www.ismaeldeanda3.com

Using mutant practices including digital photo-collage, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and interactive, site-specific projects my work is inspired by my pluralistic upbringing on the U.S./Mexico border and living in Los Angeles.

My personal concept of the mutant, a condition of unexpected evolution, was born from my adolescent reading of X-Men comics that featured mutant outsiders/anti-heroes whose special abilities set them apart, as well as my own Mexican-American ethnicity. The mutant refers to mixing of artistic processes and the potential of the multi-ethnic existence of those living in the U.S. in exchange with diverse world cultures as a blend of developing culture not yet forecasted.

Often my works are site-specific, inspired by the communities in which they are created, using locally sourced materials.

https://www.carlosbeltranart.com
instagram.com/carlosbeltranart/

Artist Statement

My artistic realm is rooted in a state of existential ambiguity, reflected in the fluctuating relationship between figuration and abstraction in my creations.

My work expresses the tension between the gestural markings and structures, creating a dynamic visual experience.

Through my art, I aim to explore both tangible and intangible structures that often shape the accessibility of resources and opportunities across various communities and economies.

The recurring edifices portrayed in my paintings symbolize the conventional "American Dream", however, the abstract, gestural markings serve to disrupt and question these preconceived notions, challenging the concept of a "Promised Land."

arezoobharthania.com

Arezoo Bharthania is an interdisciplinary artist and curator based in Los Angeles. She has received her BA in Painting from Azad University in Tehran, Iran, and her MA from California State University, Northridge. She has received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach. 

Bharthania has exhibited her work through out California and some international exhibitions, such as PØST Gallery along with Laura Salmon’s performance, Brand Library, Torrance Art Museum, Art Baboo146, Yokohama, Japan, Monte Vista Projects, University Art Museum of Long Beach, Ground Space Projects, Seaver Gallery and many more.

She has works in private and public collections such as COTA, California State University, Long Beach.

My work reflects the experience of creating a home while existing in a state of in-between. It is a narrative formed through layers and gestures that blend my childhood and early adulthood in Iran with my current life in Los Angeles. The space I occupy is navigated through the bodily experience of womanhood and a balance of dichotomies: public and private, psychological and physical environments, here and there.

The homes that I have inhabited across geographies represent a multilayered construction of identity influenced by interdependent forces that define roles, govern behaviors, and order power relationships. The Iranian identity I carry in the United States relies heavily on my history as an immigrant. Utilizing my personal history as a filter, my work honors the common experiences and materials of everyday life from which people build a home. This includes personal human experiences of love, work, observation, memory, emotion, sensation, nostalgia and desire; and the universal struggle to pull forth vivid memories that have been reduced to flashing glimpses as time creates distance between past experience and current life.

I make mixed-media work to communicate, mutate, and abstract layers of memory along with elements of the home with the knowledge that both are inextricable from political and social contexts.

As Gayatri Spivak wrote, using the displacing gesture as a reversal is a way to reclaim the dubious privilege of having a voice. I aim to build a ground from which I can speak. 

www.jorinbossen.com

My work, in a wider sense, explores how various natural/artificial processes of gathering information affect our understanding of reality and interpretation of it.. As well, how we attribute meanings to objects and given experiences through sensory information — visuals, text, sound, memory, time--- in conjunction with preexisting knowledge is another interest of mine to investigate. Neither mimetic/representational image nor the concept itself alone provides balanced understanding of the world; so, by invoking various style, processes, iconic images, and barely recognizable objects, I look at more complex relationships rather than surface appearances of the things. 

www.sijiachen.com/

"My work is an ongoing exploration of cultural heritage, documentation, and experimentation. Papercut is the unifying element I employ throughout my canvas, sculpture, and public art works. My mosaic-like landscapes and cityscapes utilize cut-out forms and a collage approach, and explore aspects of immigration, the notions of inclusion and otherness, and the journey back and forth. The immigration documents I use as a base material imply motifs and narratives, without shuttering or narrowing the focus of the viewer solely to this area and their contents. Rather, they allow the underlying issues and ideas to have context that is both explicit and part of a larger content. My sculpture and public art practice is about fostering community engagement and civic involvement. Through my artistic process, I am engaging with the public as we collectively explore, rediscover, and examine local culture and heritage.

