LA East

www.jweststudio.com
IG @jwest20011

Saturday Night May 23rd 8-midnight
(best viewed from across the street)

6th Street Bridge Film (16mm color and black and white film prints submerged, floated, dragged, scratched and corroded in the water and cement of the Los Angeles River Bed by Jwest and Lucie Birney under the former 6th Street Viaduct – repaired, painted with dyes, etched and preserved – original 16mm shot in 2016 by Peter West and Jwest – bug driving by Lena Ruano with Micah Espudo – car driving by Finn West – appearances on film by Kate, Chris, Rocio and others) 9 minutes, 58 seconds, 2020 (16mm transferred to 4K) Commissioned in part by JOAN Los Angeles in conjunction with solo exhibition, “Future Forgetting”, curated by David Matorin

Biography
Jennifer West is an artist who has explored materialism in film for over ten years. Born in Topanga, California, West lives and works in Los Angeles.   Her solo exhibitions include: “Future Forgetting”, JOAN, Los Angeles, 2020;  “Emoji Piss Film”, Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, 2018; ” Is Film Over?, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China (2017); “Film is Dead…”, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2017; “Action Movies, Painted Films and History Collage”, Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro, Nuoro, 2017; “Flashlights Filmstrips Projections”, Tramway, Glasgow, 2016; “Aloe Vera and Butter, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK (2012); “Paintballs and Pickle Juice”, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nuremberg, (2010); “Perspectives 171: Jennifer West”, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, (2010); Lemon Juice and Lithium, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2008); “White Room: Jennifer West”, White Columns, New York, (2007).  Her work is in museum and public collections such as and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kadist Foundation (San Francisco/Paris), Zabludowicz Collection (London); Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Depart Foundation (Rome); Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania; Henry Art Gallery (Seattle); Rubell Collection (Florida); Saatchi Collection (London), among others. Significant commissions include Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2016-2017; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Art Night, London, 2016; High Line Art, New York, 2012; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2010; and Turbine Hall at TATE Modern, London, 2009.  Select group exhibitions include: Yuz Museum, Shanghai, 2019-20; Whitney Museum, New York, 2017; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2015; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2010; Musee d’Art Contemporain (CAPC), Bordeaux, 2008; Drawing Center, New York, 2008 and ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe, 2007. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Frieze and Mousse Magazine. West has produced eleven Zine artist books which were recently acquired by the Getty Museum.  She received an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and a BA with film and video emphasis from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She has lectured widely on her ideas of the “Analogital” and is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Fine Arts at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design.

www.danitull.com
IG @dani_tull

Artist Statement
SLOW BURNERS is an ongoing series of functioning lanterns whose forms are unrefined, raw and unmistakably made by hand. Each unique lantern is emotive, conveying ephemeral aspects of the human condition. The lanterns bulbs and wires harnessing an electric current can be seen as a representation of the human body and states of human consciousness. Previously, my lanterns have been exhibited in indoor exhibition spaces, for DRIVE-BY-ART (PUBLIC ART IN THIS MOMENT OF SOCIAL DISTANCING), I am interested in the opportunity to see and present them in an exterior public setting. Lanterns illuminate our path during times of darkness, to exhibit these works at this time takes on an additional tenor as our paths have been dimmed by so much uncertainty – collectively and individually. I hope these works conjure an inner meditative sense while simultaneously illuminating a sense of togetherness on the path of your art pilgrimage.

Additional background on the lanterns: These works were initially inspired by spending a great deal of time in Barcelona amidst the great works of Catalan Modernisme (Modernism). While in Catalan region, I had some extraordinary and profound experiences of both extreme beauty and horror. My family and I were present during the terrorist attack a few years ago on Barcelona’s grand promenade Las Ramblas. While we are lucky to be alive, witnessing the event and participating in both the ensuing anti-terrorists demonstrations and the various memorials was a lot to process. Prior to the attack, I was deeply moved by many of Barcelona’s architectural landmarks, in particular the light spilling in through the Sagrada de Familia and The Church of the Colonia Güell (both by modernist architect Antoni Gaudí). I was also fascinated by the large gothic lamps around the narrow streets of the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter), as well as the lamps and lanterns found in many of the region’s cathedrals and sacred sites. I had been struck by the relationship of natural light spilling into these structures during the day and the manmade light spilling out of the large lamps in the evening.

In the days following the terrorist attack, a number of spontaneous memorial sites sprouted up along the Las Ramblas promenade. Staying just around the corner, we visited and participated often. The sense of mourning expressed by the messages, objects and thousands of flickering candles placed by visitors, created one of the most beautiful and emotive participatory creations I have ever witnessed. My time in Barcelona was profoundly marked by and expressed by experiences of light and form.

