Coming Together: Painting Group Exhibit, presented by Sonny Ruscha Bjornson and Laura Grover
Feb 3 - Feb 18, 2012
Opening: Friday, February 3, 7-10pm
COMING TOGETHER is a group painting exhibition curated by Sonny Ruscha Bjornson and Laura Grover. The show, which opens Friday, February 3, showcases pieces from six Southern California-based contemporary painters, all working within the spectrum of figural representation. The artists also share an active and sincere engagement with the exploration of formal issues of color, surface, and medium—what paint itself is capable of expressing—as well as what the practice of being an artist in the studio means today.
The painters featured are Kimberly Brooks, Andrew Foster, Rives Granade, Sydney Littenberg, Sean P. McGaughey, and Anne-Elizabeth Sobieski. The opening reception for COMING TOGETHER is on Friday, February 3 from 7-10PM; the artists will be present. The exhibition runs through February 18, and is hosted by Fabien Fryns Fine Art.
Additional exhibitions presented by Sonny Ruscha Bjornson and Laura Groverin this space will be announced shortly, including shows featuring Morissa Maltz and Christian Tedeschi. For more information contact us at 323-998-6236 or info@fabienfryns.com.
Zhou Yilun (b. 1983)
Pay Back the Money that You Owe
Sep 10 - Dec 17, 2011
Fabien Fryns Fine Art is pleased to announce Zhou Yilun’s debut solo exhibition in the US from September 10 through December 17, 2011.
During his residency in Los Angeles over the past summer, Zhou spent everyday investigating different neighborhoods and treasure-hunting at vintage stores. Working mainly at night, he would then ¬recollect his diurnal impressions and translate them to his paintings and collages incorporating imagery culled from pornographic magazines, lifestyle publications, discarded photographs by strangers and gossip columns on the Internet. His new body of work manifests his penchant to intervene in media constructions of pop culture and challenge the viewer’s aesthetic comfort with his barbarous, whimsical and desultory style, both in the choice of materials and his pictorial manner.
A set of eight collages, paintings and painted photographs is mostly recycled with discarded or used materials collected by Zhou in Los Angeles. Each piece, be it a paper collage of Hollywood celebrities in Bikinis or a sketch of a naked woman riding on an alligator or a painted portrait of a young Chinese communist couple holding hands, seems to tell an ambiguous tale. Jointly however they ostensibly coalesce a ridiculed sociological landscape of our society. The largest canvas painting in the exhibition is titled “Hope Is Like Candles That Are Reminiscent Of Neon Lights” The painting in charcoal, contrasting to his usual simplified composition, depicts a seized moment at a boisterous banquet. The glasses are empty. The plates are pushed aside. Hundreds of satiated, naked, big-bellied and middle-finger-flipping banquet goers are sitting back in their chairs cheerfully staring at the viewer. The surface of the painting is then slashed and vandalized. The original photograph that this painting is derived from is juxtaposed on the wall. A viscous layer of white acrylic paint is plagued on top of the photograph, which conceals a large portion of the image. In the white paint, an ice cream cone is concaved. On the intentionally exposed fringes of the photo, the viewer can easily make out the formally dressed and happily fed men and women at the banquet tables. It was the photo of the employee Christmas banquet of 7up Corporation in 1960. On the associated painting, Zhou cleverly adulterates the picture with vulgarity and levity to switch the time and the space to an anachronistic state of mind. With precipitate and frenzy charcoal strokes and the graffiti action of tagging, Zhou seems to enjoy making a “bad” painting to subject the established aesthetic tastes and social values to vicious intervention and sarcasm. His provocative attitude does not emerge as a surprise. An iconoclast, Zhou lives outside the art communities in a remote neighborhood of Hangzhou, China. He surrounds himself with people whom are often misunderstood as outcasts. He finds their eccentric characters and non-conformist visions more agreeable with his own recalcitrant and humorous nature.
Not all of his works measure up equally in terms of their execution. His meticulous drawing on a piece of 4-by-3-inch oval tracing paper, titled “A Portrait with the Crashed UFOs,” depicts three soldiers, judging by their uniforms, from the World War II era proudly posing with two unknown opaque objects: one beside them and the other behind them. With all the convoluted details, it is easily mistaken for a black-and-white photograph. The drawing is then framed in a weathered brass pendant to further give a mocked banal appearance. The message underlined is not immediately clear. What clear is that Zhou intends to tease the viewer with ambiguity to arouse the senses of anachronism, happenstance and fantasy. In his own words, Zhou articulates that “painting is about representing simultaneous visual events in different spaces in intended coincidences. It also has a slight sense of retaliating against the present space and time. The vengeance occurs unintentionally, but the unintentional is intended. ”
Zhou Yilun was born in 1983 in Hangzhou, China. He graduated from the Art Academy of China in 2006. His exhibition “Pay Back the Money that You Owe” will be on view at Fabien Fryns Fine Art in Los Angeles from September 10 through December 17, 2011.
Lu Xinjian (b. 1977)
City DNA III
Jun 25 - Aug 27, 2011
Fabien Fryns Fine Art, Los Angeles, is pleased to announce Lu Xinjian’s first solo exhibition in the US from June 25 through August 27, 2011.
In Lu’s obsessively meticulous paintings of aerial views of cities on Google Earth, including San Diego, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Napa Valley and Monterey, among other places in California, Lu reconfigures architecture, landscape, human activities and infrastructure to short yet exclamatory lines, circles and squares, that are woven into continuous and colossal networks. The lively colors that are applied to these motifs generate explosive rhythms and energy against the monochromic background. City DNA San Diego, 2011, employs the color of aqua blue as the metaphorical background to reflect beaches and the surfing culture that San Diego is famous for. The vivid colors of white, yellow and fuchsia of the motifs are derived from the colors on the flag of San Diego. Circles and curvy lines symbolize nature; straight lines and squares imply man-made structures.
Lu eliminates the painting elements of perspective, light and depth; relies on color, lines and composition to fulfill his painterly vision and his interpretation of urban planning in the context of globalization and homogenization. The technique of masking adds precision to his artistic vocabulary. Lu’s abstract approach to topography decodes the places that we are familiar with. The recognizable landmarks of our environment are reduced and transformed into geometry. Only upon closer scrutiny, the viewer can discover each city’s characteristics through colors and the arrangement of the lines and shapes.
Such a reconfiguration of data can trace its history back to as early as cubism, futurism and Mondrian’s neoplasticism in the early 20th century. These movements were marked by the artists’ attempt to translate their experience of flying above an open space where the perspective was constantly shifting under the pilot’s eyes in dynamic and synthetic visual terms. Similar to the invention of aircraft, Google Earth enables Lu to survey our landscapes from a whole new perspective: optically and philosophically. For Lu, his painting is not only a device to articulate the fascinating observation from the height of a satellite on Google Earth, but also an instrument to illustrate how human societies impact the earth. Each city is devoid of its uniqueness in the web of uniformed lines and motifs, which are the metaphor for the generic blueprints of modern urban development and regulation: the DNA of cities. Lu creates his own visual language to tell the tale of a changing ecosystem. Through the process of decoding and recoding, the dividing lines between public and private, urban and rural, nature and human intervention are diminished. Each picture forms a reformatted landscape through the lens of ecology and technology.
Lu Xinjian was born in Jiangsu Province in1977. He graduated from Nanjing Arts Institute, then studied at Design Academy Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He earned his MFA from Frank Mohr Institute in the Netherlands in 2006. Lu now lives and works in Shanghai. His work has been exhibited in Asia and Europe. His exhibition at Fabien Fryns Fine Art will be his debut in North America.
Lu Xinjian’s paintings from his new series of City DNA III will be on view from June 25 through August 27. A vernissage will be held on Saturday, June 25, from 3 to 6 p.m. Catalogue is available.
Wu Junyong (b. 1978)
Cloud's Nightmare
Dec 11 - Mar 12, 2011
Fabien Fryns Fine Art is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition on the West Coast by multimedia artist Wu Junyong. The exhibition features his new eight-and-a-half-minute long computer-generated animation Cloud’s Nightmare, which is accompanied by three sets of oil-on-canvas, three brass objects and four painting installations depicting the characters and sequences in the animation.
Born in 1978 in Fujian province, Wu attended the prestigious China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, where he earned his BA in printmaking and MFA in new media arts. Since his childhood, Wu has made the world’s idiocies the focus of his creativity. Inheriting a strong sense of mockery and rebellion from historical figures in art history, such as Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Dürer, Wu uses his art and his dark humor as the instrument to express his acute criticism and protest. Beginning in 2003, Wu has used Adobe Flash to create ridiculed and whimsical animations reminiscent of shadow puppetry, an ancient form of motion picture storytelling using opaque cutout figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images, which bring to life folklores and fantasies. The theatrical protagonists in Wu’s animations for the past 6 years have been men who wear tall cone-hats. These silhouette figures make a grand entry to a generic public space (often a public square with a monument in the center) at the beginning of each episode. They first freeze in a long pose and then adjust their cone-hats. These heightened dramatic moments of introduction once again reassemble the tradition of Chinese opera and shadow puppetry. Besides the traditional repertoire of stories, Wu’s concept for his motion pictures was also inspired by the irony in Chinese idioms. The disconnection between the metaphorical references of idioms and their visualized graphics intrigues Wu. The tall cone-hats in all Wu’s animations, for instance, were a result from the idiom “to put on a tall hat.” To put a tall hat on someone is to excessively extol someone, who is often with power and authority. China is rich in idioms, but there is not one single idiom dictionary. Wu has spent a few years actively collecting idioms and then illustrating them into iconography. In his Flash videos, he reverses this process by inserting iconography in his loosely orchestrated narratives to imply the embedded metaphors. This unique discourse presents a challenge: to extract the symbolism from the iconography depends largely upon one’s cultural and linguistic knowledge in Chinese. However, regardless of how much his implication can be elicited, one does not fail to understand Wu’s acute cynicism towards authority and its oppression of individuality. “The so-called individuality within the context of China refers to publicly dissenting. With public spaces diminishing and being muzzled, voices can only be heard in the margins of society. To me, in such a ludicrous and suppressed totalitarian society, fables are the best way for one to protest, to protect and to voice his opinion,” Wu says. Cloud’s Nightmare is Wu’s 7th animation in the sequel that articulates the absurdity existing between reality and illusion, between darkness and illumination and between humor and ridicule. The original Chinese title of this animation is A Breakout of Birds and Beasts, a Chinese idiom referring to the state of chaos and abandonment when a regime is defeated.
Wu Junyong’s work has been exhibited or collected internationally by institutes and museums, such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul), Museum of Cinema (Turin), the third Guangzhou Triennial, Streaming Festival 3rd Edition (the Hague), the third China New Media Art Festival (Hangzhou) the White Rabbit Museum (Sydney), and Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai).
Cloud’s Nightmare, the debut solo exhibition by Wu Junyong in Los Angeles, will be on view at Fabien Fryns Fine Art from December 12, 2010 through February 12, 2011. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday December 11, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Do You See What I Mean?
Jul 31 - Sep 25, 2010
Fabien Fryns Fine Art is pleased to announce a group exhibition by ten of the most promising young Chinese artists to survey the complex dynamics of contemporary art in China within the context of globalization, sociological changes in China and the consequential impacts on art making. It is an ongoing investigation into the state of Chinese contemporary art, especially among the younger artists who were born after the 1970s, to illustrate the diverse range of ideas, thought processes and sensibilities. The exhibited twenty-four pieces, including eleven paintings, eight drawings, three animations, one sculpture and one light box, highlight the contrasts and commonalities in these artists’ incisive sense of curiosity and their intuitive engagement with the world. In the upcoming years, Fabien Fryns Fine Art will present solo exhibitions by most of the artists included in this group show.
Do You See What I Mean? will be on view from July 31 through September 25. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 31, from 5 to 7 p. m.
MadeIn 没顶公司
MadeIn: There are new species! What do you suppose they are called?
May 15 - Jul 17, 2010
Extended until July 17, 2010
Fabien Fryns Fine Art is pleased to present its grand opening by MadeIn, an art collaboration founded by Chinese artist Xu Zhen. Titled “There are new species! What do you suppose they are called?” The exhibition includes 4 extraordinary collage works, ranging from 250 by 180 cm to 350 by 250 cm, and one 1.6-meter tallsculpture, all assembled with fabrics, embroideries and other notions commonly seen in the apparel industry and toy factories.
Chen Man (b. 1980)
Chen Man: Red Beauty at Fabien Fryns Fine Art, Los Angeles
Mar 11 - Apr 24, 2010
Fabien Fryns Fine Art is pleased to announce its soft opening in Los Angeles of Chinese photographer Chen Man’s work, titled Red Beauty. Born in 1980 in Beijing, Chen graduated from the photography department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. She has produced photographs for prestigious fashion magazines, such as Vogue, Elle and Bazaar, among others.
- 1-8 of 8 exhibitions.