Coming from a family of traditional Chinese calligraphy and paper cut artists, and having studied and now residing in the United States, I make references to traditional Chinese landscape painting, as well as acknowledging the influence Western art has on my work. My work explores Here and There, the two poles of culture and influence that have shaped me as an artist. For a first-generation immigrant, this is the experience of place and culture, where both bleed into each other and color our journey."

Sijia Chen is a multi-disciplinary visual artist concentrating in public art, large-scale painting, and installation. Her commissioned public works include “Bloom” in North Kansas City, Missouri, “Voyage Beyond” in Shantou, China, “Arbor” in Claremont, California, and “SWA” and “Tea and Tree” in Jieyang Chaoshan International Airport in Jieyang, China. She has shown her work in solo exhibitions at Art and Sustainability, Net Impact Los Angeles, Culver City, California; Art Museum of Shantou University, Shantou, China; Fei Gallery, Guangzhou, China; South Bay Contemporary, San Pedro, California; Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, Illinois; Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia, Philadelphia; and group exhibitions in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, US, and China. Various institutions, including the Goldbach Center, Zurich, Switzerland; the Inside Out Museum, Beijing, China; Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou, China; Shantou University, Shantou, China; and Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, China, have included Chen’s work in their permanent collections. She received her MFA from Tyler School of Art in 2011 and her BFA from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2009. She resides and operates her principal studio in Los Angeles, California.

www.joedavidson.art

IG: @joedavidsonstudio

www.DaniDodge.com

Dani Dodge uses unexpected sculptural materials to alter spaces. 

 Her experience as an embedded journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq changed her forever. Since then, she has  created art and installations that change and challenge expectations. 

 From brightening a black and white snowy forest in Ireland with luminescent tree stumps to turning a Los Angeles gallery into a gantlet of rotating car parts made from baby blankets, her works play with surrealist ideas using innovative forms.

The installations merge the rational and the dream state. They often require interaction with the viewers.

 Although she creates individual works for group shows, she is best known for her installations that confront emotion. In the past she has invited participants share burdens, joys and sins. Her work often incorporates interactive elements that require participants to reveal personal truths, and in doing so recognize our shared human frailties. She has burned people’s fears, thrown people’s burdens into the ocean and typed people’s secrets for the purpose of posting them publicly.

 Dodge created site-specific installations at the Coos Art Museum, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, New Museum Los Gatos, Inland Empire Museum of Art, Inglewood Public Library, San Diego International Airport, San Diego Art Institute and more. Dodge’s installation/performance CONFESS at 2015’s LA Pride was named one of the outstanding public art projects of the year by Americans for the Arts. 

 Her work is included in four museum collections and has been shown across the U.S. and internationally.

Dodge lives and works in Los Angeles.

My sculptures are meant to act as individuals that question the contemporary sense of self. Because of high media access and output by any one individual, our current framework allows one to conduct oneself through highly changeable means, allowing us to create fickle conceptions of ourselves that seemingly give us a sense of control. My sculptures are meant to exist in an environment where this sense of control and significance within this framework is questioned. These sculptures have signifiers of the primitive and advanced, male and female, toy and organic, and exist in an uncomfortable state of limbo that has lost their will to outside forces.

@vita_eruhimovitz

I’m interested in ways that scale and form trigger bodily sensations, and in the ways that painted bodies and paint-as-a-body coexist in one space. Biological life and consciousness have a central place in my work. Through painting I explore my mind, navigate languages, non-conceptual states of being, the creative instinct, and destructive energy as a device to comprehend and unify all of these.

My work is inspired by motherhood and womanhood, my scientific background, and a passion for "nature" and natural history. It is shaped by my tri-lingual and tri-cultural personal history, ecological anxiety, immigration, locality and globality, nomadic instinct, and a life-long search for home. My recent paintings reflect a reconciliation with the sense of living on perpetually shifting grounds and the pursuit of home within my own mind.

