2018
LA Times, review: Police, violence and an artist who paints to provoke by sharon mizota
A raw rage runs through Forrest Kirk’s paintings of police officers at Chimento Contemporary’s new space in West Adams. The provocative images are indictments of police violence, attributing it to racism and an obsession with power. The techniques Kirk uses are sometimes ham-fisted, but the same could be said for the subjects he portrays.
ARTILLERY MAGAZINE, RICHARD HOBLOCK BY ANNABEL OSBERG
Richard Hoblock’s recent paintings appear as peekaboo scrims offering tantalizing glimpses into abstruse corners of the artist’s mind. Each of 16 abstractions in the San Francisco-based painter’s show “View from the Cheap Seats” appears non-objective but specific in its approximation of a certain, but not necessarily specifiable, mood or metaphor. Each involves vibrant shapes of indefinite boundaries that variably mingle, mesh, blend, overlap and interlock without any obvious purpose or designation. Yet paradoxically, they don’t appear random; the shapes and forms appear to exist intentionally, occurring for reasons that one doesn’t understand, but doesn’t need to; for like molecular motion or cellular mutation, these images conform to their own fascinating logic; and like a mystified scientist peering through a microscope, one can only observe and try to assimilate whatever information one might absorb through looking.
WHERE ART INSPIRES BEAUTY, RICHARD HOBLOCK AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY
Richard Hoblock, Perfect Stranger, Oil on Canvas, Recio Young, Eva Chimento, Melanie Engle, Coco and Romi Cortier, Photo Osceola Refetoff
Saturday September 15, 2018, marked the opening of artist Richard Hoblock’s exhibition View From The Cheap Seats at Chimento Contemporary, in the newly opened West Adams gallery. Chimento Contemporary was previously in Boyle Heights, having opened its doors there in September of 2015. The new location at 4480 West Adams Boulevard features Eva Chimento’s signature vibe with bright white walls, white flooring, and ample overhead lighting.
LA WEEKLY, West Adams Is L.A.'s New Gallery Row
In the beginning, there was La Cienega. For a while in the 1960s, the West Hollywood gallery district was the destination center for the Los Angeles art world and beyond. Later, in the 1990s, came Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, then Culver City, and more recently the downtown Arts District. It's a truism in the contemporary art business that you will move to a dope space in a suddenly on-trend part of town more than once during the life of your gallery.
Seattle Pi. Seattle Art Fair 2018, Interview with Eva Chimento of Chimento Contemporary, Los Angeles!
Eva Chimento of Chimento Contemporary discusses one of her artist’s amazing conceptual sculptures!
Los Angeles Times, NEWSLETTER, Essential Arts & Culture: Picasso lost and found, Bernstein at the Bowl, Estefans on stage, Trump baby by CAROLINA A. MIRANDA
Times contributing reviewer Sharon Mizota has been doing the white cube thing. This week, she checks out a show by Young Joo Lee at Ochi Projects that explores how the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea has become a nature preserve of sorts. She also examines a show of paintings by Forrest Kirk at Chimento Contemporary that serve as “indictments of police violence.”
Los Angeles Times, Review, Police, violence and an artist who paints to provoke by sharon mizota
A raw rage runs through Forrest Kirk’s paintings of police officers at Chimento Contemporary’s new space in West Adams. The provocative images are indictments of police violence, attributing it to racism and an obsession with power. The techniques Kirk uses are sometimes ham-fisted, but the same could be said for the subjects he portrays.
Los Angeles Times, Datebook, forrest kirk, “body count,” at Chimento Contemporary by Carolina A. Miranda
Chimento is marking its move to a new gallery space in West Adams with a show of works by the San Diego-born artist, whose work deals, in hallucinatory ways, with the very real issue of police violence. This includes larger-than-life paintings of police officers brandishing water guns, encircling victims with lassos, and wielding power in nightmarish ways.
Los ANgeles Times, Datebook, David Donald Sutherland and Chas Schroeder, “Affinity and Distance,” at Chimento Contemporary by Carolina A. MirAnda
This two-person show features the work of a pair of emerging young artists who employ paint in distinct, yet complementary ways. There is Sutherland, who creates smooth, super-flat surfaces consisting of crisp pools of paint. Schroeder, in the meantime, mixes material and technique, creating abstractions that feature solid blocks of acrylic color against bits of spray and transparent, watery shades.
art and cake, Kim Schoenstadt and Cole Case at Chimento Contemporary by Jody Zellen
Kim Schoenstadt, Context v. Perspective at Chimento. Photo Credit: Kristine Schomaker.
