LA East

https://www.as-is.la/exhibitions/takako-acrk5   
https://www.as-is.la/exhibitions/2017/10/23/takako-yamaguchi-new-paintings

Artist Statement
I rely on the portability of painting, my preferred medium, to the point of almost taking it for granted. Nonetheless, I recognize that portable art isn’t context-free art, that even an easel painting is in some sense “site specific,” inextricably tied to the institutions from which it borrows and to which it lends credibility and legitimacy. In this spirit I have chosen to “decorate,” so to speak, an existing architectural element, a 1930’s era bas-relief composed of Modernist organic imagery of the sort that has long figured in my own paintings. This new artwork is situated directly above the now locked and gated doors of my Los Angeles gallery, as-is.la, thus its parenthetical title, “the gallery will be closed.”

Biography
Born and raised in Japan, Takako Yamaguchi is a long time resident of Southern California. She has shown widely there, in New York and in other American cities. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in Japan, Berlin and Mexico City. She is a recipient of artist grants including Tree of life Individual Artist Grant, California Community Foundation / Getty Fellowship Grant for midcareer artists, a Gottlieb Foundation grant, and a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship. Her works are in both private and public collections including the Buck collection at UC Irvine, Nola Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, Utah, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada, Long Beach Museum of Art, CA among others.

www.sterlingwells.info
IG @sterlingpastel

Artist Statement
Water holds the contradictions I am interested in between symbolism and physical reality. We use water as a symbol for refreshment, fluidity, and the ability to flow through any obstruction, but water is a scarce and increasingly commodified resource. Water is not only the source of life,  but was the prime mover that powered the factories in England where capitalist labor relations developed. It cools the computers that store all the information retrieved by the Internet. In California, water is being extracted and hoarded like other nonrenewable natural resources. The CEO of Nestlé does not think that access to clean water is a human right, and the current administration is attempting to re-define water to exclude intermittent streams and marshes from the Clean Water Act. But the only way out is through, and sometimes when I look through water, I feel like another world is possible.

Biography
Sterling Wells (b. 1984, New York City; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) received his BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007, received his MFA from Art Center College of Design in 2017, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2018. In 2019 he was awarded an Emerging Artist Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. He has recently exhibited at Night Gallery, LAMOA (Los Angeles Museum of Art), AWHRHWAR, Yard Pedro, and Vernon Gardens.

IG @aaaaaalis

Biography
Alice Wang lives in Los Angeles and Shanghai. She is an assistant professor of arts at New York University Shanghai, and co-organizes The Magic Hour.

IG @ j_p_w_3

Biography
JPW3 (b. 1981, Tallahassee, Florida) has had solo exhibitions at Night Gallery, Los Angeles; the Sarasota Museum at Ringling College, Sarasota, FL; MOCA Tucson, Tucson, AZ; Martos Gallery, New York;  Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin; Michael Jon Gallery, Miami; and Kunstverein Heppenheim, Heppenheim. In 2020, his solo presentation with Night Gallery at Untitled, San Francisco won the eBay Booth Award. He has also been included in group exhibitions at the De La Cruz Collection, Miami; the Pit, Los Angeles;, New York; Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy; and Kavi Gupta Gallery, Berlin. His work has been covered by The New York Times, Artforum, and Art-Agenda, among other publications. JPW3 lives and works in Los Angeles.

www.christiantedeschi.net
IG @christiantedeschi1

Artist Statement
James J. Gibson’s  “affordance theory” states that objects have specific forms which are designed as “clues in the environment that indicate possibilities for action and are perceived in a direct, immediate way with no sensory processing”. Affordance brings with it a system of concerns given our precarious relationship to objects, technology and social media. My work aims to problematize perceptions of affordance within our relationship to objects, materials and spaces, while opening up new possibilities for alternatives to this increasingly volatile modern syntax.

