Los Angeles: “The Color of Light” Solo Exhibition, Lora Schlesinger Gallery
Opening reception: December 10, 5-7PM
2525 Michigan Ave. #T3 Santa Monica, CA 90404
Lora Schlesinger Gallery presents The Color of Light, a new series of elegant and ethereal metal works by New York artist Miya Ando. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The show opens December 10, 2011 and is on view through January 14, 2012.
Miya Ando uses steel and aluminum plates with luminous mirror-like surfaces as blank canvases, reworking each surface to manipulate and enhance the natural and physical properties of metal. She uses metal finishing techniques to create quiet, minimal, meditative environments that transcend the physical properties of the metal into metaphysical landscapes.
The new body of work is created using a unique hand-dyed method new to the artist. Each plate is hand dipped into a bath of water and dye, resulting in a watercolor effect that is permanently absorbed by the material. Each piece is a practice of meditation, combining the mind and body on a singular task in hope of creating spiritual and meditative fields that come from a place of sincerity and compassion.
Miya Ando has exhibited nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions in galleries throughout Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Tokyo. She recently completed two 9/11 Memorial Sculptures from pieces of steel from the World Trade Center for the cities London, England and Santa Cruz, California. Miya’s public commissions include projects in Puerto Rico, South Korea, London, New York and California. Her work can be found in the collections of the Aldrich Contemporary Museum in Connecticut, The New House Center for Contemporary Art in New York, The Byzantine Museum in Greece and the Chapman University Collection in California. She is the recipient of the Gilber Slomowitz Foundation Grant in 2011, the Thanatopolis Special Artist Award and Public Outdoor Commission Winner and Puffin Foundation Grant winner in 2010. She received her Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude in East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley and continued her studies at Yale in 1998 in addition to an apprenticeship in 1999 to a master metal smith in Japan. Miya is half Japanese and half Russian and is a descendant of Bizen sword makers turned Buddhist priests.
The East Gallery will feature The Fifth Element, New Paintings by Susan Metzger. Susan’s intimate landscapes are ethereal while evoking a sense of the sublime. She uses bands of color to create wide-open spaces with translucent atmospheres creating calm and empty environments that cannot be entered, only contemplated. The landscapes are at odds with the East Coast’s artist’s experience in search of her subject. Exploring Maine’s turf she encounters potentially dangerous terrain that serves as an inspiration for her paintings. The result is a body of work that transforms the beauty of the sublime into a transcendental space.
Susan Metzger has exhibited nationally including exhibitions in Massachusetts , Maine, Vermont and California. She studied painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in addition to landscape architecture at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She also studied architectural drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. She is the recipient of the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship Grant in Taos, New Mexico.
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 – 5:30pm
CONTACT: Lora Schlesinger or Stephanie Mercado
ADDITIONAL EXHIBITS
Miami: Sundaram Tagore Gallery at Art Asia Fair
November 30-December 2
2901 North Miami Ave. Miami, FL 33137
http://www.soulofmiami.org/2011/11/01/art-asia-miami-2011-112911-12411
http://www.sundaramtagore.com/
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Puerto Rico: Outdoor, Ephemeral Public Project
Fist Art Foundation, February 2012
http://www.fistartfoundation.org/en/obon.html
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Santa Cruz: 9/11 Memorial Sculpture for CalFire Fire Department created from World Trade Center Steel. Unveiling December 7, 2011