Kim Schoenstadt is interested in architecture, perspective and point of view. To that end, she makes works that appear flat and dimensional simultaneously. In her prize winning installation at the 2018 Volta NY art fair, she invited viewers to participate in the creation of the work by adding blue string perspective lines that emanated from a wall drawing— combining line drawings of municipal architecture from all over the world— to other parts of the booth. The finished work became an entanglement of criss-crossing lines that hindered movement within the space.
WALL STREET INTERNATIONAL, Kim Schoenstadt 24 Mar — 5 May 2018 at the Chimento Contemporary in Los Angeles, United States
Chimento Contemporary presents Kim Schoenstadt’s second solo exhibition at the gallery opening March 24 and Kim Schoenstadt’s solo booth at Volta NY March 7-11, 2018.
Fresh off the final US iteration of Now Be Here in Washington, D.C., the project that photographs female identifying artists en mass, Schoenstadt tackles the relationship between situational context and individual perspective in a series of new mixed media works. Continuing to explore human impulses and issues behind our built environment through her signature language of symbolic architecture and spatially engaged installation, Schoenstadt has devised a body of work addressing the tensions between context (cultural and greater sociopolitical relations) and perspective (subjective individual view). Her new works lean out from the wall to claim sculptural space with delicate suspension.
Be-Art Magazine, CONGRATULATIONS: to Kim Schoenstadt at Chimento Contemporary by Beatrice Chassepot
New York: March 11, 2018: Amanda Coulson (VOLTA Artistic Director), John Cox (Creative Director at Baha Mar), Saul Ostrow (independent curator, New York) and Uli Voges (Co-Founder VOLTA art fairs) selected Kim Schoenstadt as the inaugural recipient of the Baha Mar Art Prize & Residency, presented by The Current.
As part of the award, The Current will acquire a substantial work from Schoenstadt’s oevre and provide a residency at their studio space at BahaMar in Nassau, the capital city of The Bahamas. ChimentoContemporary, Los Angeles, presented the work at VOLTA NY.
Hyperallergic, Artists Share Their Studio Playlists by Matt Stromberg
Chimento Contemporary hosts a live recording of artist Pia Pack’s podcast What Artists Listen To, with Zeal Harris, Alexandra Grant, Shizu Saldamando, and Cole James.
Art-making can often be a solitary process, with hours spent toiling away without any human interaction. But the one companion that many artists have throughout their workday is music, and a constant stream of soul, punk, hip-hop, or cumbia can fill a lonely studio with voices and vitality.
KCRW, 5 design things to do this week by Karen Bruckner
Perhaps best known for her Now Be Here series which photographs large groups of female identifying artists, Venice-based artist Kim Schoenstadt works in the intersection of the physical and virtual, exploring the tension between the larger cultural context and subjective individual perspective.
Artillery Magazine, FROM SEA TO SHINING ART by Genie Davis
Kim Schoenstadt with her work at Chimento Contemporary © Artillery Magazine
Ending in DTLA on Anderson Street in the notorious Boyle Heights district, things were jumping a little more, with more of everything. Chimento Contemporary showed Kim Schoenstadt and Cole Case.
Kim Schoenstadt Wins Inaugural VOLTA NY x Baha Mar Art Prize & Residency, presented by The Current
Image: Eva Chimento and Kim Schoenstadt
New York: March 11, 2018: Amanda Coulson (VOLTA Artistic Director), John Cox (Creative Director at Baha Mar), Saul Ostrow (independent curator, New York) and Uli Voges (Co-Founder VOLTA art fairs) selected Kim Schoenstadt as the inaugural recipient of the Baha Mar Art Prize & Residency, presented by The Current. As part of the award, The Current will acquire a substantial work from Schoenstadt’s oevre and provide a residency at their studio space at BahaMar in Nassau, the capital city of The Bahamas. Chimento Contemporary, Los Angeles, presented the work at VOLTA NY.
“The responsibility of me and my team to create an authentic creative impact for Baha Mar is enormous, and I don’t take it lightly,” commented Cox, following the announcement. He noted Baha Mar, “has been very supportive in promoting culture — Bahamian culture, visual culture — and they did not hesitate when we wanted to participate in VOLTA, nor did they hesitate when we wanted to take it a step further to initiate this prize.”