Biography
Dani Tull lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He received his MFA from Stanford University in 1990 and a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute in 1984. Tull has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums internationally with selected solo exhibitions including Blum and Poe (LA), Jack Hanley Gallery (SF), The Pit (LA), Kim Light Gallery (LA), Fredericks & Freiser (NY) Torch Gallery (Amsterdam). Recent exhibitions include On Stellar Rays (NY), Jacob Lewis Gallery (NY) and LAM Gallery (LA). Tull’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Artforum, Art in America, I.D. Magazine, Wallpaper and Frieze amongst others. Tull is also an accomplished musician and has collaborated with a variety of internationally recognized artists such as Jim Shaw, Raymond Pettibon and Marnie Weber. Permanent collections include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Getty, The Laguna Art Museum and The Peter Norton Family Collection. Tull was cited by Ed Ruscha for a feature in Wallpaper* Magazine, “LA’s brightest new talent and truest voices.” As an accomplished musician and composer he has recorded and performed with a great variety of musicians. Recent musical projects include solo performances for SASSAS, West Of Rome and LAFMS. Dani Tull is also a member of D’red D’warf, a band project with artist Jim Shaw. Tull is also co-owner of ODD ARK LA gallery in Los Angeles.

www.janetsternburgphoto.com
www.janetsternburg.com
IG @janetsternburg

Through the Little Tokyo community spirit, Azay, this beloved restaurant at 226 First Street, between San Pedro and Los Angeles Streets is displaying the work of Janet Sternburg in their windows.

Artist Statement
My work is about revealing an interpenetrating world. To that end, I use no manipulation whatsoever. I work with single-use and iPhone cameras because their limitations give me what I want, images that are close to the way our minds work.

About Azay Restaurant
Azay is the homecoming of Chef Akira as he explores the intersection of history, cuisine, and community in the former space of Anzen Hardware, Little Tokyo. 

Born and raised in Kyoto, Japan, Akira trained in the French countryside of Azay-le-Rideau and Paris, having worked at Maxim’s de Paris and the hotel Nikko under Joël Robuchon. After being recruited to work at the esteemed L’Orangerie in Los Angeles, he and his wife opened a French restaurant in Kyoto, Japan then Pasadena, California, which closed in March 2019 after celebrating 20 years as Maison Akira. 

The new menu at Azay will celebrate his experiences professionally in the kitchens, gardens, and communities of the culinary world as well as the personal relationships he made along the way.

Biography
Janet Sternburg is a polymath: an artist of photography, a writer of literary books, a maker of theatre and films, an educator, all in the service of a singular vision which has always been at the forefront of cultural change. Since 1998 when she began taking photographs, her work has appeared in a portfolio in Aperture (2002), and that same year in a cover story and portfolio in Art Journal. Her photography has been exhibited in solo gallery shows in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Milan, as well as at cultural institutions in Mexico and Seoul Korea where she received a commission for a full-building installation using projection and multiple monitors. A monograph of her photographs, Overspilling World: The Photographs of Janet Sternburg, was published in 2016-17 by Distanz Verlag with a Foreword by Wim Wenders. In 2018, the USC Fisher Museum of Art presented her solo show, LIMBUS. 

www.cammiestaros.com

Artist Statement
I make sculptures and installations that mine Classical antiquities and the contexts in which we view them. Through a combination of ancient techniques, contemporary sensibility, and museological display, my work folds the past in on itself to reveal semiotic systems developed and reinforced through art history. I try to challenge the dominant historical narrative that places the relics of my own Greek lineage at the origin of the “Western Canon,” adding broader regional and epochal references to reflect the overlapping nature of visual influence and considering the role of the museum in the shaping of such narratives and such canons.

Biography
Staros received her BA in Art and Semiotics from Brown University (2006) and her MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts (2011). She has presented solo exhibitions with Shulamit Nazarian, François Ghebaly, and Lefebvre & Fils galleries. Her work is currently on view in the Ceramics Biennial at the Craft Contemporary Museum and is featured in 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow, a Thames & Hudson survey of contemporary sculpture. She has received several awards, grants, and residencies, including a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship.

www.nataliesmith.info
IG @natalienfs

Artist Statement
This painting was made as a reflection on the cow or the bull archetype, known to ancient cultures as the Queen of Heaven and creator of the great Milky Way Galaxy. Across cultures and spanning millennia, the cow possesses the power of the eternal mother: birth and rebirth, of expansion and contraction, the life force of Spring, beauty, sex pleasure and becoming. This painting is a continuation of a body of works deailng with my shadow. In these paintings, I am reconciling the conscious and unconscious selves into one whole, honoring space for our experiences that remain on the edge of knowing.

Biography
Natalie Smith (b. 1986 Chicago, IL) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Her practice spans painting, drawing, and sculpture to confront the ways that not only beauty and pleasure, but also ambiguity and bewilderment are necessary in our acts of survival. Recent group shows include U’s in Calgary and Spirit in Los Angeles. Her work has also been exhibited at The Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, NM, the University of New Mexico Art Museum and in a public project with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. This fall, Natalie was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. She received her BFA from the University of Illinois and MFA from The University of New Mexico.

www.martyschnapf.com
IG @marty_schnapf

Artist Statement
I work with the inconstant emotional and psychological space experienced in dream, desire, memory, and premonition. In Par la main, a woman’s right hand signs, salutes, and shades. Light breaks in a partial spectrum across her palm. She looks out beneath a broad-brimmed hat through the shadow of her hand. A second set of eyes (second sight) peer from her upturned collar. Button loops open like mouths mid-breath, but she remains close-lipped. Her left hand draws the coat tighter or removes it. One hand sees. The other decides how much to reveal.

Biography
Born in 1977, Marty Schnapf received his BFA from Wittenberg University and studied in Italy through the Lamar Dodd School of Art. He has exhibited work throughout the U.S. and internationally with recent solo exhibitions at Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles, Alice Black Gallery in London, Soulangh Cultural Park in Tainan, and Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles. He is the recipient of numerous international residencies and grants including, most recently, the 2017 Rema Hort Mann Community Engagement Grant.

www.shelby-roberts.com
IG @williamshelbyroberts

Artist Statement
Through sculpture, video, and photography, Shelby Roberts has spent over thirty years peering into and stabbing at the darker corners of American life. His images are beautiful, replete with irony, often imagining something better of our character than one might otherwise perceive. His sense of humor appears offering an escape, launching a psychic lifeboat. Roberts’ most recent project Origin Myth is on view February 2020 – June 2020 at Foto Forum, Santa Fe. This project started in 2018 as a series of color photographs made on the side roads along the I40 corridor between Los Angeles and Oklahoma City. It is a long drive Roberts made frequently to address obligations calling from both ends. The project expanded in 2019 to include locations in Kentucky and New England while contemplating the remains of those troubles.

Biography
Shelby Roberts was born in Oklahoma City, OK and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Roberts’s photography has been exhibited nationally at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, IN; the Supreme Trading Annex Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and the Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles, CA to name a few. Roberts counts among his major influences, Walker Evans, John Cassavetes, and Townes Van Zandt, He received his BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and an MFA in art from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California. He is faculty in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine.

www.mamiko.biz

Biography
Mamiko Otsubo was born in Nishinomiya, Japan, in 1974. Her work has recently been featured in the solo exhibition Sky Lobby at Cleopatra’s in New York (2015) and Lullin + Ferrari in Zürich, Switzerland (2013), and included in the group show Minimal Baroque at Rønnebæksholm in Næstved, Denmark (2014). Recent public art commissions include Bold Tendencies in London, Lujiazui Harbour City in Shanghai, PS 313Q in New York, Public Art Fund in New York, and Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. Having first earned her BA in economics from the University of California, San Diego, she went on to study fine art at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and receive her MFA in sculpture from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She is a recipient of the Brown Foundation Fellows Program at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France, which was awarded by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and has held artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and Statens Værksteder for Kunst in Copenhagen. In 2017 she was commissioned by the City of Seattle to realize a three-part public art project for the Center City Connector streetcar in 2020. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

www.joetken.com
IG @jotkn

Biography
Jordie Oetken is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her photographs use scale, lighting, and strategies of containment to maintain a continuous tension, asking the viewer to oscillate between their desire for calcification and the ambiguous narrative power of the image. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Oetken has held residencies at the Lighthouse Works, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Vermont Studio Center. She received her MFA from UCLA in 2017.

www.benwolfnoam.com
IG @wolf_noam

Biography
Ben Wolf Noam was born in Cambridge, MA, in 1987, and received a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design in 2009. He has exhibited throughout America, Eu- rope and the Middle East. Exhibitions include The Breeder Gallery (Athens) Suzanne Geiss Co. (New York), Museo di Capodimonte (Naples, Italy), SADE Gallery(Los Ange- les), Metropolitan Art Society (Beirut, Lebanon),10 Hanover Gallery(London, England), and others. He has had performances commissioned by Night Gallery and PS1 MoMA.

Ben Wolf Noam’s visual, curatorial, and performative work has been presented in The Observer, Vice, T Magazine, ArtFCity, Art in America, Artforum, Nylon, Purple Maga- zine and many others. He lives and works in Los Angeles.