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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Photos by Mik Luxon On July 25th, Hi-Fructose attended the opening of Peter Gronquist's solo exhibition "All of the Above" at Soze Gallery in Los Angeles. As recently discussed, the artist has embarked on more abstract and conceptual explorations than in previous works. For this exhibit, he chose to expand on multiple recurring themes in his art, and techniques using more varied color, form, depth and stillness - and with surprising results. Gronquist's paintings, for example, are created using sanded plexiglass over hand-painted drop boxes, creating a foggy, luminous effect. This process flattens the image to the surface while simultaneously dropping the image back. Gronquist says, "It's hard to explain without seeing in person, I best describe it as a glowing effect."
Last year, Portland based artist Peter Gronquist made a remarkable departure from his dramatic taxidermy sculptures in favor of more abstract explorations. He continues to experiment with color and form in his latest body of work for "All of the Above", opening on Saturday at Soze Gallery in Los Angeles. The show expands on his 2014 exhibition "The Great Escape" which featured infinity boxes of holographic war planes and firearms, a recurring motif in Gronquist's art.
San Francisco based artist Zio Ziegler (covered here) has an eclectic style; a few of his pieces portray Cubist figures, some more detailed than others, and then there are his more color-based paintings. His art is not cohesive, but rather reflects on his every day life's emotions and moods which flow between feelings of self awareness and bliss. He very much lives in the moment. Ziegler's current solo exhibition at Soze Gallery in Los Angeles, "The Psyche's Gestures," takes a look at these different sides of the psyche.
Berlin based artist Jaybo Monk (previously featured here) is the architect of an abstract world in his paintings. Human figures, which he likens to "cathedrals", are split apart, masses of muscle and shapes swimming around the canvas that leave us feeling disoriented. Combined, they provide the backdrop for a landscape with no boundaries, a place Monk calls "nowhere". His current exhibition "Nowhere Is Now Here", which opened last night at Soze Gallery in Los Angeles, explores this concept of wandering, both literally and metaphorically.
The selfie and the woven tapestry are just about as disparate as two media can get. While the former is snapped quickly and effortlessly to join a stream of endless images, the latter is created through a painstaking process that beckons a more thoughtful viewing than mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. Erin M. Riley subverts our image consumption habits — and the hierarchy of types of images in general — with her hand-woven tapestries, which she bases on selfies of anonymous women found on the internet. Riley culls her source imagery from social media, taking throwaway, low-res photos and cementing them into handmade, physical objects with a much longer lifespan. The artist will present her latest body of work, "Something Precious," at Soze Gallery in Los Angeles in February 21.
Artist duo Gosha Levochkin and Devin Liston have made a name for themselves as DevNgosha, combining their backgrounds in illustration and fine art. Years after their first collaboration, Soze Gallery is showcasing their individual talents in side by side solos "GROWN UPS" and "LOST" (previewed here). As collaborators, they've come up with a system of working together and creating, where one starts a piece and the other finishes it, and vice versa. Now abandoning that system, we can see Liston and Gosha are artists who like to play with varying aesthetics.
On Friday, September 12th, Soze Gallery will host double solo exhibitions by Los Angeles based Devin Liston and Gosha Levochkin (of DevNGosha, covered here). Titled "GROWN UPS" and "LOST" respectively, the event celebrates their first time exhibiting together since 2012- and highlights their unique dialogue as collaborators. Together, the two artists create a subtle dichotomy by focusing on two parts of a combined expression. We take a look after the jump.
Soze Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles came to our attention over a year ago and has been steadily turning out bold shows by established and emerging artists, usually of the street art scene. By bold, we mean artists here sometimes go left field in favor of experimentation and collaboration. Among those who have shown on Soze’s walls, both inside and out, are Miss Van, Ciro, Moneyless, Dave Kinsey, Cyrcle, Retna, Victor Castillo, and Dan Quintana to name a few. The gallery is now moving shop to West Hollywood, starting this Saturday with “Further Adventures in Abstraction” by graffiti artist Remi Rough.
While many street artists are known for signature tags or characters, Italian artist 2501's work is instantly recognizable for an iconic pattern — an organic, zebra-like evolution of stripes that morph into various geometric forms, whether across massive walls or canvases. The cryptic artist never signs his work and his name implies a desire for a certain level of anonymity (it's nearly impossible to find anything about him online if searching for the numerical digits alone). After a lengthy mural-painting tour across the world that took him from Australia to Mongolia to Canada, 2501 will touch down in LA for his solo show "Nomadic Experiments: Anatomy of Restlessness," opening June 27 at Soze Gallery.
Last Friday, Soze Gallery in Los Angeles debuted “Paper Teller”, new works by Italian street artist Moneyless (featured here). Moneyless is an artist who, as he describes it, “speaks through geometry.” His education in mathematics is a clear influence on his new work, but this is a twist on forms he’s been observing for several years. The circle artworks are new, blending concepts of math and science with the colors of 1970s art. Read more after the jump. Now on view at Soze Gallery is “Steer Ahead”, a unique group exhibition of hand-painted steer skulls benefitting CAMP2E. Proceeds from the artwork go to the charity’s art programs created to empower Los Angeles inner city youths, ages 8-14. Among the artists involved are street artists and pop surrealists Dan Quintana (featured in Hi-Fructose issue 27), Victor Castillo (issue 23), Dave Kinsey (issue 13), Retna, Cyrcle, Gregory Siff, Aaron de la Cruz, Paige Smith, and more. Read more after the jump.