past Exhibitions
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February 13 - March 13, 2010
MILJOHN RUPERTO
ISABEL ROSARIO COOPER: A WORK IN FOUR PARTS
Thomas Solomon Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles artist MILJOHN RUPERTO. This is Ruperto’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and his Los Angeles debut. The exhibition opens on Saturday, February 13, 2010 with a reception for the artist from 6 to 8 PM.
"Isabel Rosario Cooper, an actress, was born in the Philippines of Filipino and Scottish ancestry. She was famous as the firs t recipient of an on-screen kiss in a Filipino movie. When she was sixteen years old she met US General Douglas MacArthur and became his mistress. He arranged for her to follow him to Washington DC. While serving as Army Chief of Staff in the 1930s, MacArthur filed a libel action against a journalist on The Washington Post, Drew Pearson. When Pearson add ed Cooper to his list of witnesses to be deposed, MacArthur dropped the suit. MacArthur subsequently paid Cooper $15,000 to leave Washington, the money allegedly delivered by his aide, Dwight Eisenhower. Cooper never returned to the Philippines; she died due to suicide in 1960, her occupation listed as 'freelance actress'."
- from Wikipedia
Isabel Rosario Cooper is a peripheral figure in American history, as well as in Hollywood, where she worked as an extra for many years. The Isabel Rosario Cooper project is an effort to bring Cooper from the periphery into the center. The project comprises four parts, each utilizing a different strategy toward this goal. The first is a collection of all the clips in which she appeared during her Hollywood career. The clips are digitally manipulated to blur out everything except for Cooper, and transferred to 16mm film. The second is a cinematic haunting: a ghost appears from the shadows to sing a song about longing, and then fades back into the shadows of a corridor. The third part is an original screenplay and a fictionalized account of several months in Cooper’s life. The screenplay is loosely based on Cooper’s biography and is written in a 1930s romantic screwball comedy style. The fourth part is a cinematic reconstruction of a day in the life of Isabel Rosario Cooper, during the time she lived in the Chastleton Hotel, in Washington, D.C., in the early thirties. This last part is shown in HD video.
Miljohn Ruperto was born in Manila, Philippines. He was educated at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (MFA 2002) and University of California, Berkeley, California. (BA 1999). Recent exhibitions include Topaz, Martin Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2009); Art Multiple 2008, Ke Center for Contemporary Arts, Shanghai, China (2008) and The California Files: Re-Viewing Side Effects of Cultural Memory, Wattis Institute, California College of Arts, San Francisco (2007). Ruperto was included in Migration Addicts, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen, China, and Migration Addicts, Collateral Events, Venice Biennale (2007). Ruperto lives and works in Los Angeles, California. -
January 9 - February 6, 2010
Michele O'Marah
A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do
Michele O'Marah
A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do
January 9 - February 6, 2010
Kathryn Brennan Gallery is thrilled to present A girls got to do what a girls got to do, an exhibition of new work by Michele O'Marah. For the exhibition, O'Marah has created three new video works that are re-created scenes from the Pamela Anderson film Barb Wire (1996). Continuing her examination of the mass media representation of the revolutionary, this exhibition is the second half of a project that began with her piece How Goes it with the Black Movement? (2007), whose focus was a PBS broadcast interview between Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton and conservative host and author William F. Buckley on his program Firing Line. A counterpoint to the heady, academic discussion of the former, O'Marah's current source, Barb Wire, is an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name. Anderson's "Barb" is a disaffected mercenary in the post-Second U.S. Civil War city of Steel Harbor, who gets caught in the middle of the revo lutionary activities of a former flame who is working to expose the ruling Neo-Fascist government for its ruthless behavior. Aimed at a Gen X audience, the film has acquired a cult status despite a poor reception, both critically and at the box office.
For A girls got to do what a girls got to do, the artist will be exhibiting three video works, installations of set pieces, photographs, and text-based drawings. Having re-staged four scenes from the film, O'Marah has cast a different actress for each to play the character of Barb. In addition to the artist's probe of the corporatized, MTV version of a revolutionary hero, O'Marah's efforts serve as deconstructive analyses of the film's representation of femininity. Hiring a diverse range of professional actresses to fill Anderson's stiletto high heels, O'Marah's "Barb" takes various forms. Working with each actress, O'Marah's video works take on the most sexually explicit scenes from the film and offer a variety of interpretations of the lead role: campy, flirty, and sexy. The one-dimensional, Barbie Doll of a character is given a depth, sexuality, and humor that is lacking in the original. Set pieces from the production of the videos re-installed and accessori zed with photographs and sculptures blur the line between art installation and function. In addition, a series of text-based works on paper, pulled from dialogue and lyrics from the film’s soundtrack (primarily new metal cover versions of older songs), address issues of authorship and contrivance.
Michele O'Marah received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and currently resides in Los Angeles. O’Marah has had solo exhibitions at Sister, Los Angeles and Mary Goldman, Los Angeles as well as two person exhibitions at Rental, New York and Peres Projects, Berlin. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the CCAC Wattis Institute in San Fancisco, White Columns, New York, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, the London Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and The Station, Art Basel Miami Beach. -
November 21 - December 19, 2009
Aaron Sandnes
STAR CROSSED EVASION
Thomas Solomon Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles artist AARON SANDNES. This is Sandnes’ first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition opens on Saturday, November 21, 2009 with a reception for the artist from 6 to 8 PM.