Bio

Vita Eruhimovitz was born in Ukraine, grew up in Israel and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Vita’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, including at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis, Museum of Design Holon in Israel, Brattleboro Museum in Vermont, and at the San Diego Art Institute Museum. Her work has also been shown with Walter Wickiser gallery, Denise Bibro gallery, Black and White gallery, Wonzimer gallery in Los Angeles, and more. Vita has been awarded artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, Herzliya Artist Residence, Israel, Trestle Art Space, NYC, Playa, OR, and more. She has worked in collaboration on some award-winning public sculptures and was the winner of Award of Distinction for recent alumni of the Sam Fox School of Visual Art and Design. Her recent curatorial projects are: Sense of Place, at Wonzimer Gallery and Sending Love, at Keystone Gallery in LA.

Jenny Hager

Jennyhager.com

Jennyebhager@gmail.com

Instagram: Hager8645

Biography

Jenny Hager is a Los Angeles based artist, originally from Detroit, MI. She has a BA from Knox College, Illinois, a post baccalaureate from the New York Studio of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, NYC, and an MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Knox College, West Los Angeles College, and Santa Monica College.

Jenny has received two Joan Mitchell Foundation Grants, a research grant from Knox College, a merit and teaching grant from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Professional Artist in Residence Scholarship from Ox-Bow.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Atlanta, London, Berlin, Brisbane, Lecce, Paros, and Budapest. She has participated in art fairs, including Miami Projects (Miami), Supermarket Art Fair (Stockholm), Spring Break (Los Angeles), and QiPO 01 (Mexico City), and her work has been shown in the Reykjavik Art Museum (ISL), the Torrence Art Museum (Los Angeles), the Riverside Art Museum (Los Angeles), the Figge Art Museum (Davenport, IA), the San Diego Art Institute (San Diego). She has also participated in the Yokohama Triennale (Japan). Hager works with the artist run gallery, Durden and Ray, in Los Angeles, and has shown at the Berry Campbell Gallery (NYC), Paul Thiebaud Gallery (San Francisco), the Bentley Gallery (Phoenix), and Gross McCleaf Gallery (Philadelphia), and HClub, Los Angeles.

Artist Statement

“Landscapes and Objects of Disquieting Events” is the working title of twenty plus years of painting that attempts to come to terms with my experiences as a woman in a world that routinely fails to protect women and children, amongst others.

What started out as bravado became a code that morphed into an investigation of trauma. In choosing a more abstract format, I have centralized negation and painting as palimpsest in the service of exploring the tension between the explicable and the inexplicable. Negation and the act of covering produces a hierarchy of things allowed to speak and things that are censured. Scraping, building layers, and the use of taping to create patterning (screens, barriers, obfuscation, and noise) against organic ephemera enable me to find a space that embodies a representation of confrontation and incomprehensibility that defies categorization through language structures and resides in the visceral. Mountains, monsters, and cosmos are recurring themes in my work, weaving together landscape, mythology, and the double edged sword of wonder.

It is my intention that the form and content of my work be open to interpretation and accessible to all viewers despite the specificity of its subject matter to me.

Born in London, 1959, educated at St. Martins School of Art, Goldsmiths and Chelsea School of Art. I first began visiting Southern California in 1989, in 2007 I moved from London to Riverside California. During the 1980’s my early work was associated with “New Image Painting” and significant exhibitions during this period include a solo show, “Journeying in Search of Hidden Treasures” at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK, “Problems of Picturing” at the Serpentine Gallery, London and “Between Identity & Politics – A New Art”, Gimpel Fils, London and New York. Since January 1st 1983 I have made small gold ink line drawings on cream colored paper. These drawings have become a reservoir of knowledge, and constant source of information for making my paintings; very few drawings have ever been exhibited. Other important shows include, “Aperto 90” at the Venice Biennale, “LandEscapes”, Ex Lanificio Bona, Turin, Italy and “The East Wing Collection”, Courtauld Institute, London. I have been exhibiting nationally and internationally since 1981, including 21 solo shows. My large dayglo, nightglo and interference acrylic paintings are associated with Charles Saatchi and the YBA’s (Young British Artists) my work is included in the book “Shark Infested Waters, The Saatchi Collection of British Artist in the 1990’s”. I represented Great Britain at the 26th Festival Internatinal de la Peinture, Haut de Cagnes, France and was shortlisted for a number of prizes including the Jerwood Painting Prize in 1998, the John Moores Painting Prize in 2006 and the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2006. I was a Prizewinner in the 1997 John Moores 20. In 1995 I was the John Moores 19 First Prizewinner and in 2004 won the Abbey Award Fellowship with the British School at Rome. My paintings and drawings are in many private and public collections around the world including The Walker Art Gallery and Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Government Art Collection and the Saatchi Collection. 

