Julia Schwartz

Julia Schwartz

Bad Company 2020,
Unstretched canvas, newspaper, photograph transfers, acrylic, gouache, paint marker,
60 x 72 inches; with flowers 2015 concrete and rebar, various dimensions.

Reflections
Although I’ve had access to my regular studio and could have continued work on a series of paintings in process, somehow that work no longer seemed relevant. Instead I’ve found myself once again returning to working in books which I’ve done for the past 5 years. In this period of isolation and quarantine, I began making collages with repurposed materials- newspapers and everyday papers, glue and gouache, very no-tech and quiet work, Glue paper, and paint. A return to simple materials which reflects a need to simplify things in these strange times. The work on view here is an expansion onto a broader canvas, but the idea is the same. I started adding daily updates from LA County Public Health website, with dates, new cases and deaths from Covid-19.

Artist Statement
I have always liked Keats’ idea of “negative capability;” this is quite compatible with being essentially self-taught, although my colleagues remind me that all of us are always learning on the job. Still, without benefit or burden of formal “technique” in art-making, I am comfortable with doubt, uncertainty, the freedom to explore materials and methods, and an infinite freedom to fail. Materially I appreciate the sublime- oil paint on canvas or linen- and the humble- gouache on book pages and trading cards, sharpie on cardboard and envelopes.
Art depicts my situation- the geographic, the emotional, the existential, the state of the world- and how I make sense of it. That means trying to make sense of the senselessness of the everyday world and its outsized ‘seismic disasters’ including personal loss and grief, profound political and cultural fragmentation, and most recently the absolute crumbling of the world as we have known it and the traumatic reverberations that are to come.

Julia Schwartz
Bad Company 2020,
Unstretched canvas, newspaper, photograph transfers, acrylic, gouache, paint marker,
60 x 72 inches; with flowers 2015 concrete and rebar, various dimensions.

Biography
Julia Schwartz is an artist working in Santa Monica. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including a solo installation “tenderly cradled and lavishly flung” at Visitor Welcome Center in 2018 and recent work with the Binder of Women, including a limited edition print release at The Pit and upcoming group shows. Curatorial projects include “States of Being” at the Torrance Art Museum (2015) and “Black Mirror” at Charlie James Gallery (2017). Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including New American Paintings, Two Coats of Paint, Huffington Post, and The New York Times.


Kim Schoenstadt

Kim Schoenstadt

Indomitable Spirit, 2020
Acrylic on paper
72 x 42 inches.
Courtesy of the artist and Chimento Contemporary

The Tasting Kitchen, a staple in the Venice community for the last 10 years, it has a chalk board wall in the upstairs dining area for which they commission chalk murals from local artists.

Artist Statement
For Drive-By-Art I have created a new work (pictured above), based on a 2017 commission for The Tasting Kitchens upstairs dining area. Since I already had a contact at the restaurant, I just ‘poured myself a cup of ambition’ and contacted them to see if they would be open to hosting me for this project. They were super receptive and welcomed me back. The work combines parts of the 2017 commission with color patterning based on a needlepoint chair cushion my mother made in the ’70s. The architecture included is from El Segundo, Venice Beach, Westchester, and proposed lifeguard station by local architect Thom Mayne.

Since ‘Safer At Home’ began, I’ve been spending time with the needlepoint chairs my mom made. Memories of my mom (who passed in 2012), her artistic skills, and intellectual curiosity have been swirling in my mind. She had an indomitable spirit and in addition to her masters in social work, she would take night classes at the University of Chicago including an Albers based color theory class and multiple Charles Dickens courses.

This new work is an homage to her spirit and a reflection of the odd new rhythms life is taking in this pandemic moment. Echoing the ebbs and flows of our reconstructed ideas of connectivity, space, and time.

