eros/thanatos

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:22:59 -0700

Torrance Art Museum
Opening Reception: 3-5pm, March 25-27, 2010

Western Project - The First Six Years

Sat, 7 Nov 2009 20:12:23 -0800

Beyond Eden

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 23:07:21 -0700

October 9 – 11, 2009
LA Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park
4800 Hollywood Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90027
contact@beyondedenartfair.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Los Angeles, CA (July 28th, 2009)

Los Angeles’ first Beyond Eden Art Fair to be held at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park.

The Beyond Eden Art Fair is a multi-gallery event celebrating the new contemporary art scene in Los Angeles. The public is invited to attend this special event and admission is free.

After the success of last year’s East of Eden exhibition which drew over 3,000 people, the organizers have decided to branch out the scope of the fair and expand the focus geographically to include galleries from all across Los Angeles. The goal of Beyond Eden is to celebrate the new contemporary movement that has been building momentum and a patron base in Los Angeles for the past several decades and is finally starting to receive mainstream recognition from major institutions and publications the world over. Organizers are partnering with some of Los Angeles’ leading cultural and community organizations to help broaden the scope of the event. A percentage of the event's sales also will be donated to MOCA on behalf of the MOCA Contemporaries. The event organizers forecast this year’s event to be even larger and more well received and are expecting upwards of 5,000 people to pass through over the weekend.

Beyond Eden will showcase the works of over 15 galleries and will be held inside the beautiful confines of the historic Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery during the weekend of October 9th, 10th and 11th, with an opening night celebration planned for Saturday, October 10th. Participating galleries: Billy Shire Fine Arts, Black Maria Gallery, Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art, Copro Gallery, Crewest Gallery, DRKRM, Gallery 1988, Gallery Nucleus, La Luz De Jesus, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), LeBasse Projects, New Image Art, , Subliminal Projects, Synchronicity Space and Thinkspace plus a special exhibition of photography from Tatiana Wills and Roman Cho's "Heroes & Villians."

Founded in 1951, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery is a historic 10,000 square foot facility located on the sprawling grounds of Olive Hill in the Barnsdall Art Park. The park overlooks the city of Los Angeles and is also home to the famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House and Arts Complex. Under the Department of Cultural Affairs, the LAMAG is the premier city-run gallery that focuses on contemporary art, particularly the work of living Southern California artists.

Favorite this!

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:06:27 -0700

Favorite This! at the Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Friday, July 10, 2009
8:00pm-1:00am

Curated by Carolyn Castano

I organized a one night screening of videos by artists from Los Angeles and San Francisco entitled, Favorite This! at the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco. Part of my motivation for organizing the screening, was being inspired by some of my friends video pieces and wanting to share of these with a larger public. I made a call out to friends and friends of friends to send me their stuff. Without much in the way of parameters, I said "just send me what you have". Everyday was a delight, when I would go to my mailbox and right there next to my ever accruing bills, were these little packages containing the submissions for Favorite This! Each one was individually wrapped and packaged, reflecting the artist' particular artistic mission and taste. From the plain bubble wrapped CD mailer, a pink picture book, a DVD box set, a glassine wrapped disc. Some nights, I would come home to find little discs tucked into the planter next to my front door. With my live in love, exclaiming, " I opened the door and a weary eyed girl handed me this disc!" Were those the tired eyes of late night video editing? Oh final cut..How I love thee. I set out to arrange the pieces in the screening into some cohesive format, sitting for hours viewing Quicktimes and making notes on them. I noticed themes in common, like a certain quality of light, narrative or texture. The screening opened up with pieces I saw as exploring narrative and drama. In a lovely piece by Jordan Biren, It Was Dark as Night and Shadows, chiaroscuros hide and reveal characters trapped in a ritual of smoky eyed looking and not looking. In others there was the use of collage aesthetics, see Tricia Lawless Murray's L'Autoportrait, cut-n-paste film making ( Krista Chael's Black Bayou Swan animation or as I like to call it faux animation, as in Nao Bustamante's #1, from the series the Earth people, where her champaign poodle FUFU is coiffed in the manner of an American Bison. The city and nature were juxtaposed in Michael Damm's video, a projection of urban locales projected onto a Oakland street corner and Stephanie Allespach's Walden Musings: Aims of an Anarchist. There was also a lovely marriage of works in the politically charged pieces by Andy Cox and Nancy Popp in Hostage video and United States Code 2340A, respectively. The last sequence of video's explored the artist as narrator, auteur, or Christ figure. Gordon Winiemko in Meet the Artist or Cliff Hengst as Jesus Christ stalking San Francisco's Mission district,a spoof or commentary on the sidewalk proselytizing that occurs in street corners across America. The screening room at Meridian was pretty filled until approximately 11:30, when the crowd started to peter out. After that only the hardcores were left standing or leaning to watch the LA Art Girls's piece Strangelove, a remake line by line and scene by scene of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 Doctor Strangelove, Or how I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Artists include:

Stephanie Allespach
Amy Berk
Jordan Biren
Ursula Brookbank
Nao Bustamante
Krista Chael
Andy Cox
Monet Clark
Sydney Croskery
Ismael De Anda
Michael Damm
Betsy Davis
Angela Ellsworth
Micol Hebron
Cliff Hengst
Parichard Holm
Ellina Kevorkian
The LA Art Girls
Kmaxx / Tyler Hubby
Leigh McCarthy
Karla Milosevich
Mail Order Brides / M.O.B.
Tricia Lawless Murray
Nancy Popp
Wiener Girls
Gordon Winiemko

Running time 24:00:00

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:08:42 -0700

7 pm Saturday–7 pm Sunday  Resolutions 3, LACE, Los Angeles, CA
 A 24-hour screening of contemporary videos that references distant and not so distant film and video history. An eclectic selection of video works from around the world, Running Time 24:00:00 is inspired by the iconic videos of the first Resolutions, and will offer videos in segments according to the time period in film and video art history that they are inspired by. Screening curated by Micol Hebron. Each video will screen only once. Visitors are encouraged to bring pillows.
The Paul Gleason Theater can be entered through the front door facing Hollywood Blvd. or through a back door facing the back parking lot:
7pm-10pm Saturday: Front door access open to the public 10pm-9am Saturday through Sunday: Please RSVP and enter through the back door to the Paul Gleason Theater accessible through the parking lot which you enter on Wilcox Avenue  9am-7pm Sunday: Front door access open to the public.

LAAGAFBLA2008

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:46:24 -0700

LAAGAFBLA08 is the LA Art Girl's world premier international art show for contemporary works, and will be Los Angeles' cultural and social highlight for the summer. The exhibition recognizes the individual within this unique artist collective. Work by 26 artists, from our cutting edge generation of emerging stars, will be contained in two spectacular downtown spaces. The exhibition includes the highest- quality paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, and video.

This prestigious exhibition combines a selection of top art works with an exciting program of special performances, parties and crossover events. Exhibition sites are located on 6th Street on the corners of Main and Los Angeles, in the city's beautiful Historic Downtown Old Bank District. The exhibition is within easy walking distance of The Standard Hotel, and driving distance of the beach. The show will be a vital source for art lovers, allowing them to discover new developments in contemporary art. A tour de force, LAAGAFBLA08 is the favorite summer meeting place for the international art world.

Participating artists include:

Stephanie Allespach
Tricia Avant
Allison Danielle Behrstock
Carolyn Castaño
Krista Chael
Sydney Croskery
Karen Dunbar
Amber Fox
Phyllis Green
Micol Hebron
Parichard Holm
Leila Hamidi & Shana Torok
Ellina Kevorkian
Leigh McCarthy
Claudia Parducci
Nancy Popp
Sarah Riley
Ambika Samarthya
Kim Schoenstadt
Felis Stella
Ten Terrell
Kelly Thompson
Elizabeth Tremante
Marjan Vayghan

For larger photos and more info, please go to our Flicker site

girly show

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Chaffey College and the Wignall Museum are pleased to present Girly Show: Pin-ups, Zines & the So-Called Third Wave. Arriving on the heels of major museum surveys of feminist art, Girly Show: Pin-ups, Zines & the So-Called Third Wave extends the discourse through an investigation of recent works that linger in a reconsideration of one of feminism’s most hotly debated issues, that of the sexualized and insistently empowered body, (a.k.a. the pin-up) and its potential role in gender empowerment and self-determination. Featuring works in an array of media by emerging, mid-career and established artists who utilize strategies that are evocative of zines, these artists appropriate debated gender representations and the histories of their media, and the use of personal content as a vehicle for commanding the representation of gender and themselves. Girly Show reveals contemporary feminism to be an ever evolving, critically complex, and incredibly spirited artistic movement that refuses a tidy definition.

