LA West

Todd Gray’s photo based work explores issues of colonialism, diaspora, and contemporary/historical examinations of power. Gray works between Los Angeles and Ghana, where he explores the dislocations and cultural connections which link Western hegemony with West Africa. Gray works in multiple mediums including photo-based work, sculpture and performance.

For the Drive-by-ARt I am showing images from a formal imperial garden in Paris (Luxembourg Garden), a child looking out into the Atlantic Ocean’s middle passage from the shores of Ghana and an image of the cosmos.

Past, present and future intersect in the work.

Biography
He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts. He is Professor Emeritus, School of Art, California State University, Long Beach.
His work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Canada; Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles among others. He was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018, and exhibited in the 2019 edition of the Whitney Biennial.

www.yrnehgabon.com

Performance and conversation on Sunday@ 3-4pm with Marie Vickles, director of Education at the Pe’rez Art Museum Miami and independent curator currently serving as the Curator-in-Residence at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. Instagram live @yrnehgabon

Artist Statement
“TIME WILL TELL” Bob Marley; This installation is a collection of different bodies of works addressing social activism, using the arts over the years.  In this period of Covide-19 and the coronavirus outbreak globally, this is such a great time to create and to reflect while looking for answers in an ocean of fear. 

Time is the only thing that hasn’t been affected and will ultimately determine the survival of the fittest. The Singer Nina Simone once said; “You can’t help it”. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned,is to reflect the times.” I am committed to an artistic practice that is engaging and is of the times.  I see myself as a conduit; I came from a culture where the community matters and we are our brothers and sisters’, keepers. There’s a strength, oneness, longevity in social art practice. Art can be activated and function to construct and deconstructs just about anything.  I use my art to agitate the viewer and unmasking the reality through objects making, research or performance base art.

Social distancing is the new norm and a word that has evolved from the Covid-19 era, we are in lock down and using this time to reflect in ways that forces me to examine and re-examine my earlier practice to deal with some of the same social issues, with the hopes of getting my message across.

This allows me observe and revisit my past and present works, all of which decry injustice within the society. I want to use this opportunity to share works from different parts of my journey, all of which marked moments in time that speaks to social activism, public awareness, change and empowerment. 

Biography
Yrneh Gabon is a Jamaican-born multi-disciplinary and performance artist based in Los Angeles. Having studied at (USC) University of Southern California and Otis College of Arts and design, Gabon seeks to balance artistic representation with social activism and social commentary particularly regarding issues pertinent to Africa and its Diasporas. 

His work creates new narratives and extends dialogue between Africa and its Diasporas both in Western countries and the developing world. This was embodied by the seminal 2014 series Visibly Invisible; Albinism in Tanzania, Jamaica and the USA “through the eyes of Yrneh Gabon Brown.”

His work focused on the plight of people living with Albinism, particularly in East Africa, and was instrumental in supporting of the passing of United Nation, Human Rights Council declaration calling for the prevention of attacks and discrimination against people with albinism around the world. Visibly Invisible resulted in a solo exhibition at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles in 2014. In 2017, Yrneh created the work Roots and Symbols, which explored the invisibility of people of African heritage in Mexico, during a summer residency at the Fundación Sebastián in Mexico City, Mexico. Also, in 2017 Gabon focused on both the California drought and wildfires and its relation to both the social and ecological climate change creating a full installation work entitled “Memba Mi Tell Yu/Listen Up Take Note.” 

His newest series Pink King and Queen of Salt was inspired by recent travels to Lac Rose in Senegal; this collection explores the intersection of salt as a commodity in Africa and the US, and the impacts of climate change.

Gabon has shown nationally in New York and California and internationally in Vancouver, Canada, Darkar, Senegal West Africa and Jamaica, West Indies. In December 2018, Yrneh Gabon had the distinct honor and privilege to be one of the featured international artists at the Musée des Civilizations Noires inaugural exhibition in Dakar, Senegal. A true artist in heart and soul, Gabon has been in the arts and entertainment for over 35 years and has worked as a poet, actor/singer, director, producer, playwright, special effects make-up artist, and creative artistic director.  In 2020 Gabon selected by the Dakart Biennale committee to be featured in Dakart Biennale 2020 exhibition in Dakar, Senegal.

www.danswang.xyz
IG @type_rounds_1968

Reflections
Working on a project about the long shadow of the distant past in a time when the present is heaving with possibilities, and possibly not for the better, is disorienting to say the least. The pandemic has already shifted my fixations having to do with this particular past, i.e. the French Revolution. Whereas I began with the problem of a present shackled to a past, now I wonder again about the event that ruptures time, that reopens the imagination (but, in our situation, maybe not restaurants and hair salons). Siting my project in our front yard has by itself forced a different perspective—not that our homebound weeks didn’t. Still, I think the elasticity of art can help us process the many angles, both historical and contemporary, that will determine our shared future recently made deeply uncertain.