@atiliopernisco

The chaotic beginning of pandemic times and the charged political climate were both incorporated into my body of work. Trying to make sense of these perpetual absurd times by contemplating a narrative from a collage of images and reorganizing thoughts to paint. Once I establish some kind of association and by re-contextualizing each juxtaposition, I use the final collage as a pretext to experiment formally. The image is the origin, painting is the action of matter over representation.

@snezana.petrovic.art

BIOGRAPHY

Snezana Saraswati Petrovic is a multi-media artist, curator, and award-winning set/ costume designer. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in Los Angeles, Singapore, Tokyo, Prague, and Belgrade, at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Stedijilk Museum in Amsterdam, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the 32nd University Olympiad in Chengdu, China. Her art practice focuses on environmental issues versus technology, which began at Pomona Arts Colony Residency under Judy Chicago in 2002. Her MFA thesis in set design was the first in the USA done as an interactive CD-ROM, a predecessor to the DVD format.

The most recent curatorial project “Zimmer Frei” at Wonzimer Gallery (March-April 2023) received critical acclaim. Her latest solo show "Bionic Garden: The Fossils of Our Future” is presented at Kahilu Gallery, Hawaii (June-July 2024). Her work has been featured in magazines such as Artillery, Diversion LA, Art and Cake, Voyager LA, and the LA Times.

Snezana has received numerous awards in the USA and Europe, including the "Golden Arena" for Production Design in the feature movie "Harms Case" and the "Ovation 2010, Los Angeles" for costume design in the Large Theater category. She has also received the UC Regents Grant, the Center for Cultural Innovation Quick Grant, and the National Endowment for the Arts project grant.

She taught at California State University, Los Angeles (1997-2002), served as a Professor and Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa, CA (2002-2019), and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Redlands in Redlands, CA (2004-2022). Her current title is Professor Emerita in Arts.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My art exists at the intersection of art, science, and technology, forming a lexical bridge that unites visual metaphors with societal realities. By harnessing the cognitive elements of science and technology advancements, my work aims to unveil the fears associated with climate change and the infringement upon planetary boundaries.

As an immigrant from war-torn former Yugoslavia, I continually search for the home that I have lost. The notion of "home" becomes multifaceted in my work, transcending physical boundaries and encompassing a global collective experience. I create immersive, imaginary environments that delve into the boundaries between natural and man-made or robot-made objects. By crossing the delicate border between the structural and the natural, my art provokes reflections on our shared global narratives of movement, belonging, and transformation.

Whether through 3D or 2D artworks, I strive to blur the separation between object and subject, inside and outside. Through the juxtaposition of these disparate elements, I seek to challenge preconceived notions of materiality and explore the intricate relationships between consumerism, waste, and the fragility of our natural world. My interactive environments and artworks are designed to foster dialogue and collective responsibility in safeguarding our environment while reimagining future outcomes.

www.hagopnajarianart.com

Instagram: @hagopnajarian

Hagop Najarian is a working artist and college professor living in La Mirada, California. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Hagop and his family immigrated to the United States in 1969. As an Armenian living in La Mirada, he drew strength from the strong ties and grounding that his family and close community provided. Watching his father and grandfather create elaborate wood furniture with simple tools was the foundation and driving force in Hagop as an artist.

