Contemporary Art

Join us for our monthly meeting where we will discuss all things zine, have a co-working space for zine projects, discover new zine making techniques, make zines together in workshops, and cultivate a supportive zine community. Please feel free to bring a zine project you’re working on, and/or any zine making supplies you would like to use. We will provide basic zine making supplies (paper, writing and drawing tools, scissors, bone folders) and ideas so no need to worry if you don’t have your own! $10 Donation upon entry is greatly appreciated, however no one will be turned away due to lack of funds. Donations go to keeping programming like this and our after school youth arts programs at CFAER accessible!

Before the city’s first dedicated contemporary art museum was established, Los Angeles was home to disparate, heterogeneous art scenes with artists forming different nodes and establishing tight networks throughout the city—from Venice to East LA, and from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in the north to the Brockman Gallery in Leimert Park. Artists utilized unconventional contexts including the street, the studio, the art school, and other public spaces to show and present their art while embracing performative and ephemeral actions to engage the public in more immediate ways. In doing so, artists were responding to the possibilities of a burgeoning art scene and the urban sprawl and dispersed landscape of LA.

 

Timed reservations required: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.,
Thursdays 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

The Museum of Latin American Art is pleased to present Alexandre Arrechea: Intersected Horizons, the first solo museum show in California that explores the artistic practices of the well-known and multidisciplinary artist Alexandre Arrechea. A contemporary Afro-Cuban artist based between Spain and the USA for more than two decades and the former co-founder of the Los Carpinteros collective,

 

In this exhibit, Arrechea’s method of transgressing the limits of traditional artifacts and materials as a point of examination is redefined as a social and political exploration that melds art, history, and archaeological forms.

 

Adults – $15 Seniors & Students – $10, Members and Children under 12 Free,
Free Admission every Sunday

Mark Bradford’s 150 Portrait Tone, a mural-size composition that contains elements of both abstraction and realism, is based on an idea for a work that the artist conceived after the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a police officer in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in July 2016. Castile, a nutrition services supervisor at an elementary school, was shot after being pulled over in his car—an incident that was livestreamed on Facebook by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him.

The painting features excerpts of Reynolds’s dialogue from the video. The title, 150 Portrait Tone, refers to the name and color code of the pink acrylic used throughout the painting. Like the now-obsolete “flesh” crayon in the Crayola 64 box (renamed “peach” in 1962), the color “portrait tone” carries inherent assumptions about who, exactly, is being depicted. In the context of Bradford’s painting, the title presents a sobering commentary on power and representation.

The Broad is pleased to announce Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog), an exhibition drawn entirely from the Broad collection, showcasing works by Los Angeles-based artists. Drawing its title from a John Baldessari work, the exhibition includes reflections on L.A. as a city in flux, and on societal issues that extend far beyond it. The show includes the work of 21 artists across varying generations who were raised in the Los Angeles area, or relocated to the city.

 

Tuesdays, Wednesdays & Fridays – 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.,

Thursdays – 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.,
Saturdays & Sundays 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Bahia Reverb: Artists and Place presents the work of ten former fellows at the Sacatar Institute in Bahia, Brazil, all from North America and of African descent, to reflect on how Bahia, an epicenter of the African diaspora, has fueled their work and changed their understanding of themselves.

Artists include Gerald Cyrus, Juan Erman Gonzalez, Mark Steven Greenfield, Karen Hampton, Rik Freeman, Francis Tre Lawrence, Germaine Ingram, Sandra Brewster, Precious Lovell, and Tim Whiten.

Bahia Reverb: Artists and Place is organized by the California African American Museum (CAAM) and Art + Practice (A+P). The exhibition is curated by Bia Gayotto, independent curator, artist, and writer. CAAM at A+P is a five-year collaboration.

Glenn Kaino: Aki’s Market is inspired by Akira and Sachiye Shiraishi’s small neighborhood market (1957–1970) in East Los Angeles. Created by artist Glenn Akira Kaino (Akira’s grandson and namesake), the exhibition explores the transgenerational trauma from the World War II Japanese American incarceration experience through the stories of Kaino, his family, and the community. It is also an interrogation of the American practice of displacement—collapsing almost 100 years of cultural subjugation into a spiritual, exploratory space from which the building blocks of peace might be discovered.

The exhibition draws from the life of Kaino’s grandfather, Akira Shiraishi, a legendary high school football player who was unable to realize his dreams of attending Occidental College when he was incarcerated at the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming. Upon returning to East LA after the war, he and Sachiye dedicated their lives to building their market on the corner of Blanchard Street and Geraghty Avenue—a multicultural anchor that served the Japanese and Hispanic communities.

Kaino only knew his grandfather through family stories. To recreate the market, he pulled from his artistic toolkit and used his skill of unlocking past memories through layered conversations (as in his work with historical figures like Olympian, Tommie Smith). He used this methodology to draw out family memories and paint a full picture of the place they called “The Store.”

Through a virtual reality recreation of the store and an installation of related works, Glenn Kaino: Aki’s Market is an exhibition about collective memory where the archival bleeds into the imaginary and where the most advanced technology serves the most personal past.

MATERIAL RECOVERY: Printmaking with Recycled Materials is a group exhibition by LYNK Collective.

Works by: Yeansoo Aum • Elisabeth Beck • Andra Broekelschen Alexandra Chiara • Christina Yasmin Fesmire • Karen Fiorito • Carole Gelker • Bill Jaros • Nguyen Ly Diane McLeod • Jared Millar • William Myers • Marina Polic • Vera Polic-Lakhal • Francisco Rogido • Olga Ryabtsova Laura Shapiro • Tracy Loreque Skinner • Mary Lawrence Test • Paula Voss • Zana Zupur Guest Artists: Karen Feuer-Schwager • Kim Kei Wendy Murray • Jackie Nach • MJ Rado  • Victor Rosas • Fred Rose • Marianne Sadowski  • Jillian Thompson • Katie Thompson-Peer

Curated by Christina Yasmin Fesmire and Jared Miller.

The works in Material Recovery reclaim common materials such as cardboard, plastic, and wood – the very products that flow through the nearby Port of Los Angeles destined for landfills. As printmakers, the members of LYNK Collective have a vested interest in the ongoing recovery and reduction of waste. The paper on which they print— “rag” paper—was traditionally made from scraps of recycled cotton rags. Material Recovery: Printmaking with Recycled Materials is an expression LYNK Collective’s values, as ecologically conscious artists inhabiting a shared earth, producing artwork made from recycled rather than raw materials.

Exhibition Programming

Print Workshop with LYNK Collective (RSVP required) February 10th and 17th: http://tinyurl.com/mr4afwjz | Closing and Artist Talk March 23rd, 2-4pm: http://tinyurl.com/57m4rzv7

AGCC Gallery Hours: Thursday — Saturday, 10am to 4pm
(Please note that the AGCC Gallery will close early at 1pm on January 27th).

Learn more and plan your visit: angelsgateart.org

Established in 2017, LYNK Collective is a group of two dozen artists from the Orange County and Los Angeles area who collaborate on projects and exhibitions through the medium of printmaking. LYNK Collective has been featured in The Hand, Pressing Matters, and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society blog, Press On.

This exhibition is supported by Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, California Natural Resources Agency for the Museum Grant Program under the California Cultural and Historical Endowment, and Perenchio Foundation.