urges the viewer to look deeper at it’s implications.
He has been represented by Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, Alan Avery in Atlanta and Rebekah Jacob Gallery in Charleston. His paintings have been exhibited nationally in key group and solo exhibitions such as Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles, Nashville International Airport, Art Basel Miami, ArtHood’s “Great Promise” fundraiser for the prestigious Watermill Center, Slideluck Potshow, NY, La Luz de Jesus, LA, and his recent 10 year retrospective “Drown Then Swim” at the Waterfront Gallery in Charleston, SC. In 2009, filmmaker Adam Boozer shot a 45-minute documentary on Tim’s life and artwork, entitled “Running By Sight” which was an official selection at the DocMiami Film Festival and was aired at Comic-Con, 2011.
Hussey’s art has appeared in Dwell, Architectural Digest and NYArts Magazine, Murphy Publishing’s Dialogue and Why, and his recent book Drown Then Swim (forward by Shepard Fairey).
He currently resides in Los Angeles.
|
|
Hay Fire, Oil on Canvas, 24” x 48”
|
Jesse Vogel has a B.F.A. from San Francisco State.
This series of paintings began in San Francisco in 1999.
“I layer the same color on the board or canvas until all the life has been taken out of it and it is flat and graphic again just like the tiny photo I began with. I want to blend the foreground and background into one semi abstract image that only reveals itself after a moment of contemplation. Los Angeles is sometimes like this looking ugly and flat and hazy until examined longer and then beautiful moments and objects are revealed. The images are chosen for their drama or banality and then made as high contrast as possible. This breaks the picture into abstract shapes while keeping its overall integrity. The subject is usually one person alone in Los Angeles or many people gathering together for celebration, dance, work, or an emergency. The lonely moments wandering industrial areas on my way to work. ..The sunset junction street fair dancing with hundreds of my closest friends... An explosion of chaos after days of nothing. Waiting for the subway. Driving past a car crash. Paying a bill.”
Jesse lives and works in Echo Park, Los Angeles.
|
|
Krista Machovina
Horizon Dark Cloud, Oil on Panel, 24" x 48"
|
Krista Machovina's work illumines her fascination with liminal space, the infinitesimal breaths of boundary between sand and wave, water and sky. The almost abstract images that result evoke the tonalist and color field movement, with an emotive element that makes the viewer feel they stand before a portrait a of a well studied and familiar visage. When considering these oil on panel paintings one leaves with a sense of mystery and the unknown, an ever present aspect of the human condition. Ms. Machovina earned an MA from Southern Illinois University and a BFA from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her work is in private and corporate collections nationwide. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
|
|
Don’t Eat Fast Food #2, mixed media on panel, 29” x 21”
|
Many people who have heard of David Yow know him as the lead singer of seminal ‘80s punk band, Scratch Acid. More know him as the notoriously unhinged madman lyricist for Chicago noise-rockers, the Jesus Lizard. What these people don’t know about Yow is that his passion for visual art long preceded the unique spectacle that was his music career. In his pre-punk college years, David completely submerged himself in painting and drawing, but music soon emerged as a form of creative expression he couldn’t resist. Decades passed without him putting brush to canvas. Then, in 2010, Yow was asked to do a solo exhibition for a Los Angeles art gallery. The show opened the floodgates for a torrent of intriguing pieces whose mediums include photography, hair, insects, blood, toenails… and even paint. By year’s end, Yow had works displayed in a group show at Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects gallery, and March 2011 marked David’s participation in his first New York City group exhibition. Since then, he’s had work shown in Berlin, is soon to show in Bucharest and Vienna, and is planning several more exhibitions for the U.S.
|
|
G. Mack Hill
Hollywoodland
6 Color Serigraph & Collage on Canvas
64 x 51 inches
2013
|
I was four years old when my grandmother Emily spiritedly offered me my first paint brush.
I was eight years old when I learned from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that my parents were on the hit list of a recently and democratically deposed tyrannical third world dictator.
I was ten years old when I was shown the antique pistol my great grandfather Alvin used to kill a man in El Paso, Texas who was suspected of stealing from his silver mines.
I was twelve years old when I learned from my late father and namesake, Gerald N. Hill, that "Sometimes, you have to let a few arrows get through."
I was thirteen years old when my cassette of “Combat Rock” by The Clash proved to be the perfectly timed soundtrack for cutting grass with a rusty push mower.
I was fifteen years old when I found myself in Germany taking black and white photographs of wayward punks and smashing a sledgehammer through the eastern side of The Berlin Wall.
I was seventeen hours into being eighteen years old when I stepped out upon the front stoop to find that my neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles was exploding into a societal and literal firestorm.
Today with Ludwig Van on a low decibel repeat I find myself awake at night counting the cracks on the ceiling while questioning reality and contemplating the past, present and future tenses. Marveling at the wonders of fate and appreciating love and loves lost. Dissecting the art and war of politics and the intricacies of the powerful versus the powerless. Listing the ironies of the eccentric compared with the esoteric. Theoretically connecting the artifacts and clues left by history and attempting to decipher daydreams of what the future may hold.
My current works linger through time with layers of texture, imagery, collages and varnishes whose mounting imperfections provoke a story of a life lived (albeit at times hard and forgotten but also those of legend and regard). Thematically and visually self-reflective of contemporary society and all of it’s fame and follies, notions of nostalgia across both the urban and suburban landscapes are present allowing an off kilter and inquisitive familiarity to exist. The push pull dichotomy of perception throughout the themes of my work buffs off the sheen of the world we are made aware of (and or understandably choose to acknowledge) and the real world within which one or many may truly exist.
