SANTA MONICA, CA.- Christopher Grimes Gallery announces an exhibition of paintings by Sharon Ellis. Eight years have passed since Ellis’ last exhibition in Los Angeles. In this long-anticipated show, Ellis applies her singular vision to the representation of timeless landscapes. Working within the tradition of Romanticism and with a tangential relationship to such early modernists as Agnes Pelton and Charles Burchfield, Ellis’ paintings highlight the interplay between a visible world and an equally present, invisible one.

Ellis (Los Angeles, CA, 1955) lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work was included in the group exhibitions Eden’s Edge: Art in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and POPulence, curated by David Pagel, which traveled throughout the United States. The Long Beach Museum of Art organized a ten-year survey of Ellis’ work in 2002 entitled Evocations, which traveled to the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and San Jose Museum of Art. Ellis was also included in Flower Power at Le Consortium, Centre d’art contemporain in Lille, France.

The South Gallery features a new installation of sculpture and photographs by Dane Mitchell. Mitchell’s practice is concerned with manifesting the physical properties of the incorporeal. Through the use of scent, spells and shamans, his work channels invisible forces into concrete forms, coupling spiritual tendencies with minimalism and conceptualism. In this exhibition Mitchell presents a highly-polished three-dimensional Venn diagram: one ring is engraved “dusk,” the other “dawn.” The intersection represents an unknowable space between these two states. On the floor, four polished brass corners demarcate the space of a trapezoid. This “empty” space, intimated by the corners, becomes activated by “Sleep Architecture Scatter Piece” – the scattering of a sleeping aid within the interior space of the floor sculpture. On the walls Mitchell presents a series of six photographic prints. Taken on a microscopic camera, each contains a single piece of rheum or “sleep,” the unconscious material produced by the body that gathers in the corner of the eye during sleep.

Mitchell (Auckland, New Zealand, 1976) lives and works in Auckland. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (2012) and Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand (2011). His work has been included in exhibitions worldwide such as the Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK (2012); Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2012); and Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (2010).