Image
Daniel Alejandro Trejo, Dark Star, 2023, Fired ceramic, house paint and nail polish, 11 x 12.5 in (28 x 31.75 cm)
Open Air - Tryst Art Fair
Monte Vista Projects is participating in Tryst Art Fair with Open Air – a curatorial project of outdoor drawing and painting organized by Monte Vista member-artist Sarah Granett.
Open Air
Artists: Carl Baratta, Sarah Granett, Amanda Mears, and Anthony Prud’homme
Location: Space 2, Tryst Art Fair, 21515 Hawthorne Blvd, Torrance, CA 90503
PREVIEW: Friday, October 27th: 4-6pm
Saturday, October 28th: 12-6pm
Sunday, October 29th: 12-6pm
Introduction
Most Fridays these three artists and I meet to draw and paint at Griffith Park, Los Angeles' beloved urban wild space. We tend to settle in different spots from week to week, and we each draw or paint with a kit of our own design. We talk and laugh a lot, catching up on our lives and studio practices. The thrilling part is the moment near the end, before packing up, when we share what we've made. Sitting amongst the trees, grasses, and rocks, visited occasionally by critters and curious passersby, chattering mindlessly or drifting into silent focus as the activity consumes full attention-- after a couple hours working in this way, each of us has followed a personal interpretation to arrive at a piece that is unique, yet displays common themes. And here they are. This installation of drawings and paintings gathers a sampling of what we have collectively found. All the pieces were made on site, in Griffith Park. —Sarah Granett
En plein air (pronounced [ɑ̃ plɛ.n‿ɛʁ]; French for 'outdoors'), or plein-air painting, is the act of painting outdoors. — Wikipedia
Artist Statements
Plein air is a way for me to get away from distractions and immerse myself into the hills of Hollywood. At least that's how it started for me back in 2017. Since then it's become much more than that. During the pandemic it became a way to bring along artist friends and have a sense of community when mostly folks were isolated.
The act of going out and drawing from what I see in front of me has always fed my studio practice, albeit indirectly. In the studio I've noticed that I am always trying to create something from scratch. Desperately hoarding source material, furious sketches, abandoned compositions: it's all part of my studio process. By going outside and being inspired by nature I have the opposite task; there's too much to draw. Instead of drumming up compositions in my studio, when I'm outside I find myself figuring out what not to draw. It doesn't always work out, but sometimes what I filter outside into my drawings gets hauled back to my studio and gives me ideas to feed into longer term painting projects. Like I said, often the drawings I bring back are their own thing, but what I always bring back is a sense of experimentation and new experiences that helps me make work that, on a good day, makes the whole endeavor feel fresh.
There are many ways to parse the complexity of an ecosystem such as Griffith Park. My approach is intuitive and perceptual. I slow down and tune in. I begin to sense rhythms and visual organization in the environment around me. My main materials are wax crayons and watercolor. I work on paper, occasionally incorporating collage. Wax and water materials don’t combine easily and I find their physical tension evocative. While looking and drawing responsively, as I take in sense perceptions, combining scribble gestures with saturated washes of color,I watch as specificities of the place and time emerge in the forms of the drawing through my hand which has leaped ahead of any mental schema. I go for a felt truthfulness over mimetic accuracy. In the end the drawing demonstrates one possibility, not an answer as if to a problem. Each drawing seems to become a space in itself and contributes to an open-ended project of landscape and response.
Outside, nothing is fixed. Everything flickers and shifts in the changing light. There is no possibility of control. The paintings and drawings I make in Griffith Park are an inquiry, an exploration and also a record of time passing. They are responses to a place, not direct representations. The experience of regularly drawing and painting directly from nature has become the engine that drives my studio work. The paintings I make in our weekly sessions is reprocessed in the studio into figurative paintings which investigate, via materials and mark-making, how we inscribe ourselves onto the landscape.
Plein air painting has been a foundational part of painting for me, and along with live figure drawing is how I learned to see the world in greater detail. There are no other times in my life when I sit and look closely at a subject for such a long time. This intense focus has emerged as a key element of the practice the more our world has become enmeshed with the internet. Plein air requires a concentration that works to psychically balance against these constant demands on our attention.
Plein air is the flip side of the coin to my studio practice. In both cases I work directly from observation. Time stands still when working from a photograph in the studio, whereas with plein air, you feel the pressure of time and see the light changing. There is a freedom in painting nature that I don’t find anywhere else. I make my most personal painterly marks when I paint in plein air. The subject more easily escapes the perfectionism and tendency to try to make things look accurate that we are all taught as we learn to draw.
Most of my plein air painting is done within a short period of time, which opens me up to experimentation. Time imposes boundaries that encourage spontaneity.
TRYST presents a panorama of diverse artistic voices addressing a range of issues from different types of artist groups, with various structures, that exemplify the myriad ways that these initiatives support and grow the art world. From the newly founded, to the ‘established’ groups across LA, international, and national groups, TRYST offers a wider view of the current developments in emerging contemporary art as well as insight into the many ways artists form, and run grass-roots organizations and art spaces.
Participating Spaces:
After Time Collective (Portland, OR), Altan Klamovka (Prague, Czech Republic), Dinghy Rig (Fort Collins, CO), DUO Contradiction (Stockholm, Sweden), DXIX (Colorado), ETAJ (Bucharest, Romania), Farm & Distillery (Berlin, Germany), Free range (Chicago, IL), Gallery 70 (Tirana, Albania), Gallery Lara (Tokyo, Japan), HilbertRaum (Berlin, Germany), Galique (Gyumri, Armenia), Hyperlink (Denver, CO), MalerinnenNetzWerk (Berlin, Germany), MPAC (Zurich, Switzerland), The New Museum of Networked Art (Germany), Nulobaz (Tel Aviv,Israel), OJOMX (Mexico City, MX), Our Neon Foe (Sydney, Australia), Pastor Projects (Tecate, MX), Proyectos Raul Zamudio (NYC), Struggling Art Space (Hong Kong/UK),
Southern California:
515, Art In Room, Artbug, A&T Gallery, AWOL, DMST Atelier, Dorado 806, Durden and Ray, Erect Walls, The Floating Gallery, Gallery ALSO, Idolwild, Junior High LA, LAST Projects, Landmarks of Art (LOA), Lauren Powell Projects, Libertine, Proxy Gallery, MAARLA, The Middle Room, Monte Vista Projects, Munzon Gallery, OCCCA, Open Mind Art Space, Pio Pico, Prospect Art, Portuguese Bend Projects, Ruth Gallery, S-Gallery, Shallow Bath, Shit Art Club, Shockboxx Gallery, Space Ten Gallery, Studio 203, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Toy Bin Art, UOOORS, ViCA, Winslow Garage, Wonzimer
Lawn Ornaments in My Back Yard (LOIMBY)
ANNOUNCING Lawn Ornaments in My Back Yard (LOIMBY), a public installation presented by artist-run initiatives MAIDEN LA, Monte Vista Projects, and Typical Office. LOIMBY will take place at OPaf (Other Places art fair), March 14 and 15, 2020, 12-6pm, at Battery Leary-Merriam, Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, California.
This outdoor exhibition includes lawn ornaments by 48 participating artists and collectives along with a picnic area installation conceived by Typical Office. Additionally, there will be a live performance on Sunday, March 15 by Hannah Hughes. Staying true to Maiden LA’s mission of inclusivity, LOIMBY is the result of an open call inviting any and all Los Angeles artists to submit a lawn ornament of their own creation.
Participating Artists include:
Alex Kay
Andrea Bersaglieri Andrea Castillo
Ashton Phillips
Chris Hanke
Christina Shurtz
Cliff Shurtz
Cortnee Brush
Dakota Noot
Danny Angel Escalante Debra Broz
Ellen Jong
Erin Fussell
Hagop Najarian
Hannah Hughes
Heather Medure
Iris Peretz
Jamie Hamilton
Jane O'Neill
Janna Avner
Javier Proenza
Jennie Park
Jeremy Quinn
Jessica Goehring
Jillian Frederick
Juan Villarreal
Justin Stadel
Kagan Taylor & Justin Rice
Karah Lain
Kate Sikorski
Larissa Nickel
Laura Darlington
Laura Paul
Lois Keller
Mary-Linn Hughes
Matthew Kerkhof
Michael Rippens
Molly Painter
Molly Schulman
Nathan See
Nicolas Grenier
OneHouse Arts
Piper Mavis
Richelle Gribble
Robert Fitzgerald
Surge Witrön
The Artists Formerly Known as Women
Toban Nichol
About Artist-run Initiatives:
Typical Office is an ongoing project critiquing the "genius" concept. Every project is a collaboration of all the people involved typicaloffice.com
Monte Vista Projects is a Los Angeles based artist-run collective established in 2007. Through exhibitions, lectures, events, and performances, MVP strives to question existing standards that
emerge from academia and contemporary art institutions. Monte Vista Projects collaborates with local, national, and international artist-run spaces. We prioritize working with under-represented artists to broaden access to artistic discourse montevistaprojects.com
Maiden LA is an inclusive and expansive county-wide survey of art happenings that in encouraging the use of alternative spaces, considers the city as a platform for generative discourse and exchange. Maiden LA is an egalitarian program aiming to dissolve hierarchies by including everyone who wants to participate. Maiden LA‘s relevance is amplified in today’s political climate, as our ethos is one that eschews corporate backing and is accessible to artists who find it difficult to navigate the art world’s various social and fiscal constructs maiden.la
For any press inquiries, please email info@maiden.la.
Call and Response show in Berlin
Call and Response
June 7 - 23, 2019
Kronenboden of Berlin, Monte Vista Projects of Los Angeles and MADLAB of Rotterdam have partnered to present Call and Response, an exhibition of collaborative artworks for B-LA Connect. From June 7th to June 23rd, a selection of works from members of Monte Vista Projects and MADLAB will be on display at Kronenboden in Berlin. This exhibition is a continuation of a Monte Vista Projects / MADLAB exchange and residency that began in March, 2019. MADLAB members worked in residence at an offsite Monte Vista Projects studio to create site specific works reacting to the Los Angeles environment, to the members of Monte Vista Projects and to themselves. Their efforts were displayed for Co/Lab IV at the Torrance Art Museum, the fourth iteration of an ongoing international project with Los Angeles artist run initiatives in exchange with initiatives from other cities.
To continue the collaborative nature employed during MADLAB’s residency, Monte Vista Projects and MADLAB have created the joint project Call and Response. The members of MADLAB returned to Rotterdam in April 2019 and created a series of postcards based on the artworks they produced for Co/Lab IV. These postcards were sent to members of Monte Vista Projects, who responded with their own original postcard-sized works of art. This collection of postcards will be featured in the exhibition at Kronenboden, as well as a documentary film created by Roland Spitzer of the MADLAB project during their Los Angeles residency. The documentary captures the personal and professional sentiments of the MADLAB members that evolved during the residency in Los Angeles and will be played as part of an immersive, site specific installation at Kronenboden.
Email MADLAB at madlabcrew@gmail.com or visit http://madlabstudio.nl.
Email Kronenboden at info@kronenboden.de or visit http://www.kronenboden.de.