Traywick Contemporary is pleased to announce Inherent Nature, a group exhibition featuring five West Coast artists who respond to and engage with the physical world through distinct practices. Each artist constructs meaning in their work directly from the societal, cultural and environmental issues that shape our time, and their work comments on the push and pull of nature and culture through the artistic process, dialogue and play of forms.
Andre Yi (Los Angeles) looks to the neighborhood surrounding his studio in the fashion district of LA for inspiration in his recent series of sculptures. His complex and elaborate structures or “habitats” are built from materials, both natural and man-made, that are readily found inside and outside of his studio.
Johnna Arnold (San Francisco Bay Area) debuts images from a new series of photo-based works meticulously created in the isolation of the darkroom. Her work confronts our consumer-based society by transforming everyday, insignificant objects (cigarette filters, food waste) into mesmerizing, abstracted pictures that are at once beautiful and inscrutable.
In her detailed watercolors, Rachel Davis (Portland) addresses the precarious relationship between humans and the environment in our contemporary world. Specifically referencing the over-crowded and culturally significant backdrop of modern day China, the natural world competes for space and importance within her hybridized landscapes.
Samantha Fields’ (Los Angeles) paintings explore the experiential nature of light and its ability to both describe and conceal the reality of a particular place and time. Whether seen through veiled fog, sheets of rain or urban smog, her light-infused scenes of moments from everyday life defy the medium in which they are created.
The densely layered oil paintings of Portia Hein (Los Angeles) focus on singular elements in nature (a vase of flowers, tree trunks, rays of light), imbuing each with a life-force and visual power that reaches beyond the canvas. Both Hein’s and Fields’ work emphasizes the singularity of the moment and an immediacy of experience that is becoming increasingly rare in our fast-paced, digital world.
Inherent Nature will be on view through August 15 at Traywick Contemporary.
For more information please call the gallery or visit the exhibition webpage: