calendario eventi  :: 

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10/12/2004

Two exhibitions

Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles

David Huffman
Land of the New Rising Sun, paintings

David Huffman’s idiosyncratic universe of 'Traumabot's' and 'Trauma Smiles' reveals the cataclysmic nature of violence as a cultural norm. The conflicts portrayed in his paintings incorporate and parody religion, race, personal tragedies, and the current political climate. Characters that are marked with the Minstrel's smile exist in an environment of isolation, alienation, and self-induced neurosis.

In contrast with the paintings' graphic depictions a culture of apprehension, Huffman's palette and brushwork appeal to the viewer with a surface of muted tones and watermarks that dissolve in a mat, powdered surface. A disconnect is established between action (the figure) and the environment in which it is represented.

Huffman's work has often been discussed, and is written about in many publications. In the exhibition catalog of Freestyle, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Eungie Joo writes, 'Imagine traveling to the outskirts of infinity to arrive in a Journey to the Center of the Earth-territory of bodily space, replete with internal organs, digestive gases, and glandular operations. The organs can process disease, infection and sorrow. They are awareness... Huffman articulates his ideas through his paintings, often demanding that the viewer draw their own conclusions about influence and substance. By recontextualizing the minstrel into super-robots, the concentration has been intellectual and material accomplishments, thus leading to a soul-less spiritual crisis. Their sense of self has become an artifact from denial of self, from obsessive material success, all cast and proffered by others. Although the stereotype of caricature has been removed, the 'Trauma Smiles' continue to inhabit the mask of the minstrel.'

Roberta Smith, art critic for the New York Times, wrote: 'David Huffman's paintings of black astronauts and action figures drifting in surfaces of soft, smoky plumes and swirls suggest a familiarity with Chinese landscape painting and supply one of the show's few sensuous moments' in response to Huffman's paintings in a November 28 review of The Studio Museum in Harlem's recent exhibition Blackbelt.

David Huffman's work will also be on view in the Black Belt exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum December 10th - February 12th.

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Gina Osterloh
All City, video

In gallery II, we are pleased to present All City, a video by Gina Osterloh. Her work examines body language through gesture and posture, and looks at the ways in which people choose, and are conditioned to, present themselves in society. Interested in the ways in which biracial and multiethnic individuals align themselves with particular cultures, Osterloh's work questions notions of the authentic.

Osterloh draws from mass media, tennis, music videos, and cultural studies. The video utilizes the idea of the 'volley' (the shot of attack), an offensive move used in tennis when one player controls the game. The title All City, a reference to graffiti culture, offers the juxtaposition of a clandestine action fueled by an All-American work ethic and status. All-City is inspired by the desire to shed anxieties, especially the low-level of daily paranoia that is always present while functioning in an urban environment.

Osterloh is currently working towards a MFA at UC Irvine. Her work has been exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, New Langton Arts, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, the San Francisco Art Commission's Public Space, The Luggage Store, 'Playspace' (California College of the Arts) and Ze Dos Bois (Portugal).

Reception: Saturday, December 11th 7-9 p.m.

Image: Gina Osterloh 'All City', video still

Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery
2712 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034

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