Melanie Willhide - Elegy of The Garden

June 11 - July 30 at Von Lintel Gallery

Von Lintel Gallery is delighted to present new work by artist Melanie Willhide.

A pioneer of merging analog and digital photographic practices, Melanie Willhide has challenged conventional notions of photography for over fifteen years and broadened the very definition of the medium. Willhide’s new series, Elegy of the Garden, continues her life-project of photographic innovation while taking on her current subject—the environmental crisis—with an immediacy and emotional intensity that evokes witnessing a powerful storm and what it leaves. In Willhide’s work, what is left behind is always beautiful, even if only a memory.

Willhide’s evolving and expansive process eschews “the decisive moment” to represent a broader feeling of time. She employs any tool her work demands. The flowers in this work—some real, some artificial—are captured with either a camera or scanner in such a way they exist as phenomena, dynamic as a hurricane or wildfire. Time does not stand still, and Willhide privileges texture and depth over realism. Plastic stems with nylon petals can be indistinguishable from flowers picked from the artist’s own garden, and the recognizable form morphs into pixelated abstraction. Willhide intertwines the natural world with the artificial, and we are moved to find where beauty survives in an era overcome by wind, water, and fire.

Willhide’s concern with eco-grief reaches beyond her own art practice and recent landscape designs; she recognizes the environmental crisis as perhaps the gravest calamity in human history. Many of her flowers seem to be floating away or drowning in water that possesses a supernatural force, as seas continue to rise, drought and subsequent famine persist, and mega storms destroy communities and contaminate drinking water. Left behind is loss and the fear of further loss: a dream of untouchable color moving in unfathomable darkness.

Willhide received her MFA from Yale University and has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationwide and internationally. Her work is included in permanent collections such as the Getty Museum, the George Eastman Museum, LACMA, the Yale University Davenport Collection.

Images:

Melanie Willhide, Through the Vapor and Moonlight, 2021
Melanie Willhide, Whether by Day Abducted, 2021

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Artist & Intelligence

Reimagining The Artistic Process with AI

June 26 - July 14 Fabrik Projects Gallery at bG Gallery

Opening Reception on June 29 1-4pm

Artist + Intelligence: Reimagining the Artistic Process with AI showcases the work of a diverse group of artists who have embraced AI image-generating tools as creative collaborators in their artistic process. The exhibition explores the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence, highlighting various approaches to AI-assisted art production. Some artists rely entirely on AI-generated imagery, while others combine AI tools with their own image assets, working hand-in-hand with the technology to bring their visions to life.

For more information see:
https://fabrikprojects.com/exhibitions/9-artist-intelligence-reimagining-the-artistic-process-with-ai/overview/

Left Image: © Glen Wexler. Moments of Beauty.

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1:1

September 7 - 10 at bG Gallery

Join the opening reception on September 5th at 6pm

Participating Artists: Harshit Aggarwal, Gk Austin Ii, Kevin Mack

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT:

We live in a new world where tangibility and physicality is but  incidental. Art has altered its historical status from a physical object to accommodate digital derivatives. Today this change cannot be perceived as merely an experimental second thought. A daring, new set of artists have set their foot on the traditional art space. We have picked artists one from the east and one from the west to present our vision of the future of art, where the aspect ration 1:1 revolutionized the world we love and live in.

The exhibit includes digital art presentations with physical and screen presentations, including fractal based digital art.

Blockchain Impresario: Kourtney Hunter

Curated By : Deepa Subramanian  
Deepa Subramanian is an art gallerist /curator based in Santa Monica. She founded Galerie De'Arts, a contemporary art gallery in Bangalore, India in 2009. She has curated over 75 plus significant art shows of contemporary masters both in India and in the United States. She is the current Chair, Public Arts Committee, City of Santa Monica, and also serves as an Arts Commissioner in the Santa Monica Arts Commission.

Images: Harshit Agrawal

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David Hockney | Big Tech

September 7 - October 19 at Leslie Sacks Gallery

Leslie Sacks Gallery is pleased to present David Hockney | Big Tech an exhibition of a selection of David Hockney’s homemade prints executed on office color copy machine as well as a group of his iPad and iPhone drawings.

David Hockney has always been interested in “ways of seeing”. He has explored this concept throughout the decades by experimenting with the current technology of the time. In the early 1980’s he began making work comprised of photographs taken with Polaroid cameras. Shortly after he would be making art via fax machines and office photocopiers. In 2008-09 he started making drawings on his iPhone and iPad which he continues to make today. While his subject matter has a traditional resonance—still lifes, landscapes, portraiture—it is through his discovery and use of technology that he forges new ways of seeing the most familiar and fundamental subjects of life.

Images:
Two Red Chairs, March 1986
Homemade print executed on an office color copy machine

Untitled, April 17, 2011
iPad drawing 

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John Chiara : The Alchemy in Materiality

September 14 - November 9 at ROSEGALLERY

The Alchemy in Materiality offers an enthralling journey through John Chiara’s innovative career. It presents a comprehensive retrospective of his work, inviting viewers to contemplate the elusive essence of the present moment, seamlessly bridging the realms of art and science with a captivating, visceral aesthetic.

Seamlessly fusing art and science, John Chiara’s practice forges a unique process which combines photography, sculpture, and immersive experience. At its core are his meticulously crafted cameras; essentially large scale yet portable camera obscuras.

Within the dark chamber of these cameras, Chiara choreographs a precise interplay of light and chemistry on positive color photographic paper, deftly controlling light and manipulating the emerging images with an innate touch. The resulting pieces are profoundly perceptual bearing traces of their unconventional origin, rendered in soft, ephemeral hues that evoke materiality and transience. More importantly, they are all unique. With color positive photographic paper, no photo negative is created or needed, creating an image that is ultimately impossible to reproduce or duplicate. Chiara’s works are truly individual instances.

His artistry showcases the convergence of ingenuity, invention, and patient craftsmanship, transcending conventional photography to embody the interplay of light, time, and human perception.

This show is a part of the DNA Festival, as well as The Getty’s PST: ‘Art & Science Collide’ program.

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