AROUND THE GALLERIES
By Leah Ollman, Special to The Times August 8, 2008

A show's artists in a state of unrest

"Against the Grain," part of LACE's 30th-anniversary celebration, reflects back on another LACE show organized during the art center's 10th year. In the 1988 exhibition "Against Nature: A Group Show of Work by Homosexual Men," 30 artists negotiated the intersecting forces of illness, loss, decadence, artificiality, AIDS, gay male sexuality and the production of art.The earlier show's mix of irreverence and anxiety (to borrow the curators' terms) informs the current show, as well, for which artist Christopher Russell selected 14 L.A. artists (male and female), who adopt, in one way or another, a socially critical stance. Russell suggests the contemporary Gothic as a curatorial frame, for its thematic stew of "destruction, violence, anger, macabre."

Some of the work comes across as gentler than that: Anna Sew Hoy's hanging web of tie-dyed T-shirts is a benignly charming exercise in resourcefulness; Kelly Sears' short video docu-collage is more wry than radical. But unrest does prevail, with or without a declared object.

Brian Bress' "Disaster Family" is a work of breathtaking sobriety. A group of four figures fashioned from the thick felt of disaster blankets, the family doubles as angels of death and their victims. John Knuth's desiccated, affecting take on a city going down is countered by the pseudo-levity of Amy Sarkisian's Ensor-like laughing/grimacing heads and the exuberant strangeness of Wendell Gladstone's slickly painted visions. Ami Tallman's watercolors and drawings of animal corpses range from slight to disarmingly gorgeous. Robert Fontenot spells out the basics of the eternal power struggle in a comic storyboard of bread-dough figures: Big folk oppress the little folk; little folk rise up and take the big folk down.

Works by all of the artists in the show (the others are Tom Allen, Matt Greene, Julian Hoeber, Brian Kennon, Ryan Taber and Cheyenne Weaver) incorporate decay or its stagier twin, decadence, but many lack the self-sufficiency to thrive in such a heady context. In the end, the show wears its premise like an oversized flak jacket, heavier and denser than what it encloses.

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 6522 Hollywood Blvd., (323) 957-1777, through Sept. 21. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. www.welcometolace.org

Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

FREE LOVE GODS: Works on Paper from the Wild East and Far West
Opening Wednesday August 6th 530-730 pm and Thursday August 7th 530-8pm

Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery
929 Flanders St
Portland, OR 97209

AUGUST 5-30. 2008

Work by:

Reed Anderson (Brooklyn)
Erik Bluhm (LA)
Brian Bress (LA)
Chris Jahncke (NYC/New Orleans)
Benjamin Lord (LA)
Rebekah Miles (Santa Barbara)
Ami Tallman (LA)

Curated by Anna Fidler

PULLIAM DEFFENBAUGH GALLERY

929 NW Flanders Street | Portland, OR 97209

503.228.6665 | www.pulliamdeffenbaugh.com

"Bliss, Synanon, 1973"
ink and acrylic on acetate on enamel on paper
11x14 inches
Ami Tallman 2008

"Love Bombing, Miami, 1978"
ink, gouache, and acrylic on acetate (detail)
11 x 14 inches, 2008
Ami Tallman


"Ecstatic Encounter, Just Outside Bhagwan's Rolls, 1983"
ink, watercolor, and acrylic on acetate (detail)
11 x14 inches, 2008
Ami Tallman

See Line Gallery
1812 Berkeley Street,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
tel 310 829 1727 fx 310 829 3164
www.seelinegallery.com

Ami Tallman
When the Sun Shines, It Does Not Need Proof
June 21 – July 26, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 21, 6-9pm


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

See Line Gallery is pleased to present Ami Tallman’s first solo exhibition, When the Sun Shines, It Does Not Need Proof.

This body of work by Ami Tallman muses on the shared qualities of gurus and dictators, in particular the aesthetic devices used by both to inspire awe and ecstatic devotion amongst their followers. Tallman’s practice draws on images and phrases culled from idiosyncratic research. As she sought materials for this show, Tallman observed a recurrence of charismatic leaders in the 20th century who employed extravagant and sophisticated spectacles to create new, insular societies comprised of fiercely committed followers. The movements these men created usually slipped into violence and paranoia, ending in purges of their inner circles, scandal, and dissolution.

With a lush use of color, Tallman’s use and choice of materials is promiscuous. She combines colored pencil, oil, and ink with other materials, on a wide range of surfaces, yielding a tactile variation which echoes her subjects’ shifts from beatific to vengeful, doting to aloof, delphic to precise. Her work is tinged with foreboding, and both broods and frets on themes of power, hope, bliss, and betrayal. Her whimsical line slips into doubt, its cheer faltering as it encounters gaps on the page. The resultant series of images includes depictions of pageants, expectant throngs, blissed out hippies, banks of microphones, banner-lined streets, shrines, thrones, and of course, gurus and dictators.

Ami Tallman lives and works in Los Angeles. She completed her MFA at Art Center College of Design in 2006. She has exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco and was most recently included in Against the Grain, a group show at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions that runs concurrently with this exhibition. She was featured in “15 Artists Under 35” in the May 2008 issue of Art ltd magazine.

Gallery hours Wednesday- Saturday 11am - 6pm and by appointment

more dead lovelies for the lace show.

An asofyet untitled dead hare for LACE.
oil and enamel on paper, 2008.

12 June - 10 August 2008
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions

AGAINST THE GRAIN
Curated by Christopher Russell

Curated by Los Angeles-based artist Christopher Russell, Against the Grain seeks inspiration from the seminal show, Against Nature: A Group Show of Work by Homosexual Men (1988), curated by Dennis Cooper and Richard Hawkins. In a politically and socially conservative era, Cooper and Hawkins responded to the AIDS epidemic with rich, decadent work, grappling with the subject's inherent morbidity. Utilizing Against Nature as a point of departure, Russell has selected 12 local artists that seek a similar critical position in our social climate today -- Tom Allen, Brian Bress, Robert Fontenot, Wendell Gladstone, Julian Hoeber, Anna Sew Hoy, Brian Kennon, John Knuth, Ryan Taber, Ami Tallman, Kelly Sears and Cheyenne Weaver. Against the Grain is not a restaging of the prior show, instead Russell looks at the theme of decadence in a present day context. In turn, the artists use visual and narrative devices in their paintings, sculpture and installations to assert the individual, idiosyncratic worlds they have created in response to the one we all inhabit.

The first of the Gurus.
2008, oil/canvas


From Sam (theologian and writer) Keen's keynote speech for the 1973 Esalen sponsored conference given in San Francisco, generously brought to my attention by Robert Nichols:

Title: The Tyranny Game, or, How to Play Follow the Leader

The rules of the game:

(1) It takes two to play; there can be no tyranny without somebody ready to be tyrannized.

(2) It begins with the the presumption that something is wrong with the patient/client/disciple.

(3) In order to play the game, the patient/client/disciple must be taught the rules according to the therapist/guru and must accept the rightness of that specific set of rules.

(4) The goal has to be set so high that nobody can ever get there, since getting there would render the therapist/guru obsolete.

(5) The payoff is the illusion of power - that we can control life.

Source: pp 263-264, The Upstart Spring, Esalen and the Human Potential Movement: The First Twenty Years, by Walter Truett Anderson, iUniverse/Backinprint.com (can be found on Google Books).

 
an older piece, from a series of portraits of men in think tanks.
ink on tissue paper, 11x14 inches, 2005

An installation shot from
Compound Objects from the Spy Who Loves You
at The Confederacy of Creative Ephemera
inside Circus Gallery
Opening December 1, 2007 from 7-9 PM

 
 

something i'm working on.
i'm thinking about cowardice.

some additional work underway on the topic of cowardice

 
 
 
 

i've curated a show.
it will be awesome.
you should come.

some dead pheasants, kissing cows, a shed full of fox, and rabbit corpses back from new york.
ink and oil on sanded paper 2007

some preparatory drawings i made for matt chambers' show at blanket gallery in toronto. i gather they'll be there too.

DON’T TORTURE THE ROTTEN DUCKLINGS
Organized by Gean Moreno and Nicholas Frank

Kevin Arrow • Jesse Bercowetz • Jesse Bransford • Tobias Buche • Bobby Ciraldo • Jennifer Cohen • Nathan Danilowicz • Michelle Elzay • Gaylen Gerber • Ian Hokin • Juliette Jacobson • Brian Kennon • Gardy Loo • Lorenzo de Los Angeles • Rebecca Morris • Dan Ollman • Mike Paré • Adam Putnam • Antonio Rocha • Randy Russell • Aaron Sandnes • Andrew Swant • Ami Tallman • Michael Tedja • Amanda Tollefson

With film/video by Mark Borchardt, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Takahiko Iimura, Ken Jacobs, Peter Kubelka, Adam Putnam,
Peter Tscherkassky and others.

Structuralist Films! One Night Only! Special Event during Opening Reception, Saturday, October 27!

Institute of Visual Arts
Inova/Kenilworth, 2155 N. Prospect Ave.
University of Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Gallery hours: Wednesday & Friday-Sunday, 12 noon-5 pm; Thursday, 12 noon-8 pm.
The gallery will be closed November 22-25 for Thanksgiving recess.
Information: 414.229.5070
inova@uwm.edu