FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Selected Stories
Curated by Vonn Sumner
September 5 - October 6, 2007
Artists’ Reception: Thursday, September 6, 6-9pm
In conjunction with the Downtown Art Walk
PHARMAKA
101 West 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90013
A Non-Profit Institution in Downtown Los Angeles’ Gallery Row District
Contacts: Vonn Sumner, Curator (714) 206-8195, Rebecca O’Leary, Gallery (213) 689-7799
Gallery, 213-689-7799
E-mail, info@pharmaka-art.org
Web site, http://www.pharmaka-art.org
Gallery Hours: Wednesday through Saturday 12 – 6 pm
Second Thursday Downtown Art Walks: September 13, 12 - 9 pm
http://www.downtownartwalk.com
LOS ANGELES, CA - This exhibition focuses on four artists, Loretta Bourque, Hazel Collins, Jessie Henson, and Johanna Byström Sims. Each artist uses narrative in her paintings or drawings, each in a subtle, personal and idiosyncratic way. Each uses very different types of painting and drawing to arrive at her destination.
Loretta Bourque uses a very traditional looking vessel, oil on canvas, to contain unmistakably contemporary notions of gender, culture, sexuality and humor. Hazel Collins uses more industrial materials - mostly wood and enamel - to make paintings that are somewhere between religious icons and stage set pieces. Jessie Henson employs materials traditionally associated with folk art, such as embroidery and yarn, to explore a very personal territory of meaning, memory and loss. Johanna Byström Sims uses spare, austere, means-black ink on white paper-to build cityscapes and dreamscapes that are familiar yet startling and new. The result in each case is a highly inventive pictorial world that follows its own set of rules. These artists invite the viewer to take the time to look as the specific narrative unfolds slowly before their eyes.
Three of the artists live in New York City, the other lives in Chicago, but their approach to picture making is not tied to a specific region or school. If anything the artists’ approaches may be influenced by their living in big cities where many realities collide and produce unexpected moments and juxtapositions. This will be the first exhibition at Pharmaka to showcase artists from these two major American cities. Up until now almost every show at the downtown LA gallery has focused on artists in or around Los Angeles. The urban environment of downtown is the perfect setting to stage this exhibition of narrative art conceived and executed in this country’s great metropolises. Selected Stories is curated by Vonn Sumner, an L.A. based painter who is a founding member of Pharmaka. Sumner also organized the Pharmaka exhibitions “How It Happens” and “NonObjectivity,” both in 2006.
