July 5, 2025
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Opening | A Sense of Things

James Betterson028 mins

A Sense of Things
presented by Durden and Ray & Paper
1923 S. Sante Fe Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90021
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​Opening Reception | Saturday, November 4th, 2017, 4pm -7pm
Exhibition Dates | November 4th – November 25th, 2017
Gallery Hours | Tues – Sat 10am – 6pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — The Sense of Things follows on from the exhibition The Surface of Things presented at PAPER gallery in Manchester over the summer. That exhibition drew inspiration from Piet Mondrian’s 1911 scribble on a note in his sketchbook, “The surface of things gives enjoyment; their interiority gives life.” This was the starting point that led him inexorably towards a pure abstraction in the years that followed.

​As might have been anticipated, this move towards abstraction did not hail the death knell of figuration in painting and drawing, particularly in those artists who strive to challenge and conceptualize a figurative practice.​ The Sense of Things, therefore, attempts to represent a group of contemporary artists, whose work has emerged through the 20th century rhetoric that sought the death of realism swiftly followed by painting. In no way is this exhibition anti-abstraction; instead the work presented here has developed from the symbiotic dialogue of abstraction and figuration in contemporary painting. These artists are adept at shifting between the two poles of abstraction and figuration as they seek to find their own language within painting and drawing, whilst simultaneously providing a commentary on the society in which they live and work. ​
This exhibition also comes out of a dialogue between the USA and the UK and Ireland. Never before have the populations of these two countries become more polarized. In a climate of openly hostile, far right extremism, now more than ever is there a need for artists to speak out. Within the work of these artists is a desperate need to voice their concerns. Yet there is no sloganeering, each artist has subtly embedded their concerns within the surreal, the abstract. They challenge the audience to seek out their meaning and engage in dialogue. These are dreadful times, yet there is a spark of hope below the surface of things, a sense of things in motion and transition. ​
The Sense of Things showcases the work of established, mid-career and emerging artists, all of whom believe passionately in the capacity of painting and drawing to offer a purposeful means of examining the world and our relationships, our exteriority and interiority, and meaning beneath and beyond the sense of things.

​Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a Getty-led event aiming to explore Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, exhibiting in institutions all across Southern California. Here are a few shows in conjunction with PST: LA/LA that we’re itching to check out, ( in no particular order.) Be sure to check out their website for all participating galleries.

Gathering: Artist Zoe Childerley

Abrams Claghorn Gallery
1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 94706
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Showing July 5 – August 31, 2017
Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 – 7 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 – 7pm

Zoe Childerley travels far and wide to capture images that tell the stories of man and nature. In her ongoing series, Dinosaur Dust, she explores the communities on outskirts of Joshua Tree, California. Check out Dinosaur Dust, now on view at Abrams Claghorn through August 31st and read her interview from our Spring 2016 issue to learn more!

About Dinosaur Dust:

This body of work, called Dinosaur Dust, was made with the community based around the edge of Joshua Tree National Park in California during an artist in residence programme and subsequent visits.

It is an intimate portrait of a peripheral and charismatic community of the high desert,struggling to find meaning and moments of grace in a hostile environment. The work explores the encounters between people and nature, playing with light, impermanence and the faculties of seeing.

Working with the contrast of the black of the night and the blinding light of the day, this work investigates the narrative potential of photography in relation to its abstract capacities, bringing forth a reality that is simultaneously uncanny and unknowable. I am interested in landscape, and particularly in combining a desire to experience the‘sublime’ with the inexplicable seduction of the abyss.

​In the American West everywhere has been conquered and exhausted, so people look to the desolate outposts and then to the heavens in search of the authentic wilderness. The images generate a powerful atmosphere and sense of place, one that is infused with the longing, uncertainty and expectation associated with the unseen.