ArtScene, Volta artists tackle environmentalism, immigration and US policy by GABRIELLA ANGELETI
A stone’s throw from the Armory Show, the Volta New York fair at Pier 90 (7-11 March) aims to appeal to a younger demographic. The eleventh edition features 85 international galleries, non-profits and artist-run spaces, including 31 first-time exhibitors. Some past dealers like Marc Straus, Ryan Lee and Shin Gallery of New York have “graduated” to the adjacent Armory Show this year (also owned by Vornado Realty Trust), which is “always excellent news, as it both confirms our eye for emerging talent and [allows] us to invite fresh positions”, the fair’s artistic director, Amanda Coulson, who launched the Basel-born fair in New York in 2008, told The Art Newspaper.
New american Paintings, juried exhibitions-in-print, issue #133, CHRIS FINLEY
My portrait paintings feature zoomed-in, twisted iterations of weightlifters caught in the moment of extreme strain while performing Olympic-style events: the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk. The Snatch involves lifting a barbell overhead from the ground in one continuous move. The Clean and Jerk consists of two movements, lifting the bar from floor to shoulders and then overhead.
Kim Schoenstadt and Eva Chimento. Photo by VoyageLA
VoyageLA, Meet Eva Chimento of Chimento Contemporary in Boyle Heights
The heart of our mission at VoyageLA is to find the amazing souls that breathe life into our city. In the recent weeks, we’ve had the privilege to connect with some of East LA’s finest artists, creatives, entrepreneurs and rabble-rousers and we can’t begin to express how impressed we are with our city’s incredibly deep talent pool. Check out East LA’s rising stars below.
Los Angeles Art Gallery Tours, Talia Shipman’s “Meet Me in the Middle” at Chimento Contemporary by Bill
Talia Shipman’s exhibition, Meet Me in the Middle, at Chimento Contemporary, toys with expectations and a very specific color palette to deliver both a celebration and a critique of human-made objects, all in the form of a desert-mirage-like, immersive installation.
HYPERALLERGIC: MICKALENE THOMAS, SHINIQUE SMITH, AND OTHERS ARE MAKING ART FOR LA’S NEW METRO LINEMICKALENE THOMAS, SHINIQUE SMITH, AND OTHERS ARE MAKING ART FOR LA’S NEW METRO LINE BY ELISA WOUK ALMINO
Detail of in-progress artwork design by Kim Schoenstadt for Fairview Heights Station
From a stained-glass pavilion to vibrant murals, LA commuters will encounter art from the street to ground levels. One doesn’t generally associate Los Angeles with public transportation, but in recent years the city has been upping its game. In preparation for the 2028 Olympic games, the Metro plans on radically expanding the railway system. In 10 years, according to Los Angeles Curbed, it could be “the nation’s second most extensive rail system — second only to New York.”
WALL STREET INTERNATIONAL: TALIA SHIPMAN13 JAN — 10 MAR 2018 AT THE CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY IN LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES
Talia Shipman. Courtesy of Chimento Contemporary
Chimento Contemporary is pleased to co-present the first solo exhibition of Talia Shipman’s multidisciplinary works with Back Gallery Project from Vancouver. Combining elements of photography, video, and installation, Meet Me In The Middle focuses on pressing social issues in a visually robust manner. Through this project, Shipman is able to construct a necessary conversation about the state of our precarious world.
WALL STREET INTERNATIONAL: MARGARETHE DREXEL14 JAN — 10 MAR 2018 AT THE CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY IN LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES
On August 3, 1811, two mountain goat hunters and two silk ribbon fabricants penetrated the pristine white peak of the Jungfrau for the first time with a black flag. Unfortunately the flag was too small to be seen from the valley below and so nobody believed them, forcing them to reascend the Jungfrau the following year with a larger red wax cloth.
ART AND CAKE: TALIA SHIPMAN, MARGARETHE DREXEL AND THE CURATED LOO AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY PARICK QUINN
Meet me in the Middle. Photo by Patrick Quinn
As the Los Angeles arts scene reinvents itself once again, Boyle Heights is currently the most exciting and controversial arts district in the city. Take a drive down Anderson Street and you’ll pass not only some of the best galleries in town, but also some of the biggest – massive industrial venues with rooms the size of sound stages.
