“L.A. : VIEWS” EXHIBITION TO OPEN AT MAKI GALLERY IN TOKYO DECEMBER 4 CURATED BY LOS ANGELES’ CHELSEA RANA

“L.A. : VIEWS”  EXHIBITION 

TO OPEN AT MAKI GALLERY IN TOKYO DECEMBER 4

CURATED BY LOS ANGELES’ CHELSEA RANA

EXCLUSIVELY  FEATURING  ALL  LOS ANGELES  BASED  ARTISTS

 [Left] Sayre Gomez, Untitled, 2020, courtesy of the Artist

[Right] Gabriella Sanchez WE REAP WHAT WE SEW (Past and Present Patterns), 2020, courtesy of the Artist

Chelsea Rana Art Advisory is thrilled to announce the opening of “L.A. : Views” at MAKI Gallery in Tokyo. The show, curated by Chelsea Petronko Rana, highlights the work of sixteen emerging and mid-career Los Angeles-based artists, and will be on on view from December 4 through January 16, 2021. Los Angeles is a city of multitudes – a thriving art scene at odds and in concert with the entertainment industries; indigenous land and frontier histories colliding with cutting-edge technology and architecture; a web of freeways connecting distinct beach, wetland, and mountain terrains. The artists included in the exhibition reflect this vigor, with works that express manifold interpretations of the region today. With this show, Rana is looking to spotlight the rich fabric of the Los Angeles artistic community and introduce the work by this exceptional group of artists on a global scale. “MAKI Gallery is a perfect fit for this show,” says Rana. “I have worked with the founders Masahiro Maki and Yoshimi Maki for quite some time, and they specifically have championed many LA-based artists. Japan has its own very rich art history, and there are many incredible collectors in Japan, but Japan still feels like it is distanced from the art world that we know here in Los Angeles. Art has always served as a great connector, breaking cultural and geographical barriers and I feel very fortunate that I am able to bring these two art world’s closer together, and thus making the world feel a little smaller.”

The city of Los Angeles provides inspiration and is the subject matter of a number of the pieces in the show. The work of Gabriella Sanchez, Amir H. Fallah, Shizo Saldamando, Jaime Munoz, and Greg Ito are inspired by rich immigrant culture and the variants of the immigrant experiences in Los Angeles. Amir H. Fallah brings together classical Western representational painting with the dense pattern-making of his Islamic heritage in bold colors and architectural canvases. Each holding an object like a talisman or sacred offering these contorted, anonymous figures shrouded in florals and other fantastic motifs speak to a personal narrative of belonging. Gabriella Sanchez takes a decidedly punk, militant approach. In her sculpture, “WE REAP WHAT WE SEW (Past and Present Patterns),” the eponymous text is emblazoned on a handmade flag alongside serape textile samples, bandanas, flannel and silkscreens of archival images documenting conflicts between Mexican immigrant communities and the American government. This aesthetic continues in canvas works which collage paint, neon graffiti and stencils with archival imagery. Painter Greg Ito’s flat, graphic compositions echo a mysterious landscape in transition, riddled with coded symbologies. A sky-blue butterfly flashes above a floating door, promising an alternative future timescape of a lush, wet, sun-basked paradise just beyond the threshold. Ito’s interest in narrative extends to his untraditional canvas choices, in this case a circle, in the past, a keyhole, a dome, each shape both devising and mirroring the corporeal world within his own illustrative universe. Shizo Saldamando portrays members of her own community with work rendered in paint and the ballpoint pen style of the paño tradition, first begun by incarcerated. Part homage, part documentation, the eyeline of each subject is witness to a changing city amidst accelerated gentrification and urban sprawl.

The diversity of Los Angeles is not only in the cultural make-up of the city but in the actual landscapes and geography. Sayre Gomez is known for his work of painting and interpreting scenes from the city. Gomez’s “Untitled” is painted to mimic a metal sign that reads SMILE, which is followed by a leering mouth. A chain extends from the middle of the object to the floor. 

An eerie and ambiguous reproduction, Gomez refrains the signage of the American West as manmade relics, evidence of a communal psychology all but disguised as banal. The Los Angeles Times said of his last show that “The vivid friction between his paintings’ flawless precision and their subjects’ utter disaster is the show’s bracing leitmotif. “ Lily Stockman dwells around the mystical with paintings of sumptuous geometries with centered simple, ambiguous, u-like shapes. Her paintings are abstracted versions of flora found around Los Angeles. Despite the hardness of these abstractions, Stockman’s hand is loose and intuitive. Her surfaces are ethereal coatings of diluted paint. Deeply concerned with color relationships, these linen canvases are intricate reflections on time and the physical body. 

“Contrary to the metropolitan melting pot, Los Angeles is a meeting point, an intersection of different attitudes, generations and cultural legacies, driven by desire and innovation as much as contrast and change, says Rana. “Making a left turn in this town is difficult, but as these visionaries can attest, if you want to get anywhere, just keep going forward, forward, forward.”

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