Gathering: Artist Spencer Merolla

Abrams Claghorn Gallery
1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 94706
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Showing July 5 – August 31, 2017
Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 – 7 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 – 7pm

Nearly a year ago we spoke to Spencer Merolla about her art that utilizes worn fabrics, human hair and several other materials to explore our relationship with grief. In our Autumn 2016 issue, you’ll learn about her earlier works including Hairworks and Funeral Clothes. You can see Enfold now on view at Abrams Claghorn as part of Gathering: A Venison Magazine Retrospective, through August 31st.

Artist Statement:

My work is concerned with bereavement: the tension between public and esoteric grief, social customs and material culture of mourning, and objects as repositories of memory which both retain and transmit meaning. Among the media I work with are human hair, clothing, and found photographs.
Funeral Clothes Project: After a Fashion
​This series is made from clothing worn in mourning. Inspired by a personal experience with a dress I wore to my mother’s funeral and could never bring myself to put on again, I asked family and friends whether they too had clothing too tainted by association to wear. Slowly I began collecting clothes–sometimes decades old–that had languished unworn in the backs of closets, too distressing to wear and too sentimental to just throw away. Handling these testaments of loss is a powerful experience, as every garment comes with a story. Joining them together allows for the creation of a symbolic location in which otherwise esoteric griefs become public and communal.

Hairwork: Mourning Art for Moderns

This series takes the Victorian women’s practice of sentimental hairwork as its jumping-off point. For the Victorians, mourning was a very public act. Rather than a esoteric emotion or an embarrassment, grief was a popular motif for the arts and fashion. What strikes modern sensibilities as mawkish and overly sentimental behavior was, at the time, considered proof of a person’s sincerity and morality. Ornamental hairwork, painstakingly crafted from the hair of loved ones, was a fashion that insisted the wearer embodied these virtues. This work plays with the tension between sincerity and emotional performance, imagining a contemporary practice in which moderns might socially engage with death’s physicality. The dissonance of the craft (when

transposed onto the emotional and aesthetic landscape of our times) draws attention to the ever-shifting boundaries of permitted public display.

​That the hair must be severed from the body to be worked in this fashion is a compelling aspect of the practice for me. With few exceptions, the provenance of antique hairwork is now unknown. As a result, it loses its essential quality of referring to a specific person, while still being a distinctively “personal” object. In a sense, the story of hairwork is a testament not of our capacity to remember our lost loved ones, but of our ultimate inability to hold onto them.

Summertime Views

​Satisfactual
Heidi Schwegler + Derek Monypen

​THRU Media
1706 NW Gilson St, suite 7,
Portland OR 97209

On view:
July 2017

New Modernism
group show
Math Bass – Pat Boas – Chris Gander – Chris Johanson – Samuel Levi Jones -Joanna Pousette-Dart – Amanda Wojick​

Elizabeth Leach Gallery
417 NW 9th avenue
Portland OR 97209

On view:
​July 20th – September 2nd, 2017
Tuesday – Saturday
​1030am – 530pm

Wolf Haven:
​Annie Marie Musselman
​
Charles A. Hartman Fine Art
​134 NW 8th Avenue
Portland OR 07209

​On view:
​July 20th – September 2nd, 2017
Thurs-Sat
11am – 5pm

 

Under Cover
Alison OK Frost

Fourth Wall Gallery
473 25th St
Oakland CA 94612

​On view:
July 22nd – September 9th, 2017
Saturdays, 1 – 5pm
1st Fridays, 6 – 9pm & by appointment

​ONSET
​group show
Adele Renault – Bagger 43 – Basik – Caratoes – David Ryan – Jade Rivera – Jaime Molina – Joseph Martinez – Josh Grotto –
Lena Gustafson – Li-Hill – Lie -Miss Van – Roan Victor

First Amendment Gallery
1000 Howard St
San Francisco, CA 94103

​On view:
​July 20th – August 17th, 2017
Wednesday – Saturday 12 – 630pm

Currents
Paula Morales

R/SF
1050 Larkin St
​San Francisco CA 94109

On view:
July 28th – August 20th, 2017
Saturday & Sunday 8pm – 1030pm
​& by appointment

