Sept. 15-Oct. 2, 2023

STAY ON IT

at Keystone Art Space, 338 S. Ave 16, L.A., CA 90031

"Stay On It" revolves in and out of energy, incorporating kinetic art. Transcendent energy through the act of creation makes our energy manifest, moving toward an authentic and unfeigned life. Most kinetic art shows lean toward machine and/or mechanical actions. This show draws from natural energy and natural movement such as flight, water, light etc. We do include mechanical movement as it relates to our own human bodies and figurative expression, though a combination of techniques such as lenticular, sculpture, textile art, light and film go to describe an immersive experience. The title of the show comes from Julius Eastman’s extraordinary musical composition: ”Stay On It”, reminding us proceeding is more important than the end result.

See EMS video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8gGUL7O9dM

Review by Genie Davis: https://www.diversionsla.com/stay-on-it-never-stays-still/

FEATURED ARTIST: FRANKLIN LONDIN

I am indebted to Franklin for my work and discovery of lenticular, 3D, AR and other techniques. He is so talented and one of the greatest human beings I know! I wish he still lived in L.A., as do so many of my friends who know him. We miss him but I know he will bring his talents with him wherever he lives.

Franklin Londin is a New York City based designer, 3D photographer and 3D animator. He has a BFA from New York University Film School. He builds 3D interactive displays, creates 3D effects animation for films and most recently has taken up woodworking. Franklin has worked on over 25 films including Titanic and Spiderman2 which both won Oscars for Best Visual Effects. Also Spiderman – Into the Spiderverse, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. His 3D interactive displays have been seen in the Getty Museum, the Chinese American Museum and the National Buildings Museum, as well as galleries and many outdoor events.

“I’ve always been a visual artist. From an early age I was creating graphics, shooting photography and creating animation. I strove to connect my inner and outer worlds. 3D photography was a way to capture qualities of light I experienced, and creating graphics and motion was a way to capture and express my inner states of mind. These mediums have occupied my imagination and creative spirit for my entire life. The endless forms in nature and the myriad of manmade forms in architecture are the stuff of my art.

One of my interests and great joy has been to shoot underwater with dancers, models, yoginis, and most recently with a pregnant woman. I delight in the gravity-free environment of a pool where models and fabric flow gracefully. It’s liberating and inspiring to be in such a playful, immersive state of being. Whether the final image is static or animated, it brings me great joy to create art and share it with the world.

For this show I have created a series of still and motion graphics on Instagram that I make in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep. So much of life these days is filled with anxiety and dread. So in the wee hours, I grab my phone and create soothing geometries and animations that calm me and enable me to return to sleep. I call them my “Insomnia Series". I hope they bring some measure of comfort and delight to all those who view them.”

https://www.franklinlondin.com/

https://www.3deee.com/

https://www.instagram.com/franklinlondin/

https://www.facebook.com/franklin.londin

FEATURED ARTIST: NANCY IVANHOE

Some of the artwork in this exhibit moves in very subtle ways. I recently saw Nancy Ivanhoe’s artwork at the Korean Cultural Center in L.A. I enjoyed the softness and lightness of form she achieved with industrial screen mesh. In forming, painting and layering the mesh, a profusion of moirés appear in varying degrees depending on the glancing light. Using the filaments from the screen mesh she sews and knots the forms together into fluid configurations. Ivanhoe is influenced by the California Light and Space Art Movement. She also has a degree in dance which explains her ability to create a unified and harmonious composition. The shapes often remind me of human gestures and landscape. One artwork is titled “Moonlight over Inglewood” with dark blue and gray hues and a soft glowing white moon. The surrounding mesh sparkles like stars in the night sky. She says, ”My work is a confluence of painting and sculpture; the pieces are three-dimensional forms that require an active process of viewing, yet they are also paintings of light and color where overlapped layers set off fusions of new colors, moirés, and reflections…. I’m inspired to create work that can allow a full scope of ever-changing and beautiful perceptual experiences in which the viewer is an active participant.” Ivanhoe has shown work in international and national group exhibitions, recently at Gallery CAW in Walferdange, Luxembourg. Commissioned works are in private and corporate collections. Ivanhoe received an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2013. She received the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award in 2012 and her artwork has been published in numerous magazines.

Pictured here are two of Nancy Ivanhoe’s “Color Waves.”