Girly Show: Pin-ups, Zines & the So-Called Third Wave features work by Nicole Cawlfield, Monica Cook, Zackary Drucker, Wanda Ewing, Lauren Gibbes, Peregrine Honig, Ellina Kevorkian, Liza Lou, Elana Mann, Elizabeth Perez, Kathleen Rogan, Dee Williams and Millie Wilson.

Girly Show: Pin-ups, Zines & the So-Called Third Wave opens Monday, October 22 and runs through Friday, November 30, 2007. An artist’s talk featuring Zackary Drucker, Elana Mann, Kathleen Rogan, Dee Williams and Millie Wilson will be held on Tuesday October 23, from 6:00-7:00 p.m. at the Wignall Museum, immediately followed by an artists’ reception at the Wignall Museum from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.

SCWCA Artist studio visit

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:13:15 -0700

ELLINA KEVORKIAN is one of the 13 upcoming artists who were included in the Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980-2006, exhibition at the Los Angeles municipal Art Gallery earlier this year. This studio tour will include a presentation that traces the evolution of her work, provide an opportunity to view some original pieces and encourage discussion of themes and techniques.

Her playful, irreverent work explores combinations of painting, sculpture, photography, and video. Within these media, she believes in challenging her own expectations as well as those of others. She pushed formal boundaries by painting on digital photographs printed onto canvas and attaching three-dimensional forms to two-dimensional surfaces, as well as by using black lace as a framed support for thick impasto layers of acrylic polymers.

In addition to taking technical risks, she has also defined and redefined content in complex ways. A recent series titled Love Poems for Infidels featured images of herself and her twin sister, Soseh, as strong female protagonists in dramas that encompassed personal history, art history, literature, and the Wild West.

KEVORKIAN completed a BA with a major in History and a minor in Folklore & Ethnic Studies At the University of Oregon, then went on to earn her MFA in painting from Claremont Graduate University in 2002. Currently she is represented by Western Project in Culver City.

multiple vantage points

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:11:18 -0800

Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980-2006

LOS ANGELES, CA—The Department of Cultural Affairs’ Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
hosts Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980-2006, an exhibition of 50 artists spanning generations and cultures which offers insight into the broad and shifting conceptions of culture, image, and identity that have taken place within the
postmodern experience since the 1980s.

An examination of women’s art created after the rise of the feminist art revolution in this
metropolitan area, Multiple Vantage Points was organized by the Southern California
Women’s Caucus for Art and co-sponsored by the Southern California Council of the
National Museum of Women in the Arts. Curated by Dextra Frankel, the exhibition will run
from February 25 to April 15, 2007, at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) in
Hollywood. An Opening Reception will be held Sunday, February 25, from 2 to 5 p.m.

This exhibition of 50 artists tackles vital aesthetic issues that range from investigations of
abstract form and perception to concerns about the urban environment. Free of monolithic
conceptions of what women’s art must look like or the issues it must engage, Multiple
Vantage Points demonstrates the breadth of artistic freedom secured by the women ’s
movement for the current generations of artists, especially in cities across Southern
California.

Multiple Vantage Points offers diverse perspectives on the experience of gender, race, the
body, sexuality, history, politics, nature, counterculture, and spirituality. While many of the
thought-provoking artworks explore female experience and issues developed during the
women’s art movement, the emphasis is not exclusively on feminist art.

Multiple Vantage Points complements the upcoming MOCA exhibition, WACK! Art and the
Feminist Revolution, 1965-1980, curated by Connie Butler, and offers a unique opportunity
for Los Angeles audiences to explore connections between the dynamic women artists
working in Southern California today and the early global history of feminist art. Both
exhibitions are part of The Feminist Art Project, a national program bringing public
attention to women artists’ significant impact on contemporary art practice, and
guaranteeing their inclusion in the past, present, and future cultural record.

Curator Dextra Frankel, renowned gallery director and Professor Emeritus at California
State University, Fullerton, said, “This exhibition is an impressive testament to the
explosive professional growth women artists have achieved in the last 35 years.” In 1972,
Frankel curated one of the first west coast exhibitions of women’s art entitled
Invisible/Visible: 21 Artists at the Long Beach Museum of Art.

Multiple Vantage Points, an exhibition of painting, sculpture, drawings, installation, video,
performance and photography, features a significant roster of seasoned, mid-career, and
emerging artists. They include: Kim Abeles, Amy Adler, Lita Albuquerque, Eleanor Antin,
Judith F. Baca, Uta Barth, Tanya Batura, Angie Bray, Carole Caroompas, Karen Carson,
Eileen Cowin, Carlee Fernandez, Eve Fowler, Camille Rose Garcia, Betty Gold, Phyllis Green,
Becky Guttin, Ruth Grace Jervis, Nina K. Jun, Ellina Kevorkian, Liz Larner, Jean Lowe,
Cecilia Miquez, Gwynn Murrill, Margaret Nielsen, Enjeong Noh, Catherine Opie, Julie Orser,
Robin Palanker, Helen Pashgian, Jennifer Pastor, Sarah Perry, Ann Preston, Rachel
Rosenthal, Erika Rothenberg, Sandra Rowe, Alison Saar, Betye Saar, Lezley Saar, Alexis
Smith, Barbara T. Smith, Tamara Sussman, Patssi Valdez, June Wayne, Marnie Weber,
Ruth Weisberg, Carrie Whitney, Patty Wickman, Takako Yamaguchi, and Bari Ziperstein.

Multiple Vantage Points will be accompanied by an illustrated catalog with an introductory
essay by arts writer Suvan Geer. Additional information can be found at www.scwca.org.

Works In Progess: Discourse, Democracy, and Autonomy: Inventing The LA Art Girls

Fri, 8 Dec 2006 16:46:49 -0800

Discourse and Autonomy: Inventing the LA Art Girls
PRESENTERS LA Art Girls
RESPONDENT Jill Dawsey Curatorial Associate, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Friday, December 8, 2006 2:00–4:30 p.m.
Museum Lecture Hall, The Getty Center

The LA Art Girls discuss the evolution and negotiation of collaborative practice. In the spirit of the process-oriented Works in Progress series, sixteen members of the LA Art Girls venture beyond “the doing”—that is, “the making” of their art—to examine the debates, strategies, values, and relationships embedded in their individual and collective art practices.

The LA Art Girls are a progressive collective of more than thirty practicing contemporary artists. Since forming in 2004, the group has produced several collaborative projects: Strange Love(2005), a corpse-style video remake of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) exhibited at QED Gallery; Total Art Performance Event, a series of Fluxus-inspired performances at the Getty Center in June 2006; group exhibitions at Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and Angles Gallery; and a radio show on KBeach Global Radio.

Presenters: Stephanie Allespach, SE Barnet, Allison Behrstock, Sydney Croskery, Catherine Daly, Karen Dunbar, Angela Ellsworth, Anoka Faruqee, April Friges, Anne Hars, Micol Hebron, Dawn Kasper, Ellina Kevorkian, Nancy Popp, Ambika Samarthya, Felis Stella, Elizabeth Tremante

Respondent: Jill Dawsey, curatorial associate of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Dawsey is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Art His-tory at the University of California, Irvine.

Matter of Fact

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:16:31 -0800

Hysteria Deluxe

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 23:15:50 -0700

Reception: Saturday 10/21 from 6-8. 10/21/2006-11/25/2006

" No hysterical symptom can arise from a real experience alone..."

Hysteria Deluxe features art works by 14 of the LA Art Girls, each of whom considers Hysteria and women within a trajectory of meanings from Freud to Def Leppard

Hysteria Deluxe explores the conceptions of Hysteria within the art practice of several female contemporary artists. Historically, Hysteria was a catch-all condition "diagnosed" in women whose creativity, intelligence or yet-undiscovered illnesses ruptured the socially normative boundaries that circumscribed their lives and activities. Hysteria was never exclusively the provenance of women, yet the early 20th century understanding of "woman" as a sexually passive being whose emotions trumped reason made hysteria an obvious explanation for many physical problems. Treatment for Hysteria through time included drugging with laudanum or opium, sexual stimulation, psychotherapy, electro shock therapy and institutionalization. In more recent memory, Hysteria has been reinscribed in our social consciousness as anxiety, paranoia, sexual frustration, and panic. In concordance with the fluid definition of Hysteria through time, the eponymous Def Leppard Album, Hysteria, was released in 1987. Def Leppard was/ (is) a hard rock band, characteristic of the 1980s glam/metal bands, with big hair, makeup, tight jeans, and fast guitar work. Ironically, their hard music and image was, at the time, intended to emblematize a type of virility and masculinity that was traditionally located in constructions of the feminine. Def Leppard recently re-released a remastered version of the original album entitled Hysteria Deluxe for the pleasure and historical edification of their work, and the inspiration of our exhibition title.

While several works reached into the history that set the stage for Freud and Breuer's initial evaluation of "Anna O", most works dealt with Hysteria as it has evolved beyond Freud's "talking cure". While research and proposal development was left up to individual artists, a remarkable number of common and overlapping themes emerged. Paradigms of architectural space delineate boundaries that are both physically and mentally confining. From Anne Hars’ research into architectural facades of decaying American asylums, to Carolyn Castaño's noir heroine in Señora Señora, who paces her apartment, nervously performing chores, drinking, and talking on the phone. Not only do these spaces map the mind, but they are also surveilled by the artist. Through drawing, photography or video, artists have absorbed the contemporary transparency of surveillance into their projects. The artist's reflection upon herself is voyeuristic in Stephanie Allespach's video Corner, and a similar reflection turns neurotic in the drawing and re-telling of a 21st century Captivity Narrative in Displaced Studios by SE Barnet.

Freud's "talking cure" took form in prompting patients to dig through layers of memory to a primary traumatic experience that was the cause of present-day ills. He understood certain memories to be constructions, foils for other deeper memories that were all connected by associative threads. Interestingly, Freud came to believe that false memories, or fantasies were equal to memories of real events during analysis. This territory is mined in several artists' work. Micol Hebron's photo narrative I Wanna Know What Love Is, Part II indulges in fantasy to undermine Unicorn mythology as a metaphor for dominant patriarchal structure as the puerile protagonist seduces and slays the unattainable. Rebecca Campbell's coloring book examines adult understanding of childhood whimsy and construction of the self. Elizabeth Tremante's drawings pose a question about the temporal space of memory, and propose a conundrum in unlocking meaning among memories whose existence in time is ambiguous. Ellina Kevorkian's video of Elizabeth Taylor composites dialog excerpts from two separate films to create an internal soliloquy in which Taylor wanders from room to room, examining herself in various mirrors while having an overwrought internal dialogue that explores self-doubt and frustration.

The traditionally gendered dichotomy of emotion and reason that underpins Hysteria is exploded in the work or Allison Behrstock and Anoka Faruqee. Allison's conceptual work is a mathematical and statistical analysis of women, emotion and trauma. Anoka's abstract painting Freehand Fade to Yellow is sensuous and randomly patterned at first look, but precision, obsessive planning and complex organization is at the core of the work.

Our current-day rock stars include Dawn Kasper and Angela Ellsworth. Dawn's photograph Woman is a violent homage to Duchamp's Etant Donne , in which the woman's body simultaneously becomes sculpture, landscape and the ultimate abjection. In a fantasy turn, however, the artist has enacted this gruesome violence upon herself to make the image. Catherine Daly's sculptural poem DEAF is part of her series of poems from "Heavy Rotation". Catherine reveals the obsessions of editing and writing by reorganizing the song lyrics of Def Leppard into a 2000 page poem. Angela Ellsworth directs the luminous and hysterically funny Tania Katan in Hot Air. In Angela's own words, " No amps, no guitars, no ovaries, just explosive silence: stripped down and ready to rock. Hot Air is one woman with no girl parts and all the bravado of an entire boy band!"

Fluxwear Event

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 22:46:37 -0700

LA ART GIRLS FLUXWEAR EVENT
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006, 7-9pm

Part of the Draw a Line and Follow it Exhibition
June 22 - August 20, 2006

Participating artists included:
Stephanie Allespach
Amber Arseneau Fox
Kristin Calabrese
Carolyn Castaño
Sydney Croskery
Jackie Dunbar
Karen Dunbar
Angela Ellsworth
Anne Hars
Micol Hebron
Dawn Kasper
Ellina Kevorkian
Leigh McCarthy
Nancy Popp
Sarah Riley
Kim Schoenstadt
Felis Stella
Elizabeth Tremante

Painting Film

Tue, 6 Dec 2005 22:47:01 -0800

Painting Film: A Multimedia Group Show
at Lounge Gallery and Studios,
28 Shacklewell Lane, London, E8 2EZ.

Dates: 7 – 20 December 2005
Opening party: Tuesday 6 December, 7-9pm featuring live arrangement of an evolving filmic soundscape by record producer and DJ,  FZV of AI Recordings, with drinks provided by Tiger.
It is nearly two hundred years since a photosensitized surface was first used successfully to capture a faithful picture of the world. The mechanically produced image has changed forever the way we live and the way we look at our surroundings. Painting Film brings together an international group of artists, all of whose work is drawn from photographs and film.
John Vincent’s solitary narratives set his personal involvement with the painted surface against the voyeuristic distance of the CCTV footage his paintings are inspired by. With the stillness of paint, the intrusive capability of photography and the narrative expectation of film, Vincent’s work demonstrates the versatility of paint.
Roselina Hung’s paintings of historical figures as depicted by Hollywood, play with our knowledge of history as retold by the silver screen, replacing a more complicated truth with sanitized fictions.
Jill Fehrenbacher’s ‘painted photographs’ undermine Sontag’s statement that “A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened”. Fehrenbacher digitally enhances her work to match more closely her emotional interpretation of the events or scenes she experiences.
Through an ongoing open submission process we also present a diverse selection of video. Jason Martins archetypal documentary film explores one artist’s life and work in rural solitude. In contrast is France Dubois’ “Digue Morand” – like a dilated photograph her single shot film conveys a sinister ambience at odds with the subject matter of an innocent family walk. Yonatan Vinitsky’s abstract composition deals with the subject of light as a phenomenon through the relationship between light and camera and light and editing.
John Vincent lives and works in London, Roselina Hung works between London and Vancouver and Jill Fehrenbacher’s practice is based in New York. Video artists include France Dubois (France), Jason Martin (UK) and Yonatan Vinitsky (Israel). FZV has been played on Radio 1’s “the breezeblock” and “the blue room”, has appeared at the Hayward Gallery and has featured in the New York Times.
Supported by Tiger Beer, Toshiba and Little White Lies magazine.
For more information and images please contact Christine Cowin tel: 020 7820 9380 email: christine@swarmgallery.com.

Strange Love

Thu, 21 Jul 2005 22:48:25 -0700

Strange Love was the first collaborative project of the LA Art Girls. Taking the subject matter of Dr. Strangelove, the LA Art Girls created an exquisite corpse style remake of this Stanley Kubrick film. While the original film starred all men and one woman, Strangelove starred all women and one man and pieced together each artists representation of a chapter.

The video was shown at QED Gallery as part of the Apocalypse Soon! Show.