In this moment of multiple simultaneous traumas, it felt weird to continue to do my job, it felt less important. Yet in a year where all my projects have dried up overnight this opportunity to continue to do my work was important. What I can do is commit to a percentage of the sale of this work to go towards Black Lives Matter and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

About The Tasting Kitchen
The Tasting Kitchen is a contemporary Italian restaurant with a New American farm to table heritage, using traditional and classic regional diction with thoughtful, local growers to guide guests through the ever changing landscape of Southern Californian cuisine. The restaurant reinforces their scratch kitchen philosophy with handmade pastas, in-house cured meats, and produce from the westside farmers markets. The menu changes regularly based on seasonal fresh produce and offers an optional tasting format as a guided dining experience. The neo-classical cuisine is amplified by an exquisite, purposely-curated wine portfolio and a celebrated cocktail program. Designed around a central olive tree in the entrance, The Tasting Kitchen, which opened in 2009,  is a romantic, intimate space where one would be comfortable finishing a bottle of wine with friends until closing time.

Kim Schoenstadt
Indomitable Spirit, 2020
Acrylic on paper
72 x 42 inches.
Courtesy of the artist and Chimento Contemporary

Biography
Kim Schoenstadt was born in Chicago, Il. and currently lives in Venice, CA. She received a BA from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA. She is known for large scale wall drawings / murals and a project entitled Now Be Here which gathered close to 1,000 women-identifying and nonbinary artists in Downtown L.A. for a historic photograph that visually showed the world artists who are not always included in exhibitions and collections. The project launched other “Now Be Here” events across the country in Brooklyn, Miami and Washington, D.C. to significant media attention and critical acclaim. Schoenstadt’s work will be featured at the Fairview Heights Metro station on the Crenshaw/LAX line.


Kenny Scharf

Kenny Scharf

Toy Drive, 2019-2020
One hundred feet and growing.
Plastic toys, plastic garbage.

Artist Statement
Toy drive is a continuation of my obsession with plastic and garbage. This is an ongoing and growing piece that gets added to a couple times a month. Most of it is found discarded in the street, or my personal consumption and/or plastic things that come across my path. I hope to stimulate the eyes and mind. The ongoing consumption of plastic goods is continuously overflowing and overwhelming the earth and especially the world’s oceans. Plastic trash is a great artist material because it’s free, colorful, light, waterproof, and evocative.
Although, I feel sad about the suffering that people are going through physically and mentally during this time I also welcome the brief but hopeful respite( I noticed a lot more birds singing outside my window)that the slow down has caused as I feel the pace and path we were on similar to a speeding freight train going off a cliff.  

Kenny Scharf
Toy Drive, 2019-2020
One hundred feet and growing.
Plastic toys, plastic garbage.


David Schafer

David Schafer

Untitled Logos No. 4 , 2020
Epson print on Epson paper
34 x 84 inches

Untitled Soundtrack, 2020
Vinyl records of corporate jingles, instructional, self help, spoken word, sound effects, and production music.
PA speaker, turntable, amp, misc. hardware

Artist Statement
This work is compiled from ten corporate trademarks and logos that represent ownership by companies including fast food, automobiles, gas, banks, media, and credit cards. The texts and specific identifying content was removed from each one to leave the abstract form and colors of the logo itself. The word Logos is not only plural for more than one logo, but is also a term used in Theology, Linguistics, and Philosophy to represent different ways of theorizing the concepts of center, presence, ground, or origin.

In addition there will be a selection of audio comprised of corporate jingles, spoken word, instructional, and self help records that will be emitted from an outdoor PA speaker. Viewers are invited to roll down their windows, or park and sit in the grass in front and listen.

David Schafer
Untitled Logos No. 4 , 2020
Epson print on Epson paper
34 x 84 inches

Untitled Soundtrack, 2020
Vinyl records of corporate jingles, instructional, self help, spoken word, sound effects, and production music.
PA speaker, turntable, amp, misc. hardware

