A Muse Visits! Understanding two unusual exhibits at the Regen Projects Gallery, Santa Monica Blvd

We are drawn to Art Galleries for various reasons. It could be to keep up with fashionable art, purchase for our collection, get inspired for our own missions in life or just be entertained and amused.


Art which turns expected idiom on its head provides more. One is challenged to look at the fabric of connections of everything we have, who we are and what we assume. So I try to being to you artists that do offer sufficient of a mental whirl and and impression to potentially satisfy all these needs.

Our review of the photographic part of the 2 exhibits is posted here, while Pernice's installations will be covered there shortly.

In this thread, however, we share our reactions to being there and acclimatizing to the very unique and exceptional photography and sculpture. My own photography below is in homage to the two artists celebrated in The Regen Projects exhibition until August 16th 2014. The gallery is located at 6570 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90038, 310-276-5424 Admission is free.

The Regen Projects is an art gallery that's very well considered in Los Angeles. It's located on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, just close to the dragon mural I've shared here.





Right now they are hosting two exhibits which I will review shortly. For now suffice to say that the first artist, a photographer, SCOTT MCFARLAND, showing "Simultaneous contrasts", is from Canada and his work appears here in two versions, one color and the other, closely related but different and in B&W. The contrast juxtaposed is interesting but for me difficult as one image interferes with its sibling. He constructs scenes which, although they seem to be realistic, at first, are actually a collage of images shot over a long period of time.

The other exhibit is of the German architectural - scatter art sculptor, MANFRED PERNICE, who puts together, (often, seemingly incomplete), assemblies of things, that remind him of places, previous exhibits or some tale he's heard. Or it could contrast an exhibit in Germany with buildings in New York, but all represented in a lot of arranged household "stuff" in pressboard or plywood boxes, sometimes mounted on the wall under glass, but containing ordinary objects, for which either one creates a connection and is impressed or dismisses the whole lot as nonsense!






Pernice also has shown previously here, (this is his 4th Regen Projects show), in New york and all over Europe, a more formally constructed set of architectural forms and collections of household items, all in a state of unfinshedness as if he built things in a high school project, but very neatly. He uses wood and also a lot of pressboard and or containers or open sculptures made of planes of material with perhaps sections cut out or else tiles, posters or pictures stuck on or even a splash of paint, but nothing polished to any gallery-ready perfection we'd expect in so -called -"fine art". But here it was just the rectangular containers for his his chart of memories, complexity and connections.

So we visited, but not having a storyteller to stand in for the architect - sculptor, I photographed Kate, (my photography assistant), looking at each set up and trying to figure things out. Well, of course, it's a huge challenge since one needs to know the language of the presentations and reviews to weave any fabric of understanding related to the artists intent.....and the artist does have a voice, (it's just on the borderline between provocative and esthetic and, to the uninitiated, conceit supported by elites that dote on his organized irrelevance). To Pernice, the assembled collected "things", shown in handmade presentation boxes of plywood, makes all the necessary memory connections, (like some analog computer, made of common things found around the house, perhaps). So, if we can plug into this lucidity, we could figure out our own relationships to the multitude of small items we use, collect, throw away, places we visit and leave behind, magazines we read and so on, all the things we see, touch, hear about and do!

So having no guide for this, I settled, accepting that the performance going on was me being flummoxed, watching Kate examine each box of goods on the ground or on the wall in an attempt to at least make sense of what we were, ourselves doing.

Here's some samples of our work looking at the exhibit by Pernice. I'll start with our work product and then show the introduction! So here's Kate looking into a glass covered showcase box mounted on the wall.





What was inside was very ordinary, stuff one might find left around after a meal perhaps, or on grandma's bookcase, but nothing that seemed to carry any message for me. From here, hopefully you will be armed with perplexion and better able to experience Pernice's work.

In homage to Scott Macfarland's dual presentation of photographs in color and in B&W, I'll try to do that where it seems to have value in, as he advocates, exploring the qualities of color versus B&W in showing us aspect of the same or similar art. So I'm game for that too and I'll post a B&W version below, but separated by some text to reset one's perspective.





In this collage, we see on the left, Kate staring into a pretty mundane box covered with glass and with a few shelves and scant objects. Here we can only make out her reflection. To the right is a close up and the transition is made from combinations of the two and some added artwork of mine. It's meant to record our attempt at completing the arc of creative communication with Pernice, and we have more questions than answers. But at least we challenged ourselves.




................and now the B&W version




The idea the McFarland appears to have for his own pairs of collages, B&W and color, is to explore the scene elements in two different worlds of expression. Do you have the same reactions in each and can one divorce one from the other. Can one ignore what one has already felt from the previous version or is it possible to segregate our reactions?


Your comments and critique welcomed!


Asher

Hi, Asher,

All very interesting.

I especially like this one:

So here's Kate looking into a glass covered showcase box mounted on the wall.

Asher Kelman: Reflection in Pernice's showcase

Sony A7r, 55mm Zeiss f 1.8

processed in standard way in Capture One 7 from DSC RAW file, no manipulations otherwise

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The gray mat is very effective here.

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug

I also like the "Reflection in Pernice's showcase" very much.

Perhaps a set of three or more similar images would be interesting...

Thank you for posting your experience about seeing work by such great masters.

Doug,

Thanks for your choice of favorite. I see you go for factual purity. I've been careful not to manipulate that primary image. Even in the collage, above, I am conservative, but the middle section of that collage has my obvious artistic liberties at play, I must admit.

Antonio Correia said:

I also like the "Reflection in Pernice's showcase" very much.

Perhaps a set of three or more similar images would be interesting...

Thank you for posting your experience about seeing work by such great masters.

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Antonio,

I'm delighted that you visit! I'll add a link to my review of the exhibition, shortly!


Asher

It's a matter of refleection!

Antonio,

As you requested, a simple Triptych of 3 views of Kate, our muse, examining the wall mounted works by Pernice. Each is a presentation case made of plywood or pressboard with simple shelves, according to his "get it done, sparse construction style. There are a scant few objects inside each one, but in a specific arrangement with other shelves empty, as if the one's showcased are specifically selected for some connections, shock value or memories. We are not told whether or not the pieces included constitute sufficient of a message or whether we supposed to elaborate and perhaps add our own memories and incidents to the his offerings.

So looking, requires an attempt to imagine what Pernice intends and to imagine what he'd expect or to put that aside and just use the opportunity to reflect on our own existence within a myriad of interconnections and new or discarded "things" we value or discard, remember of forget.


Here's a triptych of reflections from Pernice Display Cases on the wall s of the Regen Project Gallery.





The images are not manipulated in any way, just optimized by merely adjusting the curves to allow the reflections to develop from their ghostly origins.



Your comments and critique would be valued and appreciated!


Asher

Asher,

Really love the three images framed together, they have an elegance in their combined flowing composition.

Very nice work. Also think you have found a way to present the work in a way that reflects a quality that is closer to looking at an actual print. I'm a real fan of that.

Best, Bill

Bill McCarthy said:

Asher,
Really love the three images framed together, they have an elegance in their combined flowing composition.
Very nice work. Also think you have found a way to present the work in a way that reflects a quality that is closer to looking at an actual print. I'm a real fan of that.
Best, Bill

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Thanks so much Bill for stopping by and your encouraging comments!

My efforts are to use the thrill I have of experiencing the art exhibition to stimulate my own work. We really owe a great deal to the risk-taking that galleries undertake in order to exploit unique voices in art. When it works well, artists are fed, restaurants are busy and the public gets to see artwork that otherwise might be hidden from us when they join the flow of privately traded art to select "favored" collectors.

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

...

Asher Kelman​

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Here is an excellent example of good photography and good presentation.
The three images connect to each other, like a sequence when approaching the portrayed person, while changing the overall color and the mood of the scene.

It looks like she is in search of something while we - the observers - dive into her mind trying to scan her thoughts, feelings or emotions.

It is good we can't see her face clearly. It is good to see the grain increasing from left to right, after all it is our sense of reading isn't it ? Trying to read her thoughts or intentions...

The presentation is also a bonus here. The position of the three images inside a white framed devision and then three canvas one black, the other white in only two sides (perhaps it is something you have to review) and finally the dark grey one with a big visual impact making everything to stand up.

I also like the subtlety of the text on the bottom right.

Well done Asher, well done !