Artist Statement
The actors of the French Revolution made political speech into a primary medium of conflict and in the process laid the foundation for modern political culture. With twenty-first century democracies in perpetual crises, incapable of solving their own problems, never was there a better time to excavate the speeches of the French Revolution, to put the original weaponized words to contemporary voice. Committee for the Equitable Redistribution of Violence is a work from the early phase of this project. It focuses on the words of Robespierre, the most notorious of the revolutionary leaders, feared by his enemies and adored by the Jacobin-led masses. Performance at the top and bottom of the hour. Language sourced from the compendium of Robespierre’s speeches, Virtue and Terror (Verso, 2007).

Biography
Dan S. Wang/王念華 writes and makes art about social movement concerns and political conditions. His writings have been published internationally, including the collaborative book The Social Practice That Is Race co-authored with Anthony Romero, published by Wooden Leg Press, and the critical essay “In the Back of the Beyond” in Global Activism from MIT Press, co-authored with Sarah Lewison. Currently suspended exhibitions include a presentation of more than 80 works from twenty years of letterpress printing at the Darling Foundry of Montreal. He lives in Los Angeles and is a resident artist at 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica.

www.kyungmishin.com
IG @kyungmi_shin_gray

Artist Statement
My installation works since 2005 have been influenced tremendously by my experiences of spending time and building a studio home in Ghana, West Africa. What began as a naive adventure fantasizing about an affordable vacation home in a tropical landscape turned into a study of my own fear, guilt and prejudice as well as a lesson in the relationship between the developed and underdeveloped parts of this world. I began to shift the focus of my artworks from investigation of perception and personal identity to that of the effects of global economic connections. Since 2007, I have been creating photo collages, video, and sculptural installations that investigate the global connection by looking at the rituals, myths, and the physical evidence of the inter-connectedness between the developed and underdeveloped nations and the effects of globalization.   In my recent series of artworks for my solo exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art, Father Crosses the Ocean, I am again investigating this global connection from the personal perspective through looking at my father’s life.

My public art practice is a practice of constantly listening to and learning from the site, community, history and nature of the location.  Thorough the research on the natural and cultural history as well as the current context of the site, I strive to create artworks that brings meaning to the site and engage the public’s imagination.

Biography
Kyungmi Shin is a sculptor and an installation artist.  She received MFA from UC Berkeley in 1995.  Her works have been exhibited at Berkeley Art Museum, Sonje Art Museum (Korea), Japanese American National Art Museum (Los Angeles, CA), and Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA), and have received numerous grants including California Community Foundation Grant, Durfee Grant, Pasadena City Individual Artist Fellowship and LA Cultural Affairs Artist in Residence Grants. She has completed over 20 public artworks, and her most recent public video sculpture was installed at the Netflix headquarters in Hollywood, CA in 2018.

IG @saroyanesque

Artist Statement
My contribution is the space on Coliseum Blvd. between Burnside and Hauser, a short block with traffic (if any) in both east and west directions. Anything observed, heard, smelled or otherwise apprehended during the drive-by in either direction.

Biography
Born 1943, NYC. Poet/Artist.

www.stasorlovski.com
IG @stasorlovski

Space for this project has been generously donated by BOOKARTSLA, a nonprofit organization devoted to bringing the beauty of printing, binding and collecting artists’ and other hand made books to the public.

Artist Statement
Running Man (Nocturne) is a hand-drawn, stop-motion animation projected onto a storefront window to be viewed by pedestrians and motorists. The animation is based on an image from one of my mid-century, Russian children’s books that I grew up reading. The Running Man has been a recurring image in my recent work where I explore themes of migration, loss and dystopia. In this work, the Running Man is paired with a Suprematist geometric composition where figuration and abstraction merge, intermingle and collide.

