24-Hour Gallery (Past Exhibits)

  August 6 –  September 22, 2011 George Domantay Shifting Mass The titles of Domantay’s minimalist landscape and Mylar cloud formations (Static, Strike Slip Fault, Dip Slip Fault, Oblique Slip Fault, Reverse Dip Slip Fault) bring to mind geological fault lines, the result of tectonic forces.  But Domantay is also making reference to the manmade fault types which appear in our pristine landscape:  the graded lots of tract home developments.  For Domantay these faults of urban sprawl are stand-ins for human fallibility. Domantay draws upon his early work experience advertising model tract homes in Corona, California.  Dressed in a clown costume and stationed on a street corner for eight hours a day, he would stand jump, wave, and flash his painted clown smile to the occasional passing traffic.  Mostly alone, he began waving to the cumulus clouds and large vista of dirt.  These graded lots and rolling clouds were the first audience to Domantay’s performance art practice which, twenty years later, he still pursues.  On weekends during the course of his installation, Domantay will be conducting roving performances throughout Old Town Pasadena. Thinking about recent earthquakes and climate crises, Domantay asks if nature’s cataclysmic events can also be a “resetting” of the population of an area, beyond any human intervention there.  We can do nothing as tectonic plates shift underneath us, but we might consider the big picture as we continue to push the outer edges of habitation.  These faults are ours. Artist Bio: George Domantay has created performances and performance installations at many venues in Southern California including LACE, Deep River, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, Mount Saint Mary’s College, Track 16 at Bergamot Station, RAID Projects, FAR at the Los Angeles Zoo, Action Space at the Brewery, Lemoyne Kennels, Spaceland, Intersections Eagle Rock, and as a featured performer at the 2003 fundraiser for the Los Angeles Community Garden Project.  He was also a performer at Beyond Baroque as a proxy for Daniel J. Martinez, and in 2008 was included in a group show curated by Glenn Kaino at the Warhol Foundation in Pittsburgh.  Domantay has a BA in Studio Art from UC Riverside and an MFA from UC Irvine. -------------------------------------------------------------- April 16 - June 9, 2011 Karen Reitzel Cismontane and the Belly of the Valley A devoted hiker, mountain biker and horseback rider, Karen Reitzel has been reflecting on the devastation, both natural and manmade, that limited access to our local foothills this past year. She states, “Personal histories and life situations makes each person’s relationship with nature distinctive.” Reitzel was personally affected by the 2009 Station Fire, which required her to evacuate her horse and limited riding trail access for months afterward.  Her regular hiking and biking trails continue to be closed due to subsequent erosion from the recent winter storms that caused further damage and washed away repairs made last year to the Angeles Crest Highway. Cismontane and the Belly of the Valley is Reitzel’s response, an exploration of the meeting of domesticated and natural environments, mingling, informing and affecting one another in those valleys and foothills. She uses elements of human design and intervention as well as the flora and fauna of the cismontane (“this side of the mountain”) chaparral of the San Gabriel Mountains encountered during her regular traverses. Just as Reitzel observed the sweeping effect of the wildfire and the slow rebirth of landscape, this installation relies on the contemplation of change, both dramatic and nuanced. Artist Bio: Karen Reitzel is a painter/sculptor/mixed media artist who lives in Los Angeles. Her work is also currently on display at LA - Ontario Airport, and she has recently shown site-specific pieces at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center, the El Paseo Invitational in Palm Desert, CA and the Arts Council for Long Beach’s “Mobile Exhibits.” In addition, Reitzel has shown her work at the Turtle Bay Museum in Redding, CA and many Southern California non-profit venues such as The Pasadena Armory, the Brewery and Eagle Rock Center for the Arts. Reitzel is interested in expanding the art and audience relationships beyond conventional boundaries and has a history of curating art exhibition series with the Foundation for Art Resources, At The Brewery Project, Warner Music Group and the Hollywood DMV. She is an avid hiker, bicyclist and equestrian and spends much of her free time in the local open spaces. Reitzel received her M.F.A. from the University of California Irvine in 1992 and lives in Los Angeles.     ---------------------------------------------- February 11 - April 7, 2011 The Hodge-Podge Show Participating Artists: Ed Ushiro, Tasha Kusama,Tim Carey, Sean Chao, Ming Ong Guest curated by artist Brian Damitz, The Hodge-Podge Show showcased a wide variety of artwork, from paintings to sculpture to stained glass. While their media may vary, all of the artwork is united in their modern style, dark themes, and powerful statements. -------------------------------------------------- December 11, 2010 - February 3, 2011 Jill D'Agnenica The Point at Which Time Stands Still Jill D’Agnenica plays with the idea of Time as an artificial and arbitrary construct to which we are enslaved.  In researching this piece, she drew on such diverse sources as Cal Tech theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll, the philosophical musings of Umberto Eco, and even her own harried life. Irrespective of its basis in the observable physical universe, when viewed across cultures and epochs, “time” is a malleable device used to create order. In the 21st century, we rely on GPS satellite time synchronization to structure and coordinate our days, yet we cannot observe time itself — we only see the physical manifestations of the hands of the clock. The Point at Which Time Stands Still is D’Agnenica’s irrational yet orderly reaction to the implications of time’s pull. She fills the gallery windows with 720 clocks, each ticking forward from a unique consecutive minute setting. Hundreds of time idioms printed on the clock faces attest to the multiple permutations of time in our lives.  D”Agnenica simultaneously displays and disrupts time, exposing how every moment has been choreographed, enthralling and entrapping us in a cyclical dance. Artist Bio: A native of Southern California, D’Agnenica has lived and worked Los Angeles since 1991. Many of her pieces have been located in places where people “happen upon” a situation, unawares, taking viewers beyond their everyday concerns to a moment of reflection and wonder.  Explorations of community and interconnection are recurring themes in her work, made manifest at various stages of the art making process, from concept and fabrication to the final presentation of the piece. D’Agnenica has been the recipient of several grants and awards for her art including an Artist in Community Grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, an Artist’s Project Grant from LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), and The Los Angeles Downtown Breakfast Club’s Rose Award for Public Art. Her work has been reviewed in numerous art and mainstream publications. Her project “Angels” was the subject of a documentary, “Los Angeles” by Paul Martinez and Bill Fletcher and was featured in several local and national television programs and documentaries in the US and UK. The Point at Which Time Stands Still has been made possible through the generosity of crowd-funders through Kickstarter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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October 8 – December 2, 2010

Cynthia Minet

Unsustainable Creatures III

Minet repurposes and recycles plastic objects and containers culled from discount and hardware stores, and rescued from dumpsters to construct her sculptures of domesticated animals.  Lit from within by optical fibers and LED lighting, these creatures glow with a life force that escapes our landfills.  Underlying their playful construction, Minet’s sculptures question whether ultimately we will evolve to become the materials that we can’t do without and point to humankind’s dependence on electricity.

Artist Bio:

Cynthia Minet’s mixed media sculptures, sewn drawings and installations combine an interest in science with an investigation of materials. Her artworks have been exhibited both locally and internationally.  International group exhibitions include a collateral event of the Venice Biennale, (2009), and museum shows in Minsk, Belarus, Amelia, Italy and in several venues in Israel. Additionally, Minet has participated in two international artist residencies in Denmark and in the Netherlands. Recent press includes interviews on RAI Television nationwide in Italy (2010), and posted on theArtblog.com (2010). Minet’s work has also been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Artweek Magazine and Coagula.