In contrast, Chimento Contemporary is a wonderful example of the notion that “less is more.” Though small in scale compared to its neighbors, Chimento features a main showroom and an adjacent side room as well as what is easily the cleverest project space in town, a functioning restroom that houses regularly curated group shows. The relatively new gallery has already gained a reputation for mounting noteworthy exhibits. This month’s show is no exception.
Read more here
KIM SCHOENSTADT ON PANEL OF ME TOO - ART AND FEMINISM NOW AT ARENA GALLERY 1, SATURDAY JANUARY 27TH 1-3PM
Artists often use their creations as a sort of reflecting device that mirrors and focuses attention on social and political change. Carrying these thoughts forward, on Saturday, January 27th 2018 a vibrant panel discussion on #MeToo - Art and Feminism Now will be held from 1-3pm at the Santa Monica Art Studios.
We will gather as artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers and more to help discuss ideas on how to build a path forward. Kathleen McHugh, Chair Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA, will be moderating the panel discussion.
Michele Pred, #MeToo, 2017, Neon on Vintage Case, 16" x 16" x 8", Courtesy Nancy Hoffman Gallery
LA MAGAZINE: AN EARLY LOOK AT ALL THE ARTWORK COMING TO THE CRENSHAW METRO LINE FEATURING KIM SCHOENSTADT
L.A.-based artist Kim Schoenstadt references both iconic buildings (look for a shout-out to the Forum when the art is in place) and lesser-known structures in the area. The architecture love extends to the blue “snap lines,” which represent a place’s timeline as well as the phone lines, traffic markings, and, now, train tracks that bisect the area.
Kim Schoenstadt’s panorama at the Fairview Heights station
2017
ARTILLERY MAGAZINE: CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY PHYLLIS GREEN BY ANNABEL OSBERG
Spiritual aspirations present this fundamental dilemma: we exist as physical beings in a material world of far more palpable empirical reality than anything incorporeal, with pragmatic demands inevitably more urgent than intangibles. Without surplus resources, how does one afford the time to meditate, the money for yoga classes, or the peace of mind to entertain any such immaterial considerations? Phyllis Green’s work evokes this timeless tug-of-war between concrete and supernatural. Sidestepping cynicism and camp, Green creates objects appearing evenly suspended at the fortuitous fulcrum where material luxury meets spiritual fulfillment.
ART AND CAKE: PHYLLIS GREEN AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY JODY ZELLEN
In “Life after Life after Life” Phillis Green presents an array of objects —some are wearable, suspended from the ceiling on hand crafted wooden supports that look like walking sticks— others are sculptures on casters that can be repositioned and moved around the gallery space alluding the the idea that nothing is static or stationary. Even an image of a cloud filled sky, entitled “Sky Shade,” 2016 has moving parts. That these objects are in flux challenges the traditional notion of a static exhibition and this is exactly Green’s intention. In this body of work, she is suggesting things change and has fashioned an exhibition that connects the material and spiritual worlds.
LOS ANGELES TIMES: WHEN CLOTHES ARE MORE THAN CLOTHES: PHYLLIS GREEN'S DESIGNS ARE JOURNEYS, HUNG ON A HANGAR BY LEAH OLLMAN
Form and function are familiar enough allies. Phyllis Green pairs function and fuel in her subtly provocative show at Chimento Contemporary. Her clothing and furnishings provide ignition for the spirit.
A dark khaki raincoat hanging in a far corner of the gallery is the most resonant example. Beltless and buttonless, the stripped-down garment is all business on the outside. Inside, it is lined with white feathers that peek out of the bottom of both sleeves and along the hem. The feathers sound a lyrical note, and they invite the wearer to think metaphorically about loft, buoyancy, elevation. Green's title: "Close your eyes and feel peace. Open them and ask what can I do to make this world better." The coat is nothing less than a uniform for transformation, outerwear to encourage inner growth.
LOS ANGELES TIMES: DATEBOOK: CALIFORNIA'S MYTHICAL ROOTS, LAYERED HISTORIES OF THE SLAVE TRADE, MACHINES FOR ENLIGHTENMENT BY CAROLINA A. MIRANDA
Phyllis Green, “Life after Life after Life,” at Chimento Contemporary. The L.A.-based artist has created a series of “machines for enlightenment” designed to help with the search for truth. This includes a series of furniture-like sculptures, as well as simple sheaths that are intended to be worn during such a journey — their colors inspired by Hindu thought;
WASHINGTON CITY PAPER: HOW THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS ASSEMBLED NEARLY 500 WOMEN ARTISTS FOR A HISTORIC PHOTO; KIM SCHOENSTADT'S "NOW BE HERE" PROJECT COMES TO D.C. BY JEANINE SANTUCCI
Kim Schoenstadt began the Now Be Here project in her home city of Los Angeles in August of 2016. She got the idea to showcase the number of women artists living and working in cities where they are not equally represented in museums and galleries. Since then, Now Be Here has been replicated in three cities—New York City, Miami, and now D.C.—with a total of 2,070 artists participating.
DELICIOUS LINE: JULIE WEITZ: THE HAND NETWORK, HUMDOG A PRELUDE, CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY JEFF HANSEN
Julie Weitz's The Hand Network, HUMDOG a prelude, a multimedia video project involving choreographed sculpture, cinematography, and a scored soundtrack. The work gives voice to the writings of Carmen "humdog" Hermosillo, a controversial Cuban-American essayist and important figure of cybernetic history and internet subculture.
THE WASHINGTON POST:
STAND UP AND BE COUNTED: HUNDREDS OF CONTEMPORARY FEMALE ARTISTS PARTICIPATE IN HISTORIC PHOTO
Hoping to bring attention to the region’s vibrant arts scene, almost 500 female contemporary artists gathered at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on Wednesday night for a historic group photograph.
Conceived by Los Angeles-based artist Kim Schoenstadt in collaboration with D.C. artist Linn Meyers, “Now Be Here #4″ is the latest in gatherings of “female and female-identifying visual artists in the local community,” according to the project’s website. Previous gatherings occurred in L.A., New York and Miami last year.
Read more here
WALL STREET INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE: JULIE WEITZ AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY
Julie Weitz casts original sculptures and employs practical film effects to construct a virtual world devoid of bodies but filled with the desire for touch in her highly sensualized aesthetic. A network of phantom limbs made from molds of the artist’s hands are linked together by metal chains, a mouth emerges from darkness oozing white foam; a phallus made of wax rotates in blinking neon and a plaster bust of the goddess Athena radiates pink light from her eyes: the imagery permeates a palpable, erotic terror.
ART AND CAKE: CONDUCTION AT FELLOWS OF CONTEMPORARY ART (FOCA) BY LORRAINE HEITZMA
In the center of the gallery, Phyllis Green’s Veil, stands like an exotic sentinel. In fact it is a costume draped over an armature on wheels, allowing a participant to don the elaborate veil while remaining mobile. A Sanskrit Vedic text used in teaching Hindu spiritual knowledge inspired Veil. Specifically it refers to the advice to approach one’s guru with wood on your head. Green’s sculpture aids the individual who is seeking detachment and her performance, Detachment, demonstrates its use in a series of actions within the gallery.
ARTILLERY MAGAZINE PICK OF THE WEEK: MONIQUE PRIETO
Monique Prieto‘s new paintings radiate magnetic simplicity. The abstractions in her elegantly spare show, “Luster,” glow as though lit from within. Each of the four diptychs currently on view at Chimento Contemporary features a pair of organic shapes, one on each panel.
MCCASLIN ART ADVISORY: WORLD PREMIERE IN BERLIN ART WEEK
ART AND CAKE, "MONIQUE PRIETO AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY"
Abstract paintings draw viewers’ attention to the surface, gleaning content and narrative not from representation, but from the exchange between color, brushstroke, and texture. In “Luster”, Monique Prieto’s current solo exhibition at Chimento Contemporary, these essential ingredients coalesce to generate pleasing and layered pieces, but pieces that are nonetheless susceptible to both benefit and suffer from the ambiguity of abstraction.
Read more here
LA TIMES, "MONIQUE PRIETO AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY: FINDING A FACE IN THE CLOUDS" BY DAVID PAGEL
Last year, Monique Prieto exhibited six pairs of little paintings, each resembling an abstract ear and all brought together under the title “Good Listening.” The intimate diptychs suggested an artist listening to her inner rumblings while she let the world around her become the background music to her musings.
This year, it’s clear that those exploratory abstractions were also seeds. They have sprouted and blossomed into the four diptychs that make up the L.A. painter’s current exhibition at Chimento Contemporary in Boyle Heights.