Atonal Chromatics (2015-2019) is a series of paintings that investigate the compositional and structural elements of Atonal Harmonics in music and translates the effects to the process of drawing and painting. The paintings are a synthesis of musical genres coexisting on the same surface. They are a response of listening to a variety of musical approaches and creating visual equivalents.

The drawings and paintings explore the interactions of sound and color. I am searching for ways to communicate visually what I experience when hearing and playing music. By using the visual elements of composition, line, shape, speed, texture, light and color, I exchange comparisons to the musical structures of rhythm, volume, mass, atonality and harmonics. The paintings are made as a response to a variety of musical genres such as Classical, Jazz, Reggae and Punk as the catalyst for the paintings. The outcome of the paintings is the result of this process of translating the visual form from the audible sound.

Home Turf (2021) is a series of paintings that reunites my history of figuration with my previous series of abstract paintings. The intersection of these two genres culminates in the synthesis of color, sound, gesture and memory.

As an ongoing record of my visual DNA, these paintings ignite both the audible and visual senses within my creative process as a painter and musician. The imagery in the paintings summons the emotive powers of memory, euphoria and nostalgia, providing a dialogue for the viewer and their own senses of color, gesture and joy. We are all a culmination of our own life experiences as we reflect on our Home Turf.

The ways we cope with uncertainty and absurdity are central to my practice.  I work sculpturally, combining materials with languages of articulation (maps, architectural models, symbols, myths, traditions) to build relationships that explore instability. The connection between rigidity and fragility, whether in a declaration of Truth or within a material form, is a principal examination within these considerations. Working with structures, both tangible and conceptual, allows for properties such as brittleness, flexibility, weight, tension, balance, etcetera to operate both physically and metaphorically. 

My paintings deal with memory, identity, mortality, existential states and the possibility of political action through painting.

The paintings cover: visible decision making, collapsing and expanding space, constructed curatorial relationships, indeterminate depth, appearance of movement, transitory moments, time aware, covering and uncovering, archeological, urban inner city, romantic but not naive, joyous but melancholic, evidence of personality, energy in engagement, gravity but floating, collage-like, memory and histories, uncomfortable, surprising moment by moment, figure/ground uncertainty, pictorial and linguistic, implied extension beyond edges, taxonomic, archiving......

The usually large scale abstract paintings of Max Presneill employ a vibrant and often jarring field of color, embedded with marks, scrawls, erasures and blockages, to question the act of painting and it's relationship to issues of existential intent and obligation, thus leaning towards both a statement of individual presence (and thus a resistance to his own mortality) as much as an oblique political statement. The marks themselves, sourcing from graffiti, art history, accident and design, showcase a myriad of bravura methods of applying paint, in a move and countermove game of suppression and control. 

The core ideas in my practice have always revolved around notions of mortality, the mark as presence and the decisions and choices in painting that imply a type of existentialism as well as a reflection on our core humans as cognitive animals. As an atheist I am concerned with issues to do with the nature of free will and choice and how invested beliefs in our lives allow us fulfillment and political agency – as the act of painting, a process of self-defined questions and answers within a larger language system, is inherently. The new paintings concentrate on this act as both a literal thing – the making of a mark of presence, as well as a metaphor for the philosophical position. The marks are both literal – they are paint to make a painting, they are marks of presence – but they are also allusional and metaphorical.

Another very important thread for me is the possibility of a political awareness engaging the viewer through the process of abstraction. Can these marks be persuasive political commentary? The question is intriguing. My hope is that the constant applying of marks and their negation through further marks can act as a reflection of the struggles against Power and the constant battle for supremacy between the People, or me at least, and the interests of Authority. The picture plane acts as the liminal arena for this struggle, of potential movements and mutations towards differing strategic positions, of redirections of forces and the forging of new alignments, both offensive and defensive. They are a constantly shifting chess game of provisional wins, losses and stalemates.

https://www.instagram.com/dylsmack/

https://www.dylanricards.com/

Dylan Ricards an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in the fields of sculpture and sound. He is endlessly fascinated with the materiality of our post-natural world, peering between moral ecological binaries where contamination occurs and the possibilities of magic in art are revealed. Ricards deploys a wide range of making strategies in my practice. It’s not uncommon to find highly fabricated 3D printed forms alongside ceramic objects and ready-mades found washed up on the beach in their installations. As an educator, Ricards encourages this multifaceted approach as a part of their pedagogy. He is passionate about working with students to help them dig deeper into conceptual and technical solutions in their art.