FEATURED ARTIST: SUNG-HEE SON

photo credit: Cindy Rettig @zraddish

It was a joy to connect with Sung-Hee Son for this show. She is a generous spirit and she brings talent, strength and support to the intention of the exhibit. Based in Los Angeles she is also a curator. Sung-Hee earned her BFA from Montserrat College of Art. In her artistic practice, she explores and expresses themes of experienced and imagined realities. She is interested in the sense of things and moments more than the depictions. As a curator and cultural programmer for bG After Hours, Sung-Hee focuses on bringing artists and communities together to share and celebrate diversity.

In our show, “Stay On It”, she has created a large circulating installation which includes suspended forms of branches and feathers and a beautiful marble and golden bust. She states, ”In my paintings I have long been fascinated with the relationships of pairs and multiples. They become almost anthropomorphic, expressing personalities through their colors and forms. There are push-pull energies within the works and with their pairs or series. With “Unbearable Lightness”, I am very excited to re-engage in sculptural, conceptual and kinetic installation work. In my twenty’s, this type of work was my strength and it’s like a return home to be working and thinking this way again. The piece is an homage to the late great French-Czech novelist, Milan Kundera and his book, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (published 1984). Essentially the story is of three main characters with different personalities and life views from gentle and devoted partner, creative and wild lover, and the one between the two. Perhaps it could be said to be about choices or dilemmas between free will and devotion, beauty and pain, lightness and earth.”

FEATURED ARTIST: SANDEEP K. DAS

I am so fortunate to include Sandeep K Das in this exhibition. He is a man of many talents and I have been following and enjoying his work for some time. His expertise in biology, especially his work in the beautiful land of Kerala, India, has given his photography a unique perspective which has already reaped rewards in published works and features in science journals. His love for movement, in particular automobiles, lends a sense of adventure to his imagery. His devotion to nature and animal rescues imbues a sense of respect in all he creates. A few years ago he found out about a photographic technique on Instagram and it caught his interest. He described it as something “normal that is part science and part art.” He delved into it with a passion and cracked the code. The result is an expression of bird flight patterns that appear like charcoal line drawings on a canvas sky. He is especially proud of these art films which he says “border between reality and cgi—something that was born out of the need to compress time.” We will be showing two of these films never projected before. You can also find many of his new art and science adventures on his IG. Check out some of his science expeditions! His prints of still images are also exquisite, and available upon request.

FEATURED ARTIST: LINDA SUE PRICE

Linda Sue Price lives and works in Los Angeles County, California. Price is known for injecting her personal reflections into abstract shapes and to manipulate how neon is perceived as a medium. She began studying neon as an art medium with Michael Flechtner at the Museum of Neon Art in 2004. There she developed her unique style of free form bending. Elements of historic neon signs, abstract expressionism, social realism, pop art and graphic design influence Linda Sue Price’s work.

Her current series is Magical Medicinal Herbs. As ice packs melt and forests burn, new plants will be discovered that could aid in healing and promoting civil societies as the book Finding the Mother Tree concludes—we are all in this together. Each herb is an invented plant form and the names are made up by Linda.

Price sees herself as an investigator of cultural phenomena; one who endeavors, with the aid of observations, history/science/philosophical readings, to arrive at a point of reference that connects the human experience with all of the other parts of the environment.

Price is an avid gardener. She is inspired by watching and learning from the plants she grows. This gets incorporated into her neon works. She has learned that change is constant--each garden presents new challenges and cultural conditions are fluid.

Past exhibitions include the Museum of Neon Art, Artshare LA, Eastern Projects in Chinatown, San Joaquin Delta College and The Midway Gallery in San Francisco. She has had solo shows at TAG Gallery in Los Angeles and has shown at The Other Art Fair in Santa Monica, the Transmission Gallery in Oakland and the Brand Library in Glendale. Price has a solo exhibit annually at the Fine Arts Building in Downtown Los Angeles. She serves as treasurer for the Board of Directors for the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, California.

Linda Sue Price has been written about in Los Angeles Magazine, Art and Cake, Diversions LA, We Choose Art, Fabrik Media, Artscene, Santa Monica Mirror, the Daily Times and the Long Beach Post.

FEATURED ARTIST: ADELE MILLS

Over the last decade Adele has combined photography, digital rendering and painting to produce abstract and figurative work with a structure in which one image is viewed through the transparency of a second image. The gap between the layers creates a displacement of colors, shapes, and composition and produces doublings, fadings, and come alive through the precise placement of moiré patterns, creating a unique vibrational exchange. This latest body of work is inspired by Op (optical) Art Movement of the 60’s and builds on the notion of optical illusions using moiré patterns and glitches that the digital world avoids. The “glitch” defined is a pattern overlaid onto another pattern that doesn’t get along and creates a third pattern.