ART NEWS: MONIQUE PRIETO AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY, LOS ANGELES
Julie Weitz, The Hand Network: Humdog, a prelude, HD video, 6:20, 2017
CURATE.LA: JULIE WEITZ THE HAND NETWORK: HUMDOG A PRELUDE & MONIQUE PRIETO: LUSTER
Julie Weitz casts original sculptures and employs practical film effects to construct a virtual world devoid of bodies but filled with the desire for touch in her highly sensualized aesthetic. A network of phantom limbs made from molds of the artist’s hands are linked together by metal chains, a mouth emerges from darkness oozing white foam; a phallus made of wax rotates in blinking neon and a plaster bust of the goddess Athena radiates pink light from her eyes: the imagery permeates a palpable, erotic terror.II For Luster, Prieto has shifted key elements of her formal lexicon of shape, line, and color into new structural configurations that represent both a break from and direct evolution of her signature style of figurative abstraction.
ARTILLERY MAG: DECODER: PENISES: 1850 - 2017BY ZAK SMITH
“Regrettably, the provocative nature of your content is likely unsuitable for our audience at this time.” It may shock you to discover that artists still get told this. It may shock you to discover that—in the fine arts, in Los Angeles, California, in 2017—shock still exists. After all the slutwalking and Vagina Monologuing and pussy-grabbing, pointing the public’s antenna toward the thing their parents did to make them is still, for the individual artist, a gamble. Not a disqualifier, but one more reason the check might not come through.
CHRIS FINLEY INCLUDED IN DOUG SIMAY'S BEST PICKS
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LA: THE DICK PIC SHOW AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY ANGELLA D'AVIGNON
Foucault’s “repressive hypothesis” supposes forbidden pleasure makes sex feel transgressive and taboo. So it’s appropriate that The Dick Pic Show, curated by Katie Bode and Kenton Parker, is installed in Chimento Gallery’s small, brick-walled bathroom—a fun, lewd locale that suggests a type of kinky voyeurism or public sexual activity. Hung salon-style, the show is neither overwhelming nor precious, despite its long roster of 37 artists. The contemporary dick pic—solicitous, intimate, warranted or unwarranted—is the pariah of online dating, just as the symbol of the phallus is ubiquitous and omnipotent in art historical contexts. From subtle innuendos to brazen representations, each artist’s perspective on the trope of the dick pic reflects the notion that sexuality is fluid, subjective, and highly personal.
KCRW: CHRIS FINLEY, BENJAMIN WEISSMAN AND CINDY BERNARD BY HUNTER DROHOJOWSKA-PHILP
One of the many downsides to a market-driven contemporary art scene is the shortage of options for mid-career, middle-aged artists. Artists who had a burst of support when first out of art schools can fade from view for any number of personal reasons: teaching, raising a family, moving away from the big city, shifts in priorities and focus. Three shows in L.A. give such artists another chance and in every case, it proves a good gamble.
LA TIMES: THE STOMACH-CHURNING, VISCERAL POWER OF CHRIS FINLEY'S WEIGHTLIFTER PORTRAITS BY DAVID PAGEL
ARTISTS DO ALL SORTS OF HEAVY LIFTING, OFTEN IN WAYS THAT WE LEAST EXPECT.
THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS IN CHRIS FINLEY’S “DROOL, SNATCH, CLEAN AND JERK,” AN EXHIBITION OF SEVEN ODDLY POWERFUL PAINTINGS AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY IN BOYLE HEIGHTS. AT ONCE UNSETTLING AND ENGAGING — UGLY AND BEAUTIFUL — FINLEY’S PICTURES BRING US FACE TO FACE WITH WEIGHTLIFTERS AS THEY DO SOME REAL HEAVY LIFTING.
MENS HEALTH: HOW DOES YOUR ‘GYM FACE’ MATCH UP TO THESE CRAZY PORTRAITS? BY ALISA HRUSTIC
YOUR BODY REACTS IN ALL SORTS OF STRANGE AND COMPLICATED WAYS WHEN YOU’RE LIFTING HEAVY— AND YOUR FACE IS NO EXCEPTION. THE “GYM FACE” IS NEVER REALLY PLEASANT TO LOOK AT OR EXPERIENCE: YOUR FOREHEAD IS DRIPPING SWEAT, YOUR MOUTH IS PULLED INTO A TIGHT GRIMACE, LIPS SNARLING, AS IF YOU’RE READY TO IMPLODE.
ARTSCENE: CHRIS FINLEY REVIEW BY GENIE