April 6 – June 1, 2019
Diane Rosenstein
831 North Highland Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038
From Diane Rosenstein:
“The Seven Year Itch,” is a celebration of our 7th anniversary, with work by 15 artists. The show will include sculpture, photographs, ceramics, drawing, and painting by Eleanor Antin, Sarah Awad, Charles Fine, Aaron Fowler, Farrah Karapetian, KATSU, Jay Kvapil, Sarah Mikenis, Dan Miller, Karin Apollonia Müller, Kent O’Connor, Joe Ray, Roland Reiss, Julian Stanczak and Matthew Sweesy. This exhibition includes new work as well as significant pieces from early shows in the gallery’s program.
Iconic conceptual artist Eleanor Antin has created two solo shows for the gallery – Passengers (2014) and What time is it?(2016) – and first exhibited in Unsparing Quality (curated by Farrah Karapetian)in 2014. To honor her upcoming solo show Time’s Arrowat LACMA, we will present a series of Antin’s vintage prints from “The King of Solano Beach” (1974-75). The late Julian Stanczak, who was included in the FRONT Triennial (curated by Michelle Grabner)last year, will have his third solo show at our gallery this fall. We will show Stanczak’s “Airy,” (1973) a masterful OpArt grid painting in a palette that alternates yellows and blues.
Debuting significant emerging artists is an important part of our program. We are excited to include Aaron Fowler’s major assemblage-painting, “Landing” (2015), a ten by eight-foot tableau from his “Pilgrim” series. Thisis a portrait of the artist and his family walking towards us with his hometown of St. Louis (and the “Gateway Arch”) looming in the background. Aaron Fowler had three shows with the gallery, and “Landing” is from his solo Blessings On Blessings,” (2016). This fall, Aaron Fowler will have a solo exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum as the recipient of the 2019 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize.
Los Angeles artist Charles Fine will show recent paintings as well as sculpture from his bronze “Furnace Flowers” series. Charles Fine exhibited works on paper in our First Anniversaryshow (2013); and paintings and sculpture in Wouldn’t it be nice if we could dream together? (2017). Fine’s installation hangs in conversation with a trio of Dan Miller works on paper; especially a monumental vertical scroll recently completed at his studio at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA. Dan Miller, a prominent American “Outsider” artist, is on the autism spectrum and has developed an intensive body of work that employs language as its fundamental subject and departure-point. He has received two solo shows – CLICK (2016) and New Paintings (2017).
Farrah Karapetian is an artist who works with camera-less photography in a sculptural and increasingly relational field. She will offer resin sculpture and photograms from Accessory To Protest (2011), the gallery’s first exhibition, originally installed with LEADAPRON in West Hollywood (2012). Other sculptural negatives and photograms from this series were recently included in The Fabric of Felicity, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2018). German photographer Karin Apollonia Müller usesphotography to investigate the play between nature and cultivated spaces: how each try to control the other. She was included (with Eleanor Antin) in Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography at MoMA, NYC (2010), and had a solo exhibition, Far Out, here in 2014. We will revisit Far Outwith three large “Citylights” and “Worldlights” prints that reveal Müller’s ground-breaking work with altering raw data from NASA/JPL to create abstract images of life and light on earth.
Documentation of contact sheets from Joe Ray’s historic Market Street Program (1971) performances (with Doug Edge and Terry O’Shea) will also be on view. Joe Ray is based in Los Angeles and had a career survey, Complexion Constellation, in 2017. Roland Reiss will show rare early-career fiberglass and resin sculptures (1968-69). These pivotal works are among the first sculptural resin paintings were produced by Reiss in Boulder, Colorado, in synchronicity with both the Light and Space and Finish Fetishmovements in California. The artist, who will have a solo exhibition in May at the Oceanside Museum of Art (OMA), has had four solo shows with the gallery since 2014.
Jay Kvapil, who was included in Transfigured (2018), will show new pottery created in his studio at the School of Art at Cal State Long Beach, where he Professor Emeritus in Ceramic Arts. Experimental new media artist KATSU is a pioneer of drone paintingandhis practice spans the realms of conceptual art, digital media, public art and interventions. New abstract “Dot” drone paintingsin this show are impressionistic innovations that expand the series he began in his solo show, DRONE, last winter.
Los Angeles-based artists Sarah Awad and Sarah Mikenis will show new paintings. Awad had two solo shows — The Women (2013) and Gate Paintings (2015) — with the gallery and will present paintings from her recent series of figurative abstraction. Sarah Mikenis’ sculptural paintings manipulate canvas to suggest an interaction between body and textile. She will show “Escapist,” a new horizontal “striped painting”. She first showed with the gallery last summer in Transfigured (2018). Kent O’Connor, who is based in New Haven, Connecticut, recently took his MFA from Yale (2018). He will show a suite of new figurative oil paintings, both portraits and still life, executed on an intimate scale. O’Connor had a solo show New Paintings in the Project Room and was included in the group show, Way Out Now, both at the gallery last year. Matthew Sweesy, also based in Los Angeles, will show a new watercolor from his series of “Bird” portraits. Sweesy had a solo show, Nocturnes,in our Project Room (2018).
“The Seven Year Itch” is an edited selection of various aspects of the gallery’s history and program from 2012 – 2019. We are thrilled to show work from our very first show alongside new work from artists in recent months. It is an ongoing conversation with the extraordinary artists that we have been privileged to work with and an installation that spans painting, sculpture, ceramics, assemblage, photographs, performance, watercolor, drawing, and drones.