Participating artists included:

Stephanie Allespach
Amber Arseneau Fox
Claudia Bucher
Kristin Calabrese
Castaño
Karen Dunbar
Angela Ellsworth
Anne Hars
Micol Hebron
Deborah Jones
Dawn Kasper
Tania Katan
Ellina Kevorkian
Leigh McCarthy
Nancy Popp
Felis Stella
Elizabeth Tremante

Love Poems for Infidels

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 22:03:32 -0700

For immediate release:
ELLINA KEVORKIAN : Love Poems For Infidels
July 16 - September 3, 2005  Reception for the artist: Saturday, July 16th 5-8 pm.
Western Project is proud to present Ellina Kevorkian's second solo exhibition. Receiving an MFA from Claremont Graduate School in 2002, she continues to live and work in Los Angeles painting and shooting videos. Love Poems For Infidels, addresses issues of identity and genealogy, specifically the duality of twins – a mirroring of beauty, power and femininity - as rogue western outlaws. Kevorkian's paintings are composed after works by J.W. Waterhouse, Sir John Millais, and Artemisia Gentilleschi. They are reinvented visions of a new authority, making new choices - women slinging shot guns in western gowns, garnished in super-bling jewelry – the artist pictured "outside of society…" as Patti Smith wrote. It is the defiant stand of the Infidel – questioning the history of representation and subverting it's supposed truths.
Kevorkian uses numerous contemporary methods to spin her layered tales. Nearly all the images are staged (from Pre–Raphaelite works) and photographed, then transferred to canvas and repainted. Like tinted photographs from the turn of the century, her paintings mimic historic narratives, inverted with flourishes of technology and acrylic medium. The paintings' source of authorship is up for grabs – and, can a camera make paintings? What is "film-like"? Are these a new kind of readymade?
Kevorkian's presentation of these tales is both subjective and social – painting and DVD formats. It is her filmed mini-epic of Infidels that is the center piece of the exhibition - part 1920's sepia silent film, part hallucinogenic river of images. Her tale of twin female outlaws cracks open the polite dialogue of "the Goddess" and Photoshops a new set of criteria for the feminine – just as mythic, but with dustier skirts, and a fierce subjective voice that revels in contrary acts of determination and faith.
For images and further information, please contact the gallery at 310-838-0609 or www.western-project.com

In-A-Ga-Da-Vida, Baby

Sat, 3 Jan 2004 15:51:32 -0800

January 3, February 14, 2004 Opening reception January 3rd , 6-9 pm.
Anthony Ausgang, Ron Athey, Carole Caroompas, Nathalia Edenmont,Tom of Finland, Sush Machida Gaikotsu, Ellina Kevorkian, Bob Mizer/AMG, Catherine Opie, Michael Perelman, Richard Renaldi, Joe Schmelzer, Timothy Tompkins, Holly Topping, Wayne White, Eve Wood
Western Project is proud to present 16 artists in the first show of 2004. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Baby is a group exhibition presenting a constellation of images; a miasma of contemporary sensibilities addressing nature, humor, eros, violence and culture. The premise of the garden of Eden', filtered through the 17 minute opus by Iron Butterfly in 1968, was a psychedelic whirlwind; a kind of extended atmosphere pulsing and punctuated as a sensual, rhythmic, altered reality.
This exhibition is a grouping of hyper-real psychedelic images; at once disjointed, and yet connected visions of life. Perhaps not a garden of earthly delights in total, as there are thorns in any yard, but all 16 artists tend towards an unreasonable faith to create voraciously or intently in our splintered and spinning time. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Baby is a declaration, an attitude, a show, and possibly the most loving middle finger of life.

It's All Wrong But It's All Right

Sat, 22 Feb 2003 15:14:37 -0800

The Mark Moore Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of paintings by Ellina Kevorkian. Originally from Virginia, and a recent graduate of the Claremont Graduate University, Kevorkian has tapped such eclectic sources as Dolly Parton, Gustav Klimpt and Joan Brown, for her paintings. The works are large and theatrical, yet simple images – psychological landscapes filled with sculpted objects (butterflies, breasts or hearts) and sweeping flourishes of paint and urethane. Her hand has an authority that can paint a kind of furious hurricane, with the drama of a sad country western song, yet also with tender delicacy. While interested in the overall decorative manner of Klimt, Kevorkian subverts the harmony of her sweet colorations and lacey patterns, with the grand scale of the canvases and aggressive gestures. Using large photo transfer images of her twin sister, the artist presents a mirror of herself as actor, protagonist and voyeur of her own dramas – a surrogate dreamer and creator. Inspired by Dolly Parton, Kevorkian uses beauty and pathos to conjure up a visual stew – intimate stories with thorns and charms – a new wicked and visual hooch.