Biography
David Schafer is an artist based in Los Angeles. His practice integrates sculpture, sound, text, and digital print elements for individual works, installations, and public art. Schafer often appropriates and reframes cultural motifs, site, and structures in order to investigate systems of historical and cultural memory, built space, and language. He is interested in producing collisions, contradictions and convergences at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, sound, and language in order to disrupt communication intentionally through strategies of interruption. One-person exhibitions have been presented at Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Samuel Freeman Gallery, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Works on Paper, Los Angeles, CA, Glendale College Art Gallery, Glendale, CA, Studio 10 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York. Group exhibitions include More Light, JOAN, Siren, FiveCarGarage, Los Angeles, Re-modeling: New Ideas on the Form and Function of Architecture Models, Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA, LOL: A Decade of Antic Art, The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD, Think Pink, Sarah Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, FL, Futureways: The Middleburg Triennial 2304, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, NL, In Exile, Space Debris, Istanbul, Turkey, LaLaLand, Tent Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. Schafer is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, Center for Cultural Innovation Grant, Visions and Voices Arts Initiative USC, National Endowment for the Arts, NY. His work has been written about in ArtForum, Arts, Art News, Art Issues, ArtWeek, The Wire, Metropolis, Cabinet Journal, Documents Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times. Schafer is an Associate Professor of Fine Art at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. 


Lucas Reiner (night only)

Lucas Reiner (night only)

MEMORIAL, 2020
Color video projection loop with live music by Kerouac Von Trapp

Live composition from 8pm-10pm.
Recorded version of the composition from 10pm-12am.

A palm tree is felled by construction workers on Centinela Avenue using a chainsaw and a backhoe on May 4th, 2020, 11:57 am. A live musical composition made in response will accompany the projection.

Artist Statement
For the past 20 years I’ve been painting, drawing and filming urban trees around Los Angeles and on my travels.

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Lucas Reiner
MEMORIAL, 2020
Color video projection loop with live music by Kerouac Von Trapp

Biography
Lucas Reiner has widely exhibited internationally and his work is represented in public and private collections. Please visit website for more information.


Jackie Rines

Jackie Rines

Untitled, 2020
Ceramic

Biography
Jackie Rines is a Los Angeles-based artist who primarily works in clay at a large scale.  Her recent work addresses status symbols and power dynamics through the use of humor, opulence, and various genres of home décor that span from McMansions and Dictator Style, to home goods readily available at outlet malls. Prior to attending UCLA for her MFA, Rines lived in Detroit. She has been awarded a Jerome Fellowship at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis and has been a resident at Henry Street Settlement in New York City.  She has been included in recent group shows at AALA, Durden and Ray, and Desert Center.


Mary Anna Pomonis

Mary Anna Pomonis

She Rises, 2020

Artist Statement
The title of the artwork, She Rises, refers to the spring resurrection story prevalent in Judeo-Christian cultures. The title refers to the ascent of Inanna and Persephone in the mythology of the ancient world. The resurrection story serves as a reminder that our bodies are miraculous and just as Inanna survived her trips to the underworld, we too shall rise.

The installation focuses on the eight-point star or temple rosette form of the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna, sometimes called Ishtar or Artemis. I am fascinated by the intercessory images of the Theotokos,(Mother Mary), in my upbringing in the Greek Orthodox Church, as well as icons and stained glass windows. The light, language, and form of historically sacred artwork was designed to move the body. I want my work to move through the viewer, creating a feeling of energy and possibility in a world mitigated by quarantine, digital screens, and societal filters. My work focuses on the geometry of an architectural form and its design utilized to create an aesthetic feeling in homage to the goddesses of antiquity.

A previous version of this installation entitled, Iris Calendis, was displayed at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History in February of 2020 which closed early because of the quarantine.

Mary Anna Pomonis
She Rises, 2020

Biography
Throughout history, people have made crests, quilts, and banners to reinforce their own identity. I create artworks as personal power symbols to find faith and order in a contemporary world.

Mary Anna Pomonis is a Los Angeles-based artist known primarily for her abstract paintings utilizing commercial airbrush tools as referents to both masculine and feminine power. Pomonis has exhibited in galleries and institutions, including the Western Carolina University Museum of Fine Arts, the Torrance Art Museum, the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Her artwork has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, Whitehot Magazine, and Artweek. Additionally, her curatorial projects and essays have been featured in museums and gallery spaces throughout Southern California. She is the founder and a contributing member of the artists’ collective, the Association of Hysteric Curators. The AHC has been in both national and international press as a result of their social practice projects and activism in the Los Angeles area. She is represented in Los Angeles by Ladies Room LA and in Chicago by Seer Gallery.


