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DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS PRESENTS Spirits of LA LOS ANGELES MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY Exhibition Dates: January 18 – April 20, 2008
Showcasing the work of Armando Baeza, Raúl Baltazar, Patricia Boyd, Roberto L. Delgado, Kathi Flood, John H. Jones, Leo Limon, Pola Lopez, Dorothy Magallon, TotiO’Brien, Paul Pitsker, Annie Sperling, Cindy Suriyani, and Linda Vallejo, with guest curator Raoul de la Sota.
The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) is pleased to present Spirits of Los Angeles at the Municipal Art Gallery. The exhibition brings together artists whose work deals with spirits of the past, memories and ancestral history as well as present-day forces that play an important part in their creative process. This exhibit demonstrates some of the ethereal spirits, legends, and stories that either historically, culturally or metaphysically inhabit Southern California and are eventually visualized by the minds of these artists. While the show is thematically and geographically focused, the concepts used are universal. As we live in an urban concentration, many of our recollections, dreams and thoughts, as well as nightmares, accompany us throughout our lives. In this show those manifestations are personified in paintings, installations, and sculptures. Linda Vallejo states, “Nature sits quietly by, encircling and describing us all, as we watch war and pollution ravage our world. The Ferris Wheel reminds us that war, death and destruction are not child’s play, and that we are culpable in our everyday actions and choices. These painful illustrations are then balanced by tranquil images of nature and beauty, a place of solace, rejuvenation, and transformation. The Ferris Wheel is joined in this exhibition by A Prayer for the Earth Installation which combines landscape paintings and earth-based sculpture to represent beauty and spirit, and a mixed-media mandala with images of pollution and indigenous cultures in the act of ceremony and prayer. The Rocket, an eco-sculpture, helps to expose the absurdity and complexity of modern life in the face of devastating pollution and destruction of natural resources.” William Moreno, Executive Director, Claremont Museum of Art, California, states, “Vallejo’s interests and subject-matter spans are considerable. Themes of beauty, consumption, war, excess, world pollution, iconic references to international indigenous peoples and earth-based installations all reside in her works. Her work is not held hostage by fashion or trend – rather she is a singular voice with apparitions all her own.” Dr. Betty Ann Brown, states “Vallejo laments pollution in Post-modern assemblages that combine computer-generated imagery with Styrofoam and other cultural detritus. Even as Vallejo creates beauty from such debased materials, she asks us to lament the trash we produce so copiously. Both formally and conceptually, Vallejo’s assemblages recall the monumental industrially based sculptures of Lee Bontecou. They are similarly attractive and unsettling.” |
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