FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mark Acetelli –Stripped
Luc Arten - Red Series
June 30 – July 21, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 30, 6 – 10pm
5820 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Contact, James Panozzo
323-935-9100, Fax 323-935-9113
E-mail: james@lawrenceasher.com
Web site: http://www.lawrenceasher.com
Gallery hours, Tuesday – Friday 11am – 5pm, Saturday, 12noon - 5pm
Mark Acetelli, Icarus, 2007, mixed media on canvas, 48" x 24".
Lawrence Asher Gallery presents new works by Luc Arten painted only in hues of red. With expert technique and subtle variations of light Luc delivers the sensory impact of a full spectrum of color to these provocative depictions of women.
Mark Acetelli’s first solo exhibition at Lawrence Asher Gallery offers a collection of multi-media constructs of charcoal, tar, found objects and paint. These layered organic manifestations are inspired by the elegance of decay to yield haunting, timeless images of characters and scenes.
Please join us for the opening reception of this exceptional exhibition on Saturday, June 30th, 2007, 6 – 10 pm. Lawrence Asher Gallery is located at 5820 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and adjacent to the Craft and Folk Art Museum. Free parking is available on Wilshire Blvd. and behind 5858 Wilshire Boulevard. Enter on Stanley Ave. For more information, please call 323.935.9100 or visit http://www.lawrenceasher.com
Luc Arten, Red Couch, 2007, oil on canvas, 37" x 27".
The Artists
Luc Arten –
This series is all red. Images of nudity. This follows the women series done in 2005. I feel two characters live inside each of these women. The red puts distance between the viewer and these erotic images. The monochromatic makes them clear, defined. Women with their power and their weakness, the seduction game they play, between submission and aggression. Are they victims? Are they the prey or the hunter? They prey on a society of men's desires, willingness. It's a testimony and an appeal. On the verge of erotic, the images are not about art, but desire through the paint and the canvas. They have become more about beauty, not mere sexuality. Erotic images are about power, hidden behind a veil of beauty, but above the desire, remains the use of a human being who fakes the real love, the one perhaps they don't have for themselves.
- Luc Arten
Luc is a native of Paris, France, where he studied and exhibited painting before moving to California with his wife and two children in 2004. He has supported himself and his family through comic illustration, animation, murals and portrait painting while continuing several series over 10 years.
Mark Acitelli –
I started painting through an unusual, but evolved course. As a professional musician for most of my life, my need to express myself in other media intrigued me. Painting is very similar to making music. Tones and textures are like sounds on a canvas; it is a visual and melodious link to the soul.
I utilize a mixed media of acrylics, charcoal, tar, and found objects. I incorporate them together with layers upon layers of paint and a combination of words and phrases. Through this process, I seek to evoke a feeling rather than depict a defined image, one that is ever-changing in all its complexities from the fragile to the seductive, beautiful to the mysterious.
My most recent paintings are inspired by what I call the “elegance of decay”. Things that are distressed, old and weathered as if the hands of time have stripped and eroded the surface of the painting to reveal a beauty all of their own.
As a self- taught artist, I let the muse come to me and then let it spill onto the canvas, like a river to the sea. It is an intense creative process that is both primal and visceral. Pure emotion in motion. As if the painting paints itself. I am merely a conduit that transcends from the intangible to the tangible.
- Mark Acitelli
Mark was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1969. He was raised by creative parents in Florida where he taught himself to play guitar by age thirteen. Writing music and playing in bands fueled his creativity until his mid-twenties. He began painting between sessions and touring and soon it became his complete passion and primary form of expression. Mark has exhibited and sold to collectors in New York, Miami and Los Angeles over the past ten years.