Xiouping (night only)

Xiouping (night only)

The Lover ( 情人。, Der Liebhaber, La amante, L'amant.)
Performance Video Installation, Fence.
80 x 100 inches
12 min

Artist Statement
This performance video installation investigates the relationship between this historic pandemic and the self through introspection, vulnerability, & the body. Universal language is expressed through the body; happiness, sadness, love, hate, etc. The work is meant to be open to each viewer’s unique interpretation.

Xiouping
The Lover ( 情人。, Der Liebhaber, La amante, L’amant.)
Performance Video Installation, Fence.
80 x 100 inches
12 min

Biography
Xiouping is an American multi media new genres, performance/video artist, and film photographer. She is currently a MFA student at Otis College School of Art & Design. She has lived in San Francisco, New York and now resides in Los Angeles.


Anita Pace (night only)

Anita Pace (night only)

Les Fenêtres, 2002
Site specific dance/video for performance in Cipher: A Temporary Project by architect Andrew Zago

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Les Fenêtres, 2002. YouTube

Artist Statement
This is a site specific dance/video for performance in Cipher: A Temporary Project by architect
Andrew Zago. Cipher is a three-dimensional grid occupying nearly the entire gallery void. Formed of dyed, construction grade studs, Cipher consists of narrow, closely packed corridors and stairways doubling back on themselves to form a single volume.
“I make a correlation between a cage built for confinement and a village square built to encourage communal gathering,” explains Anita Pace. Les Fenêtres (the windows) (1863) is a poem by Stephane Mallarme, whose poetry was a catalyst for Symbolist movement of the 19th century. The performers will be confined in the large architectural structure but have freedom to move in their defined areas, as in the poem, “Are there ways, O Self who know asperity to break the crystal outraged by this monster and to escape, on these wings without feathers- at risk of falling throughout eternity?”
The video projection turns the structure back on itself through representation of the documentation of building it as well as the use of other found structures that serve to juxtapose and complement the architecture. Social interaction between the audience and the performers will happen in the confined space in and around the architecture. Les Fenêtres explores the freedoms and limitations that can exist for the performers as well as the audience.

Anita Pace
Les Fenêtres, 2002
Site specific dance/video for performance in Cipher: A Temporary Project by architect Andrew Zago

Anita Pace
Les Fenêtres, 2002
Site specific dance/video for performance in Cipher: A Temporary Project by architect Andrew Zago

Biography
Anita Pace is a choreographer, videographer and performer.  Since 1989 she has created over 30 works, presented in Europe, Asia, Mexico and the U.S.  She has collaborated with numerous visual artists, composers and writers, including Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Christian Marclay, Tony Oursler, Stephen Prina, Carl Stone, Kevin Stultz, Mayo Thompson and Benjamin Weissman.
The work ranges from the examination of popular and counterculture, to closely focused dialogues with specific texts, drawings or other visual forms and deep engagement with different musical idioms to the use of the materials and forms of technologies as creative support.


Erika Ostrander

Erika Ostrander

Help me find my proper place, 2020
Sausage casing, human hair, studio trash
Dimensions variable

Erika Ostrander
Help me find my proper place, 2020
Sausage casing, human hair, studio trash
Dimensions variable

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Erika Ostrander
Help me find my proper place, 2020
Sausage casing, human hair, studio trash
Dimensions variable

Biography
Erika Ostrander’s sculptures and installations reflect her engagement with the ephemerality of materials and the tactile and performative aspects of her work process. Incorporating materials such as human hair, salvaged print media, and animal tissue, Ostrander engages in the production of visceral objects that invoke the body’s phenomenological relationship to the transformation of the organic materials with which she works. Ostrander received her MFA from the UC San Diego in 2016; her MA in 2013 and BA in 2011 from California Sate University, Northridge. Her work has been exhibited at The Brand Library, Torrance Art Museum, Reserve Ames, Eastside International, Open Mind Art Space,  and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Currently, Ostrander is the Exhibitions Coordinator for the CSUN Art Galleries.