13ThingsLA: July 2
Holiday Hours for your art calendar
July 4th is hitting different this year, and we can’t be the only ones who’d rather skip the party and instead spend the long weekend absorbing the thoughtful, active engagement with real life, science, and history that contemporary artists have to offer. Please check those holiday hours, folks—and enjoy these reviews of ongoing exhibitions at Charlie James Gallery, NOON Projects, Wilding Cran, and Bel Ami; explore new presentations opening at OCCCA (Shana juried that one!), MutMuz Gallery, Coaxial, Taylor Fine Art, NHM, and VPAM; plus the Hollywood Bowl sings, Chris Sharp Gallery makes a move, and the Musée du AL celebrates the urban femme.
Feature
REVIEW: Daniela García Hamilton: Amanecer / Atardecer (Sunrise / Sunset) at Charlie James Gallery. So faithful to her sumptuous, buoyant brushwork, which favors both maximalist rendering of patterns in tile and fabric as well as creating schematic patterns within skin tones and the flickering light of old family photographs—so much like her oil painting is the richness of García Hamilton’s new work in embroidery, that I got to within inches of these alluring pieces before I even realized it was thread. In fact the exhibition contains examples of both paint-only and thread-only works, but of course, it’s the majestic hybrids that I’m most obsessed with. Her painting practice has always existed at the boundary of past and present, memory and loss, family and society, exuberant visual culture and the economics of labor. It’s been an unapologetically immigration-filtered story throughout her career, one that viewed the legacy of traditions as being as much of a gift as that of a new life in America. It’s not her fault that the current context throws such a poignant light on the narrative topicality—but at the same time, her devotion to advancing and expanding her craft while staying true to her most heartfelt and cherished subject—her family and community—stand as a bulwark against the icy fear that grips our city now. As well, her compositional approach that leaves much of the canvas blank while hyperfocusing on the dynamics of the embroidered thread, balanced against her love of overall pattern in painted works, highlights the presence of figures within landscapes of absence in the most affecting way. I’m still amazed at how close to brushwork she can get with a needle and thread, and I’m genuinely excited for her continuing, thoughtful, intentional creative evolution. On view in Chinatown through August 2; cjamesgallery.com. —SND
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