@stephanie_sherwood_art

The elevation of abject forms fascinates me—fleshy shapes bound within a rigid cage; haphazard fabric, plastic, and paper cast aside in a shopping cart on a sidewalk; overflowing dumpsters. The stark contrast of chaos within a structure strikes an unexpected beauty. The Confine series is a body of work defined by the imagery of soft, fleshy forms bound within the grid of a cage; they explore the inherent tension between the two entities. The wire baskets are rendered imperfectly and, combined with the soft forms pressing through the gaps in the bars and tumbling out of openings, highlight the three-dimensionality of the chosen still-life.

The In Situ body of works is painted on discarded furniture on the streets of Los Angeles. Each piece is created on-site, where the furniture is found. It is documented and left for its ultimate delivery to the landfill. Each item carries the history of its use, and the immediacy of its dumping mirrors the painting process. The ephemeral quality of the work references the performative aspect of the process which happens on sidewalks and in alleyways.

Stephanie Sherwood is an artist and curator living in Los Angeles. Her artwork has been shown internationally and in the United States, including the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, LA Artcore, The Brand Library and Art Center and ArtShare LA. Sherwood’s work and curatorial projects have been included in several publications including Artillery, Art and Cake, ArtHabens Contemporary Art Review, LA Weekly, Murze Magazine and Voyage LA.

www.curtisstage.com

instagram.com/curtisstage/

Curtis Stage is a Los Angeles-based Media Artist/Photographer and currently is Chair of Arts, Media & Performance at Los Angeles Mission College.

 New Studio Work: Abstract Still-Life Series

I have always been interested in how we are enticed into the picture plane – how an image can create a tension between static and dynamic, flatness and space. My current art practice is an exploration in still-life photography of sculpturally constructed abstract collage. I am creating three-dimensional objects using existing photos and textural materials which are temporarily assembled arrangements staged for the camera. The combination of visual elements is composed of the commonplace and the ordinary, but the final image in these works presents an explosive and abstract dimension, where the traditional laws of physics and materiality have no authority.

Ongoing Urban LAndscape Series:

For the last few years, Curtis has been interested in photographing landscape and architecture in hidden urban pockets mostly around the Los Angeles area. These are usually industrial non-places where we don’t see ourselves. They are transitional in that they are areas to manufacture products and ship them out. When you drive or walk in these spaces, you literally feel lost and disoriented–streets and landmarks don’t function the way they do in the neighborhoods sometimes just a few blocks away.

 These are deliberately uninteresting, bland places–maybe to conceal what happens inside. The companies that occupy the buildings are not at all interested in beautifying the surroundings, and mostly everything feels like a dreamy wasteland… Not close to the image of Southern California that dominates our vision.

Every once in a while, there is a revolt. People need little moments of beauty in their human-shaped landscapes. So, mixed in with the desolation, trash and decay are odd monuments of aesthetic style. Most of the time these are collisions of highly manicured plants and racing stripe style wall paintings that are clearly inspired by the need to upend the overwhelming ugliness.

Curtis Stage received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University and BFA from California State University Long Beach.

Valerie Wilcox

@valeriewilcox_art

vwilcox1111@gmail.com

www.valeriewilcox.com

Statement

I take perceived flaws and imperfections and give them a compelling new life.

I use common and salvaged materials to intuitively explore contradictions and uneasy associations between indefinable shapes, mark-making and painting. These assembled hybrid objects become my canvas and manage to transcend their base materiality, as the source materials are elevated and imbued with a newness of form and aesthetic.

