Continuing through April 16, 2011
Los Angeles painter Rebecca Campbell presents paintings that are at once abstract and representational. Campbell has mastered the ability to combine gestural abstraction with detailed description to evoke the psychological states of her subjects. In this exhibition two large paintings of women, one in the bathtub the other on the beach by the Santa Monica Pier, function like bookends holding the other paintings in place. The others: paintings of rainbows (“Bow”), fireworks (“Bang”), and bomb blasts (“Bomb”) are presented along with portraits of young girls (“Beauty”). The works’ titles reference the impact of these disparate subjects, suggesting they have more in common than one would initially suspect and that the relationship between the man made and nature is something not to be taken lightly.
Terry Allen's multimedia work "Ghost Ship Rodez: The Momo Chronicles” references the life of Antonin Artaud as its point of departure. Part radio play, part video installation, and part a presentation of multi-panel drawings, the installation illustrates Allen's imagining of Artaud's seventeen day journey restrained in the hold of a ship in 1937. Allen has an uncanny ability to weave a narrative through his works, and in this installation allows viewers to look at how he presents it in different media. In "MOMO Lo Mismo" six flat screen monitors of varying sizes present fragments of a women's face. The disembodied figure's facial features are suspended from the ceiling and held into place by a complicated lattice. This figure (Jo Harvey Allen, the artist’s wife) appears whole in "Ghost Ship" where her image is projected onto open books carefully laid out on the gallery floor to simulate the waves of the sea. "Ghost Ship" alludes to Artaud's journey as well as to his film career as fragments from films in which she appeared are projected onto the ship-like sculpture. Allen's thought provoking installation demands to be read, watched and heard.
Published courtesy of ArtSceneCal ©2011