 

Me, Myself & Delerium

Michael Reeder

Cordesa Fine Art
942 2nd St #208
Los Angeles CA

​On view:​
July 8th – August 5th, 2017
Wed – Fri 2pm – 6pm
Sat 12pm – 4pm

 

Figurative Futures
group show
Jason Shawn Alexander – Christian Clayton – Richard Downs – Chambliss Giobbi – Hugo Crosthwaite – Joshua Hagler – Nate Harris – Trenton Doyle Hancock – Seonna Hong – Tim Hussey – Maria Kreyn – Sophia Narrett – Joakim Ojanen – Irene Hardwicke Olivieri – Robyn O’Neil – Erik Mark Sandberg – Larry Rivers – Kristen Schiele – Allison Schulnik – Rodger Stevens – Mark Whalen – Kent Williams – Martin Wittfooth – Marco Zamora

101/Exhibit
668 North La Peer Drive
Los Angeles CA

On view:
​July 22nd – August 26th, 2017
Tues – Sat 10am – 6pm

Wooleyes
group show
Miguel Aldaz – Thomas Birdsong – Christopher Brown – Nicolas Canales – JooYoung Choi – Seong Chon – Michael Crew – Sylvia Drzewieski – Scott Daniel Ellison – Loren Erdrich – Mandy Lyn Ford – Julio Galarza – Rema Ghuloum – Jamey Hart – Easton Miller – Alex Paulus – Larry Pearsall – Steve Remington – Dale Riley – Karen Veronica Taylor –

UCPLA Washington Reid Gallery
6110 Washington Blvd
Culver City CA 90232

Opening Reception:
August 5th, 2017
6 – 9pm​

Gathering: Artist Meline Höijer Schou

Abrams Claghorn Gallery
1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 94706

​​Showing July 5 – August 31, 2017
Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 – 7 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 – 7pm

Swedish multimedia artist Meline Höijer Schou has been stirring the pot with her work, exploring the role of an artist, decision making and confronting thoughts, feelings and actions. Learn about her work in our Winter 2015 issue, where you can also watch her short films.

Her film, see you in my art, based off of our interview with her, was nominated in several film festivals just last year! We’re thrilled she’s joined our retrospective with Artist is injured – state of our affairs, now on view as part of Gathering: A Venison Magazine Retrospective​!

Artist Statement:

​About my art It is important that my work contains a vibrant energy.
Of sorts.
I want to capture the critical moment before the explicit outcome of a decision is possible to ascertain. I want to leave room for a great deal of ambivalence in the spectator. We don´t always make it easy on ourselves. But we communicate. Somehow. Autonomous from spatial realities.
Art as interactive speech bubbles. I adore the beauty of the uncouth and the slightly crude. I guess that´s why the knife is my tool when painting. I find knives easy to control and I love the sharpness, the edginess of its proceedings within the texture of the paint. To control it I have to hold my breath, so we´re both under an equal amount of pressure. Truce as an art form. When working with photography or making short films, I pretty much behave in the same way, I don’t look for absolute cleanliness. I want a certain amount of edge to remain. To cause some trouble. To stir something.
​I want to pose questions, I don´t provide answers.

​Abrams Claghorn Gallery
1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 94706

Showing July 5 – August 31, 2017
Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 – 7 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 – 7pm

Bryan Kring shared, as Danielle introduced, “His enchanting images and dark humored writing… often enhanced with interactive mechanisms that pull you into another world held in the palm of your hand” in our Summer 2015 issue.

We’re delighted to have Shared Illusion showing in our retrospective, now up for viewing at Abrams Claghorn through August 31st.

