SANTA MONICA.- ROSEGALLERY is presenting LIFE:STILL, a group exhibition dedicated to the imagery of trees and nature. The exhibition proposes an assemblage of artists both local and international who derive their work from surrounding landscapes and territories, allowing for varied and personal depictions.
Utilizing the visual imagery of trees and other organic forms as its focal point, the artists featured in this exhibition explore the social and environmental changes brought along by time and human civilization. Shaped by notions of climate change and impermanence, the photographs, drawings, and ceramic sculptures included in the show provide an introspective critique that documents the ever-changing character of the world.
At the center of this exhibition are the ceramic sculptures of Godeleine de Rosamel, a French artist based in Los Angeles. Her work recreates an imaginary world inspired by the natural world in which the constituent elements are pressure, matter, and change. This recreation is rendered in ceramic sculptures and installations that invoke familiar scenes in nature.
The assumptions of time, place, and identity are the main theme in the work of Albarran-Carrera, a Spanish duo who work collaboratively as photographers. Influenced by occidental and oriental philosophy, they experiment with photographic chemistry and stimulate the viewer to think about their surrounding with a new visual perception. John Chiara, a San Francisco native, pushes the boundaries of photography using large-format cameras. His imagery of trees seems to have a restricted physical light and an unlimited mystical light that emanate from inside and radiates to its surroundings. These elements congregate into a single plane of Ilfochrome, a color-dye photographic paper.
Lyrical images of the elemental subject are also the work of Rinko Kawauchi, a Japanese-based photographer, who brings the Shinto religion into her photographs, capturing ordinary moments with a hallucinatory perspective. Shaun McCracken, an Irish artist based in Los Angeles, represents the concept of the time passing by through a photographic montage developed out of an exploration of the randomness of natural patterns. Zimbabwean-born, American photographer, Barry Salzman, is an artist known for his abstracted documentarian style. The blurred trees in his photographs seem to serve as silent witnesses to the atrocities that took place in the not-too-distant past. His use of visual tools of abstraction reminds us that “that place can be any place”.
The aesthetic and practice of German photographer Elger Esser is based on the timeless romantic European landscapes. His photographs are comprised largely of air and water, light and reflection. The stillness of the landscapes and their muted dream-like palette evoke the sublime memory of lost time.
Renowned photographer Graciela Iturbide captures the diverse life and landscape of Mexico. In her photographs, the relationship between man, nature, and the concept of time is declared through visually figurative elements. Masahisa Fukase, a legend and an enigma in his native Japan, began photographing ravens as a chipper for the pain and loneliness by which he was plagued. With a grainy and raw style, he produced a body of work whose dark expressionism reflects the artistic reaction of his time. Daniel Wheeler’s drawings evoke the long and slow growth processes of trees and foliage. They act as portraits, creating a visual documentary that provides a daily measure of himself and his world.
These images are configured as an intervention and a creative trace of humanity in the environment that surrounds us.
