KIMBERLY BROOKS: The Stylist Project

February 27th, 2010

Kimberly Brooks: The Stylist Project

February 27 – April 3, 2010

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present The Stylist Project, a solo exhibition of new oil paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Kimberly Brooks. The exhibition will run from February 27 – April 3. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, February 27th from 6pm-8pm.

The Stylist Project is the first in a series of portraits of renowned stylists and fashion industry insiders who have styled themselves and posed for the artist. After delving into deeply personal subject matter for her last two exhibitions – “Momʼs Friends” in 2007 and “Technicolor Summer” in 2008 – Brooks shifts her focus outward with this new body of work. Here, she broaches the red-hot themes of fashion, style and those omnisciently responsible for setting the trends.

This exhibition features portraits of LAʼs most influential style-makers including celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe; costume designer and Madonnaʼs personal stylist Arianne Phillips; New York Times stylist Elizabeth Stewart and Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant, among others. While many of the stylists are unknown to the general public, this work turns the spotlight on them, raising questions about who is really in charge of what wear and how we choose to present ourselves. Brooksʼ paintings portray a dynamic exchange between two artists: the painter and the stylists — both of whom use various props, settings, lighting, fashion and accessories to set the canvasʼ stage.

Kimberly Brooksʼ work has been featured in numerous juried exhibitions organized by curators from the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Art Ltd., The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, Elle, C Magazine among other publications.

For additional information and images, please contact Heather Taylor at 310-559-9156 or heather@taylordecordoba.com. Taylor De Cordoba is located at 2660 South La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034.

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THE WOMEN OF WOMEN: THE FEMALE FORM

December 12th, 2009


The Women of Women: The Female Form
curated by Yasmine Mohseni
January 16, 2010 – February 20, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday January 16, 2010 from 6-8PM

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present The Women of Women: The Female Form, a group exhibition curated by Yasmine Mohseni. The multi-media exhibition examines women artists depicting the female form. In the history of art, the male gaze has traditionally determined how the female is portrayed. Male artists have long painted the female form for a male audience, therefore assuming control of how the woman is depicted. Contemporary female artists have broken the passive mold once associated with representations of women by seizing control of the gaze. These emerging artists focus on the portrayal of the female in a multitude of incarnations.

Kimberly Brooks previews a painting from her new portrait series, depicting celebrated fashion stylists in her signature saturated Hockney-inspired style. Susan Anderson spent over two years traveling the country to photograph child beauty pageant contestants in extravagant costumes and poses. The result is the portrayal of very young girls looking back at the viewer with a bold gaze one would expect to see from a mature woman. Alika Cooper approaches portraits as though they were landscapes. Her quick and instinctive hand is visible in her work, capturing emotion and narrative with just a few sparse lines.

Photographers Danielle Mourning and Roya Falahi turn the gaze onto themselves through self-portraiture. In her new series, Falahi intertwines her Iranian heritage with her love of American punk rock by photographing herself wearing a rousari, a traditional Iranian headscarf,that she has meticulously covered in silver studs. Falahi re-appropriates symbols traditionally associated with imposed submission and rebelliousness, respectively, and imbues them with new meaning, reflecting the artist’s complex and multicultural identity. Meanwhile, Mourning’s reflexive work looks more to poetry than prose. Her ethereal photographs revisit her early childhood in the Northern California, fulfilling her objective to imagine history as it once was and question how it is fixed within the present.

Yasmine Mohseni is a Los Angeles-based arts writer and independent curator. Her articles have been published in Beautiful/Decay, BlackBook, Canvas, ForYourArt.com, Newsweek, and Whitewall. She covers contemporary art and culture for magazines, with an emphasis on contemporary Middle Eastern art. Past curatorial projects include exhibitions at the Tarryn Teresa Gallery and POVevolving in Los Angeles.

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AQUA ART MIAMI 2009

November 29th, 2009

AQUA ART MIAMI – WYNWOOD 2009

KIMBERLY BROOKS
KYLE FIELD
CHARLENE LIU
CHRIS NATROP
CLAIRE OSWALT
JEANA SOHN
FROHAWK TWO FEATHERS

Taylor De Cordoba – Booth # 29

December 3 – 6, 2009.
42 NE 25th St.
Miami FL 33137 (at N Miami Ave)
Aqua Art Miami

If you are planning to attend the fair, please contact the gallery for a limited supply of complimentary passes.

Image Details: Kimberly Brooks, “The Stylist Project”, Grace Coddington, Study, 2009, oil on linen, 16″ x 12″ ; Chris Natrop, Gleaming Without Us – Moss, 2008, ultrachrome print and machined cast acrylic, 23”x31”x1 1/8”

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CHARLENE LIU: If It Were a Slow Echo

November 7th, 2009


Charlene Liu: If It Were A Slow Echo
November 7 – December 19, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday November 7, 6-8PM

Taylor De Cordoba is proud to present If It Were A Slow Echo, the gallery’s second exhibition of works on paper by Charlene Liu. The exhibition will run from November 7 – December 19, 2009 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, November 7th from 6 – 8PM.

In her new works on paper, Charlene Liu continues her interest in the natural landscape, abstracting directly from overlooked and diminutive moments of growth and decay. Many of the works allude to the vanitas of Dutch and Renaissance still-life paintings. The show’s title, If It Were a Slow Echo, recalls the transitory moments of sensory experience and the repetition of motifs that slowly weaves together patterns, lines, and color to the brink of chaotic excess. Combining collaged prints and traditional painting techniques, Liu layers, stains, and composes her paintings; interminably dissolving the transition between figure and ground. It’s an unpredictable and slow reveal with the effect of a quiet, amnesiac sense of disorientation.

In this way Liu’s work rocks back and forth between stasis and activity, order and entropy, becoming and receding. Her color palette operates similarly; in several works on paper, a subdued pastel palette resembles the color of an injury – a bruise or an infection, more than the onslaught of spring. Polka dotted hole punches appear as barnacles or parasites, traversing the picture plane at an exponential rate, bubbling and swelling in tandem with twisted brambles.

Born in Taiwan in 1975, Liu earned her MFA at Columbia University in 2003. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art in Cleveland (2008), Taylor De Cordoba in Los Angeles (2007 and 2009), Virgil de Voldère in New York (2006), and Andrea Rosen Gallery, also in New York (2003). Liu is an assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, Eugene.

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CLAIRE OSWALT: Peril In Perfection

August 27th, 2009

Claire Oswalt: Peril In Perfection
September 12 – October 31, 2009
 Opening Reception: Saturday September 12, 6-8PM

“…. yet it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.” – Dune, Frank Herbert

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Peril In Perfection, a new series of sculptural drawings by New York-based artist Claire Oswalt. The exhibition will run from September 12 – October 31, 2009 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, September 12th from 6 – 8PM. This is the artist’s second solo show with the gallery.

With her jointed figures made from wood and graphite on paper, Oswalt continues to explore the push and pull between control and freedom. In the tradition of puppets and marionettes, these pieces are designed to be controlled and moved, yet here the subjects appear abruptly frozen in the moment. The fixity of these otherwise aggressive, passionate, dynamic and often violent scenes suggests “the artist” as a master of manipulation and calculation. Although they are put into a position that lacks control, the puppets place their trust in the artist and subsequently the viewer.

While her previous body of work highlighted the vulnerability of adolescence, here Oswalt depicts scenes of aggression among primarily male adults. In one piece, two men violently wrestle each other and in another, a struggling subject is doubled over in pain. At first glance these images seem loud and explosive, yet by restricting their movement these moments become quiet places of ordered beauty.

Claire Oswalt lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She was recently included in “Under The Knife,” a group show at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA. Articles and reviews have appeared in Artweek, Angeleno Magazine and Paper among other publications.

Taylor De Cordoba is located at 2660 S La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles, CA and is open from Tuesday – Saturday, 11am-6pm. For additional press information, contact Heather Taylor at heather@taylordecordoba.com or (310) 559-9156.

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LA FASHION BLOOM

July 7th, 2009


L.A. FASHION BLOOM
Public Dates: Friday, July 10 – Saturday, August 8

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present L.A. FASHION BLOOM, a temporary fashion boutique installed in a contemporary art gallery setting. In lieu of a traditional “summer group show,” gallery co-owner Heather Taylor has curated a selection of artfully installed pieces by five Los Angeles-based fashion designers:

Melissa Coker of Wren – clothing designer
Annie Costello Brown – jewelry designer
Jesse Kamm – clothing designer
Gregory Parkinson – clothing designer
Clare Vivier – handbag and accessory designer

All items will be available for purchase and a portion of proceeds will be donated to P.S. Arts, a local organization dedicated to restoring arts education in public schools. The designers will be featuring pieces from previous seasons in addition to debuting new fall items.

Some of L.A.’s most sought after design talent will transform the space from gallery into boutique. Local artist and Reorganica designer, Tony Brown, has created reclaimed wood store fixtures. Vintage lighting and accessories are courtesy Empric with floral landscaping designed by Holly Flora. L.A. FASHION BLOOM will exist for one month.

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JEANA SOHN: Sleep Sleep

May 16th, 2009

Jeana Sohn:  Sleep Sleep
May 16 – June 27, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday May 16, 6-8PM

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Sleep Sleep, a new series of paintings on panel and an installation by Los Angeles-based artist Jeana Sohn. The exhibition will run from May 16 through June 27, 2009.  The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, May 16 from 6-8PM.

Drawing upon mythologies and the vastness of nature, Jeana Sohn paints peaceful scenes that are filled with anxiety. While aiming to express her connection to nature in these paintings, she widens the conversation to the relationship between humans and the natural world in general. Her images are undeniably gorgeous – a pretty, fashionable young girl (resembling a well dressed paper doll) floating amidst vividly colored roses is a recurring image and an appealing one. Yet, the characters Sohn imagines seem more lost than found, more frightened and overwhelmed than peaceful. A girl trying to untangle herself from a seemingly never-ending pile of rope exemplifies this.

It is exactly this tension that makes takes Sohn’s work from the level of appealing to utterly fascinating. And here, the little girl lost theme will be more disarming than ever as Sohn moves away from her traditional 2-D style and creates a life-size paper mache sculpture of a six-year-old girl.

Jeana Sohn graduated from Cal Arts in 2004. Her artwork has been exhibited in various exhibitions around the country and included in numerous publications. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

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TIMOTHY HULL: Justified And Ancient: (What Time Is Love?)

April 4th, 2009

Timothy Hull: Justified and Ancient (What Time is Love?)

April 4th, 2009 – May 9th, 2009

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Justified and Ancient: (What Time is Love?) a solo show by New York-based artist Timothy Hull. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday April 4 from 6 – 8PM.

For his second solo show with the gallery, Hull shifts his focus from the themes relating to the Russian mystic Gurdjeiff to the topic of Egypt as cultural obsession.  Hull’s interest in Egypt stems from the ways in which Egyptian motifs, mysteries and history have been appropriated, quantified and qualified by westerners since the Victorian age.

Hull presents a variety of media in this new installation composed of discrete objects: graphite drawings incorporating collage; hyper-detailed blue ink drawings depicting Egyptian landscape scenes; improbable travel posters; a wall installation featuring clocks, primary and secondary source material; and a soundtrack of Egyptian contemporary dance music that accompanies a video of a Nile cruise disco masquerade party, taken on his April 2008 research trip to Egypt. Here, he questions the signifiers and conceptual indicators that revolve around traditional “Egypt” images, orientalism and the aura of Egyptian tourism.

Timothy Hull lives and works in New York City. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Brown Project Space in Milan, Museum 52 in New York, The Morris Museum of Art in New Jersey, and Freight+Volume, Klaus Von Nichtssagend and Bellwether, all in New York. Hull has been featured in Artforum.com, The Huffington Post, LA Weekly, Flash Art, NY Arts Magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

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MELISSA MANFULL: Tesseracts

February 21st, 2009

Melissa Manfull: Tesseracts

February 21 – March 28, 2009

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Tesseracts, a new series of drawings by Los Angeles-based artist Melissa Manfull. The exhibition will run from February 21 – March 28, 2009.  The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday February 21 from 6pm-8pm.

In this new group of unframed ink on paper pieces, Melissa Manfull creates impossible worlds and structures. Much like science fiction writer Charles Howard, who coined the word “Tesseract” (the four-dimensional analog of the cube) in the late 19th century, Manfull is interested in a reality beyond what we can see and understand in a 3-dimensional world.

Drawing inspiration from science fiction, gothic architecture and mineralogy, Manfull explores the conceptual and visual analogies between naturally occurring structures and those made by humans. Visually, her drawings of towers, arches and organic bursts are arrestingly beautiful and overwhelming in their obsessive detail. Thousands of tiny lines compose the architecture she imaginatively creates.

At once delicate and bold, the work straddles our notions of temporal reality. Are we looking at an existing metropolis, a futuristic utopia or a flashback to Victorian England?  Manfull is indeed influenced by Gothic architecture and pulls her muted palette of pinks, moss greens, blues and grays from Victorian interiors and textiles.

Melissa Manfull received her MFA from Concordia University Montreal in Canada and has exhibited her artwork at The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, High Energy Constructs in Los Angeles, and Bourget Gallery in Montreal, among others.  She lives and works in Los Angeles.

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RYAN CALLIS: Are You Ready to Testify?

January 10th, 2009

Ryan Callis: Are You Ready to Testify

January 10 – February 14, 2009

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Are You Ready to Testify, a new series of paintings by Southern California-based artist Ryan Callis. The exhibition will run from January 10 through February 14, 2009. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday January 10 from 6pm-8pm.

The exhibition consists of paintings that operate conversationally, as phrases and sentences in a larger dialogue. To create the paintings’ architectural structures, Callis uses a system that codes phrases and words into geometric forms without visually making use of text. While the completed paintings do not directly reflect the original texts, every gesture, shape and concept organically flows from this unique coded system. A palette of vibrant (nearly acidic) blues, greens, yellows and pinks creates elegant passages of paint flows and color gradations.

The conception for this series of work was influenced largely by Nam June Paik’s Fluxus film, Zen For Film (1962-1964), the 1996 Dischord Records release of the self proclaimed “gospel yeah, yeah” sound of the Make-Up’s debut album, Destination: Love, Live at Cold Rice, and David Hockney’s book That’s the Way I See Things.

This is the artist’s second solo show at Taylor De Cordoba. His work has been featured in Artweek and the OC Weekly. Ryan Callis was recently included in Christopher Knight’s article for the Los Angeles Times, “45 Under 45.” He received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2007.

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