Danielle Mourning: Ordinary Time

January 7 – February 11, 2012

PRESS RELEASE : For Immediate Release

Taylor De Cordoba is proud to present Ordinary Time, new photographs by San Francisco- based artist Danielle Nelson Mourning. The exhibition will run from January 7 – February 11, 2012, with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, January 7 from 6 – 8PM.

For Mourningʼs second solo exhibition at Taylor De Cordoba, she continues her exploration of self- portraiture through photography and mixed media photographic paintings. In previous bodies of work, the artist represented her family history by assuming the roles of her ancestors from Mississippi, New York and Ireland (she literally slipped in and out of their homes, attire and settings to create this cinematic images). Mourning turned the lens on herself and set out to discover her own identity through the assumed identities of those who came before her. With Ordinary Time, the costumes are gone, as are the far-away locales. Rather, the artist is deeply invested in the present moment and capturing her sense of time and place on film. The resulting series of self-portraits is strikingly raw, honest and filled with intensity.

Providing context to the portraits are atmospheric photographs of landscapes and abstracted objects, which connect to the artistʼs Northern California upbringing – a hazy shot of the sun setting in Bolinas, a Native American Miwok tepee at sunrise in West Marin and a shattered mirror photographed from her Grandmother’s house are among the subjects Mourning photographs.. And while this new work is clearly a meditation on the present, the past continues to haunt Mourningʼs process. In the words of the artist, “This moment is an unveiling of the present yet there is always the past walking with me.”

The show is dedicated to the artistʼs grandmother, Ruth Catherine Nelson.

Kimberly Brooks is the subject of Bruce Helander’s article “Artists To Watch” in the latest issue of The Art Economist.

To view the article as a pdf file, click here.

Hadley Holliday
Warp and Weft
February 25 – April 7, 2012

Taylor De Cordoba is proud to present Warp and Weft, a series of abstract paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Hadley Holliday. The exhibition will run from February 25 – April 7, 2012, with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, February 25 from 6 – 8PM.

For Holliday’s first exhibition at Taylor De Cordoba, the artist debuts a new series of acrylic paintings wherein she explores ideas of space and depth while referencing traditional craft. In striking shades of blue, Holliday creates psychedelic patterns of interlocking circles, which form arched, expansive spaces. The circles mimic overlapping lenses, with each section projecting a different depth of field and creating its own space within the whole. The effect of the pattern is dizzying but also serene, as the varying shades of blue evoke images of the infinite (both the sublime night sky and the mysterious yet inviting sea). Holliday references the history of abstract painting with a fluid style, seemingly pouring colors over the white of the canvas into lines, shapes and patterns. Here, the canvas’ negative space is as important as the color, which rather than staining the canvas, forms a thin film on the surface.

The show’s title, Warp and Weft is an allusion to the weaving, the ancient craft of making fabric by “interweaving” material into a series of right angles. In these paintings, the circles literally weave together into a pattern of geometric shapes. While creating this body of work, Holliday considered the mythology of weaving and the way in which the terminology has become associated with lofty themes of creation and change – spinning the thread of time, the fabric of the universe and yarn as synonym for a tall tale. By using one powerful color and repeating the simple circular shape, Holliday weaves a unique narrative, which invites the viewer into a meditative experience, not unlike the one Holliday enters during the process of painting.

Hadley Holliday lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received her MFA from CalArts in 2004 and has exhibited at numerous galleries including Sam Lee Gallery (Los Angeles) and Solway Jones (Los Angeles). Reviews of her exhibitions have appeared in ArtWeek, The Los Angeles Times and Art LTD, among others.

Jen Pack | scrap 1, 2010 | chiffon, thread, wood | 31.25" x 19" x 3.5"

Jen Pack’s mixed media pieces made from chiffon, thread, and wood use a deconstructed and reconstructed medium to create a dialogue between the viewer and art.

Jen Pack | green bikini, 2008 | chiffon, thread, wood | 10.75" x 32.5" x 3.5"

Her work, though built from the same materials, takes on a transformative air in the final products’ drastically different forms and functions.

Jen Pack | (k)not entangled, 2008 | Chiffon, thread, wood | 9.25" x 33.5" x 3.5"

She explores themes of displacement and the eternal struggle that comes from deconstructing and reconstructing one’s identity.

Jen Pack | scrap 2, 2010 | chiffon, thread, wood | 26.75" x 20.5" x 3.5"

Her work was recently shown in our group exhibition, Recrafting History.

Danielle Nelson Mourning featured in B&W+COLOR magazine, March 2012.

Photographs by Danielle Nelson Mourning featured in Metropolitan Home.

Photographs by Danielle Nelson Mourning featured in CA Home+Design magazine.

RECRAFTING HISTORY: history, nostalgia & craft in the American memory

curated by Ellen Caldwell

October 29 – December 22, 2011

“Cultural memory is produced through objects, images, and representations. These are technologies of  memory, not vessels of memory in which memory passively resides so much as objects through which  memories are shared, produced, and given meaning.”

- Marita Sturkin, Tangled Memories

Artists Eric Beltz, Jen Pack, Karen Spector, Frohawk Two-Feathers, and Stephanie Washburn all speak to Sturkin’s concept of a shared history and entangled cultural memory.  Exploring our modern world through a recrafted lens, they create fictitious, re-envisioned, nostalgic, and comical memories and renderings of the past and present. Negotiating themes ranging widely in subject and medium, each artist in Recrafting History answers the question, how do we exhibit histories that we don’t talk about?   In experiencing their art, we as viewers, are welcomed to explore the deeper themes that trouble the American psyche and collective American memory.

With Eric Beltz’s series of graphite-drawn needlework, Beltz calls the concept of Americana and nostalgia into crisis, by recrafting traditional female work (often considered lowbrow), into male-made High Art (with a capital “A”) for the gallery wall.  He appropriates the aesthetic of the craft, but changes the medium and technique, at once reviving and altering the tradition.  Additional textual messages tangle and trouble the subject further.

Built of chiffon, thread, and wood, Jen Pack’s Green Bikini and (k)not Entangled use a deconstructed and reconstructed medium to create a dialogue between the viewer and art.  Her work, though built from the same materials, takes on a transformative air in the final products’ drastically different forms and functions.  And her seemingly disjointed titles are about displacement, and the eternal struggle that comes from deconstructing and reconstructing one’s identity on an ongoing basis.

In Surplus of Light, Karen Spector situates the viewer in an endless video loop that taps into and oscillates from a national post-9/11 fear and insecurity, to a ridiculous feeling of lavishness, abundance, and wealth (found in the extravagant display of fireworks), to a looming uncertainty questioning and undermining American monumentalism and ballsy patriotism.  The reversed anthems are a type of siren song, hovering and looming in the soundtrack as both celebratory and foreboding.

With Frohawk Two-Feathers’ latest installment of the saga of the Frenglish Empire, viewers become part of an exchange between cultural memory and history—between the fictitious Frenglish Company Crocodile and our world, with reality being somewhere in the middle.  His work focuses mainly on the conflict arising from European colonial conquest, though it is shown predominantly in America, thus forcing American audiences to view this work, and this imperialist retelling, as culturally and historically relevant.

Stephanie Washburn’s Margaret Thatcher’s Garden, offers a sneak-peak into the intimate domestic space of a political body.  Through her musings of this imagined realm, we are not just in the midst of a physical interpretation of an exterior location, but are also conceptually in an interior realm of Thatcher herself.  Through something as concrete as a garden, we can re-imagine the historical setting for actual political decisions, while also envisioning Thatcher’s internal, private space of contemplation away from the public eye.

Jeana Sohn featured in the Korean Magazine Cecci.