Bio:

I originally wanted to be a writer but moved on to painting when I found that I didn’t have any stories to tell. I went to art school and filled my home with large canvases. When there was no room left I switched to printmaking and working with small bits of paper. Now, after finding a few stories, I am working in book arts and am able to do a little of everything and am enjoying connecting the circle back to the writing.
​
I am also a graphic designer and run the creative firm Kring Design Studio.

​Abrams Claghorn Gallery
1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 94706
​
Showing July 5 – August 31, 2017
Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 – 7 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 – 7pm

Amber’s interview with Jennifer Pettus was published in our Winter 2015 issue, where you can see more the intricate details of Pettus’s embroidery mixed into a complex work of art made of various materials. Whatnot is up as part of Gathering: A Venison Magazine Retrospective, through August 31.

Artist Statement:

The complication of life inspires me to use complicated combinations of materials and methods in my work. I create three dimensional shadowboxes, free form assemblages, and installations that defy categorization with calculated hodgepodge. I spend a lot of time “making the stuff to make the stuff,” re-purposing second-hand and throw-away materials with techniques like knitting, knotting, stitching, wrapping, staining, poking, gluing, and smashing. I use excessive texturing in conjunction with vibrant colors and curious objects to create a visual pull, asking the viewer to come closer than they might otherwise to a work of art. My hope is to use this material mishmash to keep the viewer engaged with clues to a certain complexity behind the familiar

Gathering: Artist Bonnie MacAllister

Abrams Claghorn Gallery
1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 94706

Showing July 5 – August 31, 2017
Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 – 7 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 – 7pm

Showcasing throughout the eastern United States this year, artist Bonnie MacAllister joins us in the west for Gathering: A Venison Magazine Retrospective with Hurts Like Broken Glass. We interviewed the multimedia artist in our Summer 2015 issue, where we explored her works in 2D, 3D, fiber and film. We’re thrilled to see her work up close, on view until August 31st!

Bio:

A former student of notated scholars Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, and filmmaker Agnès Varda, MacAllister is an award winning multimedia performance artist.  Her work has been showcased at Riverside Library (Lincoln Center), Boricua College (Manhattan), the Delaware Art Museum, et al Projects (NY), Glenview Mansion (MD), Commerce Square, and the swag bags at the 55th 
Annual Grammy Awards. She has showcased her films and music through Classwar Karaoke (UK), the Leap Second Festival  (Norway), University of Sussex (UK), Kongo Kanvas (PA), and at the Kyoto Hotel (Los Angeles).  MacAllister has performed at Sandy Spring Museum (MD), New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Raandesk Gallery (NY), Highwire Gallery (PA), the Rotunda (University of Pennsylvania), Cat Cat Club (Paris), Pterodactyl Gallery (PA), and Le Grand Fromage (NJ).  She has received grants from the City of Philadelphia Department of Commerce, a Fulbright-Hays award (Ethiopia), Teach for America Fellowship (2008), and a fellowship award to Lyon (2010).

Abrams Claghorn Gallery
1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 9470
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Showing July 5 – August 31, 2017
Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 – 7 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 – 7pm

Ankica Mitrovska was featured in our Spring 2015 where we specifically discussed the relationship between the aggressor and victim, the duality between powerful and vulnerable, and so much more. She’s exhibited all over the United States and internationally, including Macedonia, where she grew up. We’re thrilled Ankica has joined us for Venison’s Retrospective with ​Untitled (D.T.).

Artist Statement:

My work operates on the dualities of aggressor and victim, powerful and vulnerable, the same way along which politically driven ideologies are implemented in western contemporary society. Thus, different means of control such as surveillance over people, controlled media, and propagation of fear create social anxieties of isolation, oppression, and division. The metaphorical nature of the work is intended to be a starting point of questioning the social and political structures we live in.
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My work alternates between drawing, installation and video performance.My central interests are concerned with gender (in)equality, social (in)stability, social pressure, power relationships and the individual’s or collective psychological transformations over resisting and embracing social change.

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