Hope, second chances and authenticity are the values that I strive to incorporate into my artistic practice. I enjoy discovering uncommon and salvaged materials that I can re-purpose and transform into unique object-based artworks. The elements I use include, but are by no means limited to: wood, plaster, papier-mâché, paint, paper, textiles, carpet, metal hardware, cardboard and foam board. Many of the wood remnants I find show a particular architectural usage or a sense of its own history. These foraged materials connect me to my community and are a continual source of inspiration. Being authentic in my process means accepting the failures and trusting that these too can be reimagined into new opportunities.

My work combines the geometries of Minimalism with the spontaneous spirit of the New Casualists. The intent for my work is to provide a sense of optimism in society's ability to reinvent itself. It’s a hopeful reminder that there’s beauty in the imperfections, and forgiveness for our perceived flaws.

Bio

Valerie Wilcox is originally from San Diego, CA, moved to Los Angeles and received her BFA in Graphic Design from Cal State University Long Beach. She continued her fine art studies at Otis College of Art & Design and Art Center College of Design and currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Wilcox has been included in many local and international exhibitions including the Kölner Liste Art Fair in Cologne; Galleries in Wuppertal and Berlin, Germany; Brisbane, Australia; QiPO Art Fair in Mexico City, Stockholm, Sweden and Norway. She's shown locally at Billis Williams Gallery (formerly George Billis), Launch LA, Torrance Art Museum, Irvine Fine Arts Center, Mount Saint Mary’s University, Korean Cultural Center, Melissa Morgan Fine Art in Palm Desert, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and the Palo Alto Art Center. She completed a three week residency in Stockholm, Sweden and showed in the subsequent exhibition there. Her work is collected internationally and in corporate collections including the Hyatt and Marriott hotels.

Wilcox has been published in the NY Times T Style Magazine, The Huffington Post, Coolibri Magazine in Germany, Veranda Magazine, Saatchi Art, Art Nerd in San Francisco, DiversionsLA and Art and Cake.

Many of my paintings focus on the power of repetition and the variety of ways repetition can be used: as a mantra, as an educational aid, as a memory device, as a sign of obsession, as a method of torture, as the set up to a punchline, as a display of insanity, as an engine of efficiency, as advertising, as emphasis, as an instruction for proper hair care.

My word piles began as a response to Anish Kapoor’s 1000 Names, a group of piles of powdered pigment.  His work was a meditation on the vanity/absurdity of trying to battle impermanence.  In response, I used an extrusion process to create 1,000 versions of the word “name” in three-dimensional acrylic paint, and assembled the dry words into a pile.  In some ways, my work is similar to Kapoor’s: both feature brightly colored piles; both celebrate absurdity.  However, the pieces are very different.  In Kapoor’s work, everyone is equal once reduced to the sands of time.  Any piece of powdered pigment removed from his piles will look like any other piece.  And any speck of pigment removed from a pile will become an insignificant piece of dust, meaningless when apart from the collection.  In my word piles, every piece retains its own identity, uniqueness, and meaning, even when removed from the pile.  In every piece, the artist’s hand is clearly present (as handwriting).  Furthermore, my 1,000 names are made of acrylic, one of humankind’s more permanent creations.  In the battle against impermanence, my acrylic names might survive, if not in the history books, then possibly in that plastic gyre spinning in the Pacific.

Related to this theme, I made similar piles using the words “crane” (also referencing the origami tradition of making 1,000 cranes for good luck), and “pound” (mostly so I can make jokes about lifting 1,000 pounds).  I also departed from direct references to Kapoor with pieces like the 400 blows (referencing Truffaut’s movie) and a pile of cocaine (made after learning that many people misunderstood the blow reference).

But repetition is only one theme that interests me.  Through all the work, I have been exploring the three-dimensional properties and possibilities of paint.  In the names of all my facebook friends, I recreated the facebook experience in paint.  I wrote the names of all my facebook friends in “facebook-blue” acrylic squiggles.  Like facebook, some friends’ names are fully visible; others are partially obscured; most are lost within the mass of other friends – they are there, but you will never see them on your wall.