Biography
Christian Tedeschi’s work is interdisciplinary in nature and utilizes a variety of materials. Fabricated and found objects, materials, sounds, and smells are employed as a means to create a varied body of sculpture and installation. Rooted in material, object and spatial poetics as well as re-contextualization. He fabricates, alters and reinterprets objects and situations to create psychoactive forms, narratives and experiences. Tedeschi is from New Jersey and received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2001 and is currently is the head of sculpture in the studio art program at California State University, Northridge, CA       

www.emilijaskarnulyte.com
IG @emilijaskarnulyte

Biography
Emilija Škarnulytė (b. Vilnius, Lithuania 1987) is an artist and filmmaker. Working between documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. Her blind grandmother gently touches the weathered statue of a Soviet dictator. Neutrino detectors and particular colliders measure the cosmos with otherworldly architecture. Post-human species swim through submarine tunnels above the Arctic Circle and crawl through tectonic fault lines in the Middle Eastern desert. Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. With solo exhibitions at CAC, Vilnius in 2015 and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin in 2017, she has participated in group shows at Ballroom Marfa, Seoul Museum of Art, Kadist Foundation, and the First Riga Biennial. Her numerous prizes include the Kino der Kunst Project Award, Munich (2017); Spare Bank Foundation DNB Artist Award (2017), and the National Lithuanian Art Prize for Young Artists (2016). She holds an MA from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art.
Her films have been screened at the Serpentine Gallery, UK, the Centre Pompidou, France and in numerous film festivals including in Rotterdam, Busan, and Oberhausen. She is a founder and currently co-directs Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø, Norway and is a member of artist duo New Mineral Collective, recently commissioned for new work by the First Toronto Biennial.

www.elnopalpress.com
IG @elnopalpress

Artist Statement
I have been investigating/playing with four lines activated at 90 degrees from each other, moving towards an intersection but stopping simultaneously short of it. The expectation of the lines meeting creates an empty space. This space of silence and nothingness generates a presence. I believe this presence recreates the idea/sign of the materialization of abstraction.

I have an electronic sign (ENP Electronic Text) where I invite artists to work with text. For the Drive-By-Art project, the featured artist is Gro Sarauw with a message responding to this time: “Intentions are Good” (2020).

Gro Sarauw is a visual artist currently based in Copenhagen. Sarauw’s work explores non-ideal theories of art as a way to create spatial and environmental justice in multiple mediums, working collaboratively and internationally. In 2019 she exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena and at 18th St. Arts Center, Venice , Ca. as part of the Copenhagen based work-group The Winter Office. She graduated with an MFA from Goldsmiths’ in London in 2014 after completing her MA in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London and at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen.

Biography
Francesco X Siqueiros is an experimental artist printmaker. In 1990, inspired by the idea of the border in its real and metaphoric imagery, he founded El Nopal Press, a fine art publishing studio. His art production includes collaboration with artists to print projects as an analogue to a rich legacy of cultural diversity.

www.susansilton.com
IG @susan_silton
@h.i.s.t.o.r.y_r.e.p.e.a.t.s

Biography
Susan Silton resides in Los Angeles. Her interdisciplinary projects engage multiple aesthetic strategies to mine the complexities of subjectivity and subject positions, often through poetic combinations of humor, discomfort, subterfuge and unabashed beauty. Silton’s work takes form in performative and participatory-based projects, photography, video, installation, text/audio works, and print-based projects, and presents in diverse contexts such as public sites, social network platforms, and traditional galleries and institutions. Her work has been exhibited/presented nationally and internationally at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; LA><ART, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum; ICA/ Philadelphia; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, among others. Projects include the commissioned site-specific performance Quartet for the End of Time, produced by LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division); the site-specific opera, A Sublime Madness in the Soul (2015), which presented through the windows of the artist’s then-studio in downtown Los Angeles; In everything there is the trace at USC Fisher Museum, the book project and Who’s in a Name? (both 2013. In November, 2015, Silton’s Whistling Project was included in SITE Santa Fe’s year-long series of exhibitions, SITE 20 Years/20 Shows, which included a commissioned performance by Silton’s women’s whistling group, The Crowing Hens. She has received fellowships and awards from the Getty/California Community Foundation, Art Matters, Center for Cultural Innovation, Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Los Angeles, The MacDowell Colony, Banff Centre for the Arts, Durfee Foundation, The Shifting Foundation, and Fellows of Contemporary Art (FOCA). Most recently, she has been awarded an LA Metro commission for permanent installation in the Wilshire/Fairfax subway station. Silton’s work has been featured in numerous publications. Her just launched participatory project, MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! is a living memorial, a call to protest, and a vehicle of support for the United States Postal Service. Please join.

www.jackierines.com
IG @jackierines

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.

www.maryannapomonis.com
IG @Mary Anna Pomonis

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.

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.