For his first solo exhibition with the gallery, STAR CROSSED EVASION, Sandnes has appropriated illustrations from the 1950s and ‘60s that envision a utopic future, a space age life of leisure. Sandnes’ interest in these images isn’t for the technological predictions but how the leisure portrayed act as metaphors for a future that has already come true - our present without agency or voice. Distorted, discolored, wrinkled, and erased, the artist has put each of the found images through a series of destructive acts. The final result: Lambda prints mounted on acrylic panels; the original images barely recognizable, transformed into brightly colored gestures reminiscent of renditions of far-off galaxies. By wreaking havoc on the veneer of leisure of a perfect future, Sandnes employs gestures of destruction as a generative process, proposing questions of recalibrating that which influences Hope and Future; decisions that ultimately shape our NOW.
"I have created my works entirely by elimination, and every truth I have gained was born from the loss of an impression which, having flashed a moment, consumed itself and allowed me, thanks to the shadows which it released, to proceed deeply into the feeling of Absolute Darkness. Destruction was my Beatrice". -Stéphane Mallarmé. A letter to Eugène Lefébure. Monday, the 27th of May 1867.
Aaron Sandnes was born and raised in Los Angeles. He was educated at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, Ca. (MFA 2007) and University of California, Irvine, Ca. (BA 2003). Recent solo exhibitions include Strange Attractor, Groeflin Maag Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland (2007); and Virulence, Groeflin Maag Galerie, Basel, Switzerland (2004). Sandnes was included in the 2008 California Biennial, Estación Tijuana, Tijuana, Mexico; and Uberstars, organized by Glenn Kaino, The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2008). Sandnes lives and works in Los Angeles, California. -
September 12 - October 10, 2009
Analia Saban
Light Breaks Out of Prism
Reception for the Artist: Saturday September 12, 2009 6:00 – 9:00 PM
Thomas Solomon Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles artist ANALIA SABAN. This is Saban’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and opens the 2009-2010 season at Cottage Home. The exhibition opens on Saturday, September 12, 2009 with a reception for the artist from 6 to 9 PM.
Analia Saban works in flat and sculptural media to debunk the mysteries associated with contemporary art. The artist’s secrets – be they of production or concept – are laid bare in her new translucent works in acrylic on canvas and thermo-formed polyethylene terephthalate sculpture. Taking clichés of painting as a point of departure, (still life, landscape and portrait,) she denies the viewer’s desire to assign meaning to the images. Rather than making paintings per se, Saban uses a four-color separation process to create unique single color layers (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) that she affixes to both primed and unprimed canvases. This process takes fundamental color theory to a physical level. For instance, she overlaps a layer of translucent yellow and a layer of translucent blue to create the illusion of green. The works then, result in a hybrid between Painting and Printmaking, and Painting and Sculpture. Saban aims to use simplified materials and processes to eliminate the mystery associated with artistic production and reveal the complex simplicity of image and form with color and light.
Analia Saban was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was educated at Loyola University, New Orleans (BFA 2001) and University of California, Los Angeles (MFA 2005). Recent solo exhibitions include Kim Light Gallery/Lightbox (2005); Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France (2009, 2007); Galerie Sprüth Magers Projekte, Munich, Germany (2007); ESSO Gallery, New York City (2007); and LINCART, San Francisco (2005). A 2009 recipient of the Durfee Foundation ARC Grant, Saban lives and works in Venice, California. -
July 11 - August 15, 2009
Summer Group Show
Walead Beshty, Eric Wesley, Pae White
China Art Objects
Mimi Lauter, John McAllister, John Williams
Bart Exposito, Christopher Michlig
Thomas Solomon Gallery
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May 30 - June 27, 2009
Video Journeys
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April 25 - May 23, 2009
Alexis Smith: "Play It As It Lays"
Thomas Solomon Gallery
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March 21 - April 18, 2009
Exhibition showing at both Cottage home & China Art Objects Galeries
1999 - The Ten Year Anniversary Show
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 21, 6-9pm
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February 13 - March 14, 2009
Brad Eberhard
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January - February 2009
Kirsten Stoltmann
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November 15 - December 20, 2008
Krysten Cunningham: TIME MACHINES
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Thursday October 30th at 8 PM
East of the 5, South of the 10
Performance
SISTER
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October 11th- November 8th 2008
Mary Weatherford
Brick Walls and Sea Life
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September - October 2008
Group Exhibition: Nietzsche vs Emerson
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July 12 - August 16, 2008
I Can See For Miles
Bjorn Copeland, Rob Thom
Davis Rhodes, Jeni Spota, Matthew Spiegelman, Kirsten Stoltmann
Troy Brauntuch, Brad Eberhard, William Eggleston, Isa Genzken
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May 10 - June 21, 2008
Sandeep Mukherje
