TAG Gallery is proud to present the 12th Annual 2017 California Open. The California open is a juried exhibition celebrating contemporary and modern art created by emerging artists. The competition is hosted by TAG Gallery, an artist-owned gallery now located at 5458 Wilshire Blvd, near LACMA and the Craft and Folk Arts Museum. TAG features emerging and mid-career artists of Southern California. Previously located at Bergamot Station, our new exhibition space is 5,400 sq. ft., twice the size of the previous gallery space.

The juror for the 2017 California Open is former curator of the Barnsdall Art Park, Scott Canty. Curator Scott Canty earned a BFA in drawing and painting from California State University Long Beach. Canty worked for the City of Torrance’s Joslyn Art Center as art instructor and was the Center’s Art Curator. Canty has worked as the Director of exhibitions at the Palos Verdes Art Center. 

Recently, Canty held the positions of Art Curator with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Senior Curator for the LAX ART Exhibition Program and was Curator and interim Director of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. His position as curator helped organized exhibitions for other City facilities and other programs for 30 years. 

The selected work celebrates diversity in its wide range of mediums, styles, cultures, philosophies, races and genders. This exhibition intermixes current political topics such as the political refugee crisis, identity politics, and racial profiling with abstraction and representational pieces, allowing the viewer the option to discuss or quietly reflect within while navigating the work in the physical space.

The 2017 California Open was curated to carefully emphasize the ability of art to manifest itself in the individual and oneself, crossing borders into an almost spiritual realm of language that all creatives share, acting as an invisible collective unconscious that drives artists to create. TAG Gallery and Canty invite the viewers to see, feel, verbalize, internalize, and question the works you see as you navigate the gallery space.

The 2017 California Open Exhibition runs from August 9^th – August 26^th with the opening reception and awards ceremony on August 12^th from 5 – 9 pm.