Elemental @ L.A. Louver, Venice, California

ELEMENTAL: Peter Alexander, Carl Andre, Josh Callaghan, Richard Deacon, Toshikatsu Endo, Richard Long, Nathan Mabry, John McCracken, Richard Nonas, Yoko Ono, Adrian Paules, Fabrice Samyn, Peter Shelton, John Zane Zappas
L.A. Louver, Venice, California
Through 3 March, 2018

Richard Long

Trastevere Spring Line, 2012

Courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice

L.A. Louver presents ELEMENTAL, an exhibition that brings together sculptures by both established and emerging artists, whose works focus on essential materiality and form. The exhibition includes work by Peter Alexander, Carl Andre, Josh Callaghan, Richard Deacon, Toshikatsu Endo, Richard Long, Nathan Mabry, John McCracken, Richard Nonas, Yoko Ono, Adrian Paules, Fabrice Samyn, Peter Shelton, and John Zane Zappas.

While representing a diversity in approaches and techniques, there is a continuity and unification of structural language that unfolds throughout the installation. Freestanding sculptures include a minimalist grid configuration by Carl Andre, a towering column of staggered concrete blocks by Adrian Paules, a sleek black triangular pillar made of resin by John McCracken, and a carved refrigerator by Josh Callaghan; wall mounted pieces include plaster bone forms arranged into letters by Nathan Mabry, Light and Space artist Peter Alexander’s colorful grouping of shimmering resin bars, and an annulus finished with silver leaf by Peter Shelton – each work displays a skilled proficiency in construction and intent.

John Zane Zappas 

A S H T R Æ 4, 2017 

Courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice

Peter Shelton 

sundog, 2003-2017

Courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice

Several considerations of material usage are represented. Raw materials – stone, burned wood, bronze, steel – maintain their original integrity in the works of Richard Long, Toshikatsu Endo, Richard Nonas and John Zane Zappas. While sculptures by Peter Shelton, Richard Deacon and John McCracken take on highly refined fabrication techniques and contemporary materials – fiberglass, stainless steel, resin.

Yoko Ono 

Disappearing Piece (Bronze, cast of 1965 version), 1988

Courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice

The sculptures challenge viewers’ perception of space in relation to their own physicality – compelling visitors to move around and confront the works individually, and as a whole. However, works by two artists engage in a more participatory relationship. The contents of a discreet bronze box in Yoko Ono’s Disappearing Piece (1988) are said to vanish upon exposure to light, and a wall mirror by Fabrice Samyn titled Dust of Breath (2010) captures the spectre of a breath – comprised of dust – on its surface, alluding to the human essence. They also challenge the idea of materiality as not merely a physical manifestation, but that which can be imagined.

L.A. LOUVER
45 North Venice Blvd, Venice, CA 90291
www.lalouver.com

Deborah Butterfield @ L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

Deborah Butterfield: Three Sorrows
L.A. Louver, Venice, California
Through 6 January, 2018

DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD

Three Sorrows (quake, tsumani, meltdown from, Gretel Ehrlich in Facing the Wave), 2016

Cast bronze, wood, plastic and wire

Primary element: 81.25 x 100.75 x 40 in. (206.4 x 255.9 x 101.6 cm)

Installations dimensions variable

Courtesy the artist and L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

L.A. Louver presents new and recent works by DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD. For the artist, found materials are a continued source of inspiration for her horse sculptures. In a new direction, Deborah Butterfield has incorporated marine debris from the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami to create some of her most powerful and poignant works to date. The sculptures are featured in the front courtyard, the second floor gallery and our open-air Skyroom.

To create each sculpture, Deborah Butterfield uses gathered wood to build the skeletal armature of the horse. Once these wooden pieces are cast in bronze and welded together, this becomes the foundation over which the artist can begin forming the sculpture. With a keen eye, Deborah Butterfield selects wood from accumulated stockpiles to build her compositions, fastening them one by one to this underlying structure. The rectangular body of the horse is the area of focus, which according to the artist is a “container for objects which often have lyrical line quality, emotional resonance, and narrative history, whether from wind, water, fire, pressure, or man.” As a finishing touch, Butterfield composes the neck and the head to personify the sculpture, realizing the form as a horse. At this stage, the artist meticulously documents the sculpture before disassembling it and casting the remaining wooden pieces in bronze at the Walla Walla Foundry in Washington state. She then works with the foundry to weld the pieces to their original configuration, and applies a specialized patina to its surface. Some are smaller in scale, while others are larger-than-life.

For Deborah Butterfield, the sculptures are less about the horse, but the wider context and emotional response invoked by their materials. In select works, Deborah Butterfield has introduced another kind of found material, marine debris that drifted to the coastal regions of Alaska and British Columbia following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. She first took notice of these washed-up materials during a visit to Iceland, which she collected and brought back to her studio. This led her to research volunteer initiatives aimed at gathering excess debris amassing in the Pacific Ocean, and was given access to these materials for use in her sculptures. “I have been collecting driftwood and assorted debris all my life, finding beauty and order in the disorder and disintegration of our treasured or discarded everyday objects.” says Deborah Butterfield. “When given the opportunity to use marine debris from the tsunami in Japan, I jumped at the chance to work with such emotionally, spiritually and tragically infused material.”

DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD

Elkhorn, 2016

Cast bronze

97 x 86 x 29.75 in. (246.4 x 218.4 x 75.6 cm)

Courtesy the artist and L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

Pairing natural wood with man-made refuse, the artist touches on the delicate balance of our environment, and the increasingly common phenomenon of natural disasters in our current age. In two smaller sculptures Maulele and Kōkai (both produced in 2017), the artist has cast both the wood and debris in bronze, but in a larger work, the artist chose to utilize the actual rubbish alongside the bronze wooden forms. Three Sorrows is a monumental installation that takes its title from Gretel Ehrilch’s novel Facing the Wave, which accounts the aftermath through those who endured the tragedy. Butterfield combined wood (cast in bronze) and detritus (plastic and foam objects) to realize the horse’s physicality. Driftwood, plastic container and scraps, foam buoys and materials are scattered around its base. With its head tilting downwards in a melancholic gesture, the horse appears to reflect upon the materials of its making, lamenting their very existence.

Born and raised in San Diego, Deborah Butterfield studied at the University of California, Davis and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, Butterfield taught sculpture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Montana State University, Bozeman. Since 1976, the artist has exhibited extensively. Solo shows include the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1981; ARCO Center for Visual Art, Los Angeles, CA (traveled to Oklahoma State University, OK; University of Colorado, CO; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Boise Gallery, ID; and Utah Museum of Fine Art, UT) 1981-1983; the Seattle Art Museum, WA and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, TX, 1982; Oakland Museum of California Art, CA, 1983; San Diego Museum of Art, CA, 1996; Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT (traveled to the Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu, HI and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL) 2003 – 2004; Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver, CO, 2015; and The Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL, 2016. Commissions include the Walker Art Center and the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA, CA. Works are also represented in numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; Cincinnati Museum, OH; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; San Diego Museum of Art, CA; Speed Museum, Louisville, KY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.

Deborah Butterfield divides her time between her home and studio on the Big Island, Hawaii, and her studio and ranch in Bozeman, Montana.

L.A. LOUVER
45 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, CA, USA
www.lalouver.com

Heather Gwen Martin @ L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

Heather Gwen Martin: Currents 
L.A. Louver, Venice, California
Through 6 January, 2018

HEATHER GWEN MARTIN

Higher, 2017

Oil in linen, 82 1/2 x 77 in. (209.6 x 195.6 cm)

Courtesy the artist and L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

L.A. Louver presents new works by Los Angeles-based artist HEATHER GWEN MARTIN. All produced over the past year, the exhibition features over a dozen paintings in bold and subdued palettes, and in a wide range of sizes, from small-scale intimate pieces to her largest work to date, approximately 8 x 10 ft. (2.4 x 3 m).

Heather Gwen Martin continues to evolve the color and spatial relationships in her lyrical, vivid abstract paintings. Painting on linen, she first primes each support with an oil ground, embracing the fabric’s natural surface irregularities that result from this process. The underlying texture roots the materiality of the painting to come, and inserts the artist’s hand as the maker. Once the background is awash with color, Heather Gwen Martin develops the composition with varied biomorphic forms and lithe meandering lines, in an array of sumptuous colors. The two-dimensional paintings are not visually flat. Elements push forward, recede back, and traverse everywhere in between.

In Higher (2017), one of the larger paintings in the show, shapes are suspended amidst a crimson red background. A pair of tenuous lines elongate from two soft blue configurations, and reach towards a dark blue almost black form, seemingly lifting it from the void. Meanwhile, green, pink, yellow and blue shapes and lines punctuate the scene. All are interconnected, reactive and conductive, making contact with only the slightest touch.

HEATHER GWEN MARTIN

Breather, 2017

Oil on linen, 20 x 21 in. (50.8 x 54.6 cm)

Courtesy the artist and L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

Throughout the exhibition, Heather Gwen Martin’s color dexterity and technical prowess are on full display. Subtler in tonality and smaller in scale, Breather (2017) is a quieter composition. In an atmosphere of muted pink, a luminous yellow radiates upwards to graze a dark green form. A single tendril extends from the dark green, interrupted by a cloud of white that floats atop the picture plane.

When approaching her work, Heather Gwen Martin begins with an initial intent that serves more as a point of departure, rather than a destination. Dissolving any sense of objectivity, the artist releases preconceptions to allow the compositions to materialize with immediacy, experimentation and improvisation. In this state of mindfulness, with an awareness of both interior and exterior motives, Heather Gwen Martin connects currents of consciousness to bring the imagery forth, their impulsivities made visible through her actions made on canvas.

Born in 1977 in Saskatchewan, Canada, Heather Gwen Martin studied at the University of California, San Diego and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been included in museum exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; Torrance Art Museum, CA; El Segundo Museum of Art, CA; and Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. Forthcoming, her work will be included in the group exhibition Chaos and Awe Painting for the 21st Century at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN, 22 June – 16 September 2018.

In 2016, Heather Gwen Martin was invited by the Murals of La Jolla to create a towering mural on the exterior of a three-story building. Titled, Landing (2016), the mural is located in the downtown La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, CA on 7224 Girard Avenue.

L.A. LOUVER
45 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, CA, USA
www.lalouver.com