Emily Silver, all images via Hannah Zhang for Art Observed
Continuing its own intriguing and honed perspective on booth its surroundings in Los Angeles and on the model of the art fair, SPRING/BREAK has once again made arrived in the California city, launching a supplementary event that offers an ample supply of artists and galleries presenting in a concept that stands as a stark contrast to the traditional fair model. Returning this year to its location in Culver City, new space continues the scrappy, raw atmosphere of past years.
Shuvina Ashoona and Padloo Samayualie
The fair has come a long way in in the past years, growing by leaps and bounds in the past several years as its annual Armory Week production in New York has filled impressively-scaled spaces with curatorial projects and proposals, while allowing galleries and artists to put on singular shows and concept-based projects. This same concept makes for a strong series of works and installations spread throughout the space, continuing the same curatorial prompt, “Naked Lunch.” “We seek Rafaelite vanishing points,” the show prompt reads, “voluminous bodies painted as if cut first in Donatello marble, then taken somewhere that accounts for all the other ideas that have shaped the human mind since 1500s Florence. Works that fixate literally or figuratively on the self portrait or artist-autobiography are also perfect here—artist process for the first time more removed from ecclesiastical benefactor-ship.”
Ryan Bock and Samantha McCurdy
The works made the most of excess and energy, from artist Emily Silver’s hyper-loaded graphical and sculptural gestures in one corner, to artists Shuvina Ashoona and Padloo Samayualie‘s collaborative works mixing together surreal gestures and landscapes, on to another collaboration, a monolithic sculpture by Ryan Bock and Samantha McCurdy. Other highlights include a range of vivid, brightly-toned compositions by artist Kathleen Henderson, as well a vivd sculpture of televisions by Parker Love Bowling and Shane McKenzie.
The show’s signature mixture of forward-thinking work, careful consideration and a subtly rebellious mentality has helped to maintain its air of detached cool and its dedication to strong work, a combo that has served both the event, and its adopted home of Los Angeles, quite well in the past half-decade.
The show closes February 19th.
Parker Love Bowling and Shane McKenzie
Kathleen Henderson
– D. Creahan
Read more:
Spring/Break Art Fair [Exhibition Site]