Biography
Stas Orlovski is a Los Angeles based visual artist whose work includes painting, drawing and time-based media.  Orlovski has exhibited widely throughout the U.S. with solo shows in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and the Bay Area. His work is represented in public and corporate collections including the Crocker Art Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Progressive Art Collection among  others. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Skowhegan, Yaddo Corporation of the Arts, Art Omi, City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship (COLA), J. Paul Getty Trust Fellowship from the California Community Foundation, Artistic Innovation Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. In 2015, Orlovski’s multi-media installation “Chimera” traveled to the 56th Venice Biennale as part of “We Must Risk Delight”, a collateral exhibition at the Magazzino del Sale No. 3. Recent solo exhibitions include Traywick Contemporary in Berkeley, Wende Museum in Culver City and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.

www.dankwong.com

Artist Statement
Given the attention being paid to spatial relationships between bodies (and our fixation on 6-foot spacing), this piece is a reflection on the relativity of distance: What is “far”? What is “near”? What is “close”? What is “distant”? SOLAR SYSTEM DISTANCING seeks to take us beyond our earthly trials and tribulations and remind us of our connection to the cosmos.

Starting at a 36′ diameter Sun painted on the 18th Street Arts Center parking lot, nine hand-painted three-dimensional models of the planets will be displayed at appropriate distances away from 18th Street, relative to their actual distances from the Sun.

Public will begin by driving into the parking lot, doing a lap around the Sun, and then be launched on their mission to visit all the planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and even poor rejected Pluto.

Heading westward on Olympic Blvd., the journey will then extend north on Pacific Coast Highway. Public will be guided by Google map coordinates (I may hand out a printed legend as well), spanning approx. 28 miles — from the Sun at 18th Street, to distant Pluto at Leo Carrillo Beach!

Embark on a fun scavenger hunt-style drive, feel the immensity of our solar system, and meanwhile enjoy a trip up the beautiful Southern California coastline!

And after all that, “six feet” may not seem very far away at all.

Biography
Dan Kwong is an award-winning multimedia performance artist, director, writer and visual artist who has been presenting his work nationally and internationally since 1989. His theatrical work often features handmade props and set pieces that manipulate size and scale for dramatic effects.

 Touring extensively, Kwong has performed at venues all across the U.S. and in Asia. He is recipient of numerous fellowships and awards for his work. 

He is writing a stageplay, MASAO AND THE BRONZE NIGHTINGALE, a story of inter-racial romance set in post-WWII Little Tokyo. COVID willing, production is scheduled for April 2021 at Casa 0101 Theater in Boyle Heights.

He is developing a personal storytelling-based theater project based on interviews with residents of the Pico neighborhood around 18th Street Arts Center. WE WERE ALL HERE is slated for possible production in late-2020/early 2021.

Kwong serves as Associate Artistic Director for Great Leap, a multicultural performing arts organization based in L.A. www.greatleap.org.

He is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Mentor Resident Artist at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica.

IG @dallapozza

Artist Statement
I play in traditional and new art mediums to reveal and synthesize my own impression of an invisible extra-dimensional world around us that I can’t see with my own natural eyes. Like the John Carpenter film They Live, but you know, colorful abstracted ideas, not an evil alien invasion.

Biography
Michael John Kelly was born in Utah, raised in Huntington Beach, probably die in LA.

www.debradisman.com
IG @artifactorystudio

Artist Statement
I currently work in the form of the book, in forms inspired by the book, and in new sculptural media of my own devising. Although the work remains tethered to lose definitions of the book as structure, it is moving progressively into other sculptural and conceptual realms where labor, repetition and a passion for the haptic become powerful motivators and themes.  Achieving and remaining in a sense of flow where potential is infinite is mission critical to my working process.  It is also this state that I try to bring those that I work with into, for it is in this state of purity, openness and unlimited possibility where new levels of connection and meaning emerge, and purpose, knowledge, wisdom and direction are clarified.  Having worked in the realm of the built environment for many years I am fascinated by the parallels between books and buildings in terms of structure, meaning, utility, architecture and effect. Each creates public and private spaces where stories are “read” on many levels, often revealing more than their authors and makers ever intended. I try to create such places and spaces of inspiration, contemplation, realization and bafflement in my work and to instigate investigation, exploration and discovery in myself and others.

Biography
Debra Disman is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily in the form of the book, both as a solo practitioner and in the public sphere of community engagement. As a maker and teaching artist she creates work and projects which push the boundaries of the book into new forms and materials. Disman was the featured artist for the Big Read in LA in 2016, showing at the Mike Kelley Gallery at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA; is the recipient of a WORD: Artist Grant / Bruce Geller Memorial Prize in 2016 to create “The Sheltering Book“, a life-sized book structure designed as a catalyst for community creativity; and was commissioned by LA’s Craft Contemporary Museum to create an interactive book for their 2017 exhibition, “Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California“. She was a Studio Resident at the Camera Obscura Art Lab at 1450 Ocean in Santa Monica in 2018, and has been awarded four Artist-in-Residence grants from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs since 2017 to work with the communities of Sunland-Tujunga and Granada Hills in LA.  She is a local Artist-In-Residence at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA