Archive for 2009

MELISSA MANFULL: Tesseracts

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

Melissa Manfull: Tesseracts

February 21 – March 28, 2009

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Tesseracts, a new series of drawings by Los Angeles-based artist Melissa Manfull. The exhibition will run from February 21 – March 28, 2009.  The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday February 21 from 6pm-8pm.

In this new group of unframed ink on paper pieces, Melissa Manfull creates impossible worlds and structures. Much like science fiction writer Charles Howard, who coined the word “Tesseract” (the four-dimensional analog of the cube) in the late 19th century, Manfull is interested in a reality beyond what we can see and understand in a 3-dimensional world.

Drawing inspiration from science fiction, gothic architecture and mineralogy, Manfull explores the conceptual and visual analogies between naturally occurring structures and those made by humans. Visually, her drawings of towers, arches and organic bursts are arrestingly beautiful and overwhelming in their obsessive detail. Thousands of tiny lines compose the architecture she imaginatively creates.

At once delicate and bold, the work straddles our notions of temporal reality. Are we looking at an existing metropolis, a futuristic utopia or a flashback to Victorian England?  Manfull is indeed influenced by Gothic architecture and pulls her muted palette of pinks, moss greens, blues and grays from Victorian interiors and textiles.

Melissa Manfull received her MFA from Concordia University Montreal in Canada and has exhibited her artwork at The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, High Energy Constructs in Los Angeles, and Bourget Gallery in Montreal, among others.  She lives and works in Los Angeles.

KIMBERLY BROOKS: artHAUS

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Kimberly Brooks has paintings in a group show in Venice, CA. The exhibited, entitled artHAUS, was curated by Thomas Schirmboeck and will run through February 24.

Barrett Johnson Performs at Ryan Callis Opening

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

RYAN CALLIS: Are You Ready to Testify?

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

Ryan Callis: Are You Ready to Testify

January 10 – February 14, 2009

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Are You Ready to Testify, a new series of paintings by Southern California-based artist Ryan Callis. The exhibition will run from January 10 through February 14, 2009. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday January 10 from 6pm-8pm.

The exhibition consists of paintings that operate conversationally, as phrases and sentences in a larger dialogue. To create the paintings’ architectural structures, Callis uses a system that codes phrases and words into geometric forms without visually making use of text. While the completed paintings do not directly reflect the original texts, every gesture, shape and concept organically flows from this unique coded system. A palette of vibrant (nearly acidic) blues, greens, yellows and pinks creates elegant passages of paint flows and color gradations.

The conception for this series of work was influenced largely by Nam June Paik’s Fluxus film, Zen For Film (1962-1964), the 1996 Dischord Records release of the self proclaimed “gospel yeah, yeah” sound of the Make-Up’s debut album, Destination: Love, Live at Cold Rice, and David Hockney’s book That’s the Way I See Things.

This is the artist’s second solo show at Taylor De Cordoba. His work has been featured in Artweek and the OC Weekly. Ryan Callis was recently included in Christopher Knight’s article for the Los Angeles Times, “45 Under 45.” He received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2007.

Opening January 10, Ryan Callis, Are You Ready To Testify

Monday, January 5th, 2009
Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present

Ryan Callis
Are You Ready To Testify

January 10 – February 14, 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday January 10, 2009 6pm-8pm

Are You Ready To Testify, 2008
Oil, Acrylic and Paper on Canvas, 24″ x 20″

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Are You Ready to Testify, a new series of paintings by Southern California-based artist Ryan Callis. The exhibition will run from January 10 through February 14, 2009. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday January 10 from 6pm-8pm.

The exhibition consists of paintings that operate conversationally, as phrases and sentences in a larger dialogue. To create the paintings’ architectural structures, Callis uses a system that codes phrases and words into geometric forms without visually making use of text. While the completed paintings do not directly reflect the original texts, every gesture, shape and concept organically flows from this unique coded system. A palette of vibrant (nearly acidic) blues, greens, yellows and pinks creates elegant passages of paint flows and color gradations.

The conception for this series of work was influenced largely by Nam June Paik’s Fluxus film, Zen For Film (1962-1964), the 1996 Dischord Records release of the self proclaimed “gospel yeah, yeah” sound of the Make-Up’s debut album, Destination: Love, Live at Cold Rice, and David Hockney’s book That’s the Way I See Things.

This is the artist’s second solo show at Taylor De Cordoba. His work has been featured in Artweek and the OC Weekly. Ryan Callis was recently included in Christopher Knight’s article for the Los Angeles Times, “45 Under 45.” He received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2007.

Taylor De Cordoba is located at 2660 S La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles, CA and is open Tuesday thru Saturday, 11am-6pm. For additional information, contact Heather Taylor at heather@taylordecordoba.com or (310) 559-9156.

Frieze Magazine January 04, 2009

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

“Report from LA Returns” by Christy Lange. “By far my favorite show was at Taylor de Cordoba, a refreshingly earnest photographic collaboration between Sasha Bezzubov and Jessica Sucher called “The Searchers”. These medium-format images of Western tourists in the spiritual meditation and yoga centers of India transcend the medium and their potentially banal subject matter. They could be on the scale of Andreas Gursky’s or Thomas Ruff’s work, but these photographs show that images don’t have to be blown up to huge dimensions to be monumental…”

C Magazine

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

C Inside Culver City “For emerging artists, we love Taylor De Cordoba.”