Joshua Callaghan
Christopher Davison
Christiane Feser
Bas Louter
Adrien Missika
Aya Saito
Ami Tallman
Group show. For this exhibition, the gallery invited 7 artists to visually discuss their relation with the flaneur - a 19th century character portrayed by the French as a well dressed man, strolling through the Parisian arcades to pass the time.
Group show
Joshua Callaghan, Christopher Davison, Christiane Feser, Bas Louter,
Adrien Missika, Aya Saito, and Ami Tallman.
fette's gallery is delighted to present Le Flâneur, a group show with
Joshua Callaghan (us), Christopher Davison (us), Christiane Feser
(de), Bas Louter (nl), Adrien Missika (ch), Aya Saito (jp), and Ami
Tallman (us).
For this exhibition, we invited seven artists to visually discuss
their relation with the flâneur - a 19th century character portrayed
by the French as a well dressed man, strolling through the Parisian
arcades to pass the time, free to explore his surroundings to gather
inspirational substance.
According to Walter Benjamin, the flâneur rose to prominence
primarily because of an architectural change in the city. While Baron
Haussmann was redesigning boulevards and tearing up many of the old
twisting streets, the flâneur became the anonymous face in this
revived crowd.
Re-defining flânerie in a current context within the Los Angeles
boundaries appears quite foolish, yet it is rather compelling.
While the urban sprawl that is the city of LA remains fairly
discouraging to the strolling of the Beaudelarian character, it still
allows for a new genre of wandering poetry to be generated. Artists
such as Ed Ruscha, Charles Bukowski and Andrea Zittel, whose work is
heavily influenced by the atmosphere of their surroundings and daily
routines, come to mind. The anonymity, compartmentation and luxurious
façade of the vast LA suburban area greatly influenced new artistic
vocabularies.
With this new exhibition we will gather alternative meanings
associated with the historical flâneur in this current context of
changes.
Los Angeles based Joshua Callaghan re-appropriates plastic and other
found objects and solicits the viewers to reshape their experiences
toward the medium. Often cynical, Callaghan's installations ressemble
allegoric landscapes from consumers' reports. For this show, the
artist will create a site specific installation revising the concept
of flânerie from a suburban point of view.
Callaghan was recently included in the group show Rogue Wave '07 at
LA Louver.
Christopher Davison is based in Philadelphia where he graduated last
year from Tyler School of Art. His body of work includes mostly
drawings and paintings on paper, their colorful and naive quality
resonating within the narrative. Inspired by Bosch, his pieces carry
layers of dark humor and disturbing accounts.
Davison's work was recently included in two paper based group shows,
one at Tower Gallery in Philadelphia and another at V1 Gallery in
Copenhagen.
Christiane Feser lives in Germany. She takes photographs which she
subtly alters digitally to question our aptitude to recognize truth
and habits. The two images featured in the show are from the series
Strassen (Roads) in which traces of the human interaction between the
inside and the outside have been removed. By reducing the buildings
and roads to their surface, these landscape describe new journeys and
unfamiliar uses.
She recently received the Charlotte Prinz Fellowship from the city of
Darmstadt in Germany.
Often, the protagonists drawn by Amsterdam based artist Bas Louter,
are depictions of power and absurd arrogance. For this show, Louter
will present a new charcoal drawing on paper. The character in this
piece, although fictional, carries the aesthetic of the classic
surrealist's muse. She posses the attributes of a willful, dark, yet
sensitive and imaginative individual. One can reflect on her radiance
and witness the changes her historical figure embodies.
The artist just had his first solo show at fette's gallery which was
in part founded by a grant from the Fonds BKVB.
Adrien Missika will present four photographs from his series Safari
Classique. These intimate sized works picture the wild dioramas, sans
animals, which one can observe at the Natural History Museum in New
York. These inanimate sceneries reflect on our aptitude to
romanticize, yet organize our surroundings.
Missika just graduated from ecal in Lausanne, Switzerland. This is
his first show in the US.
Japanese artist Aya Saito creates large oil, acrylic and ink works on
paper. By mixing these mediums, she achieves an intricate and
expressionist palimpsest of texture and matter. Often dark and
engaged, her work grabs the viewer to question what he recognizes.
A catalogue of her recent work was recently published by Little More.
Last year, she participated in the 8th Gunma Biennial for Young
Artist at the Museum of Modern Art of Gunma, Japan.
Los Angeles based Ami Tallman draws opulent interiors and failed
aristocratic gatherings. She colorfully rewrites history, combining
elements of decor, ornamented generals, politicians in drag and
disappearing fame.
For this exhibition, she will present new works on paper.
Her work was recently shown at Cirrus Gallery's Naive Set Theory
group show curated by Catherine Taft and was also included in the
last MOCA's silent auction. 2nd Cannons also published a book of her
drawing.
Left image, Adrien Missika, Untitled, from the series Safari Classique, 2006, C-print, ed. 3, 18 x 24 cm.
Opening Reception for the Artists | Friday, September 7, 2007, 6-9 pm.
Fette's Gallery
4255 baldwin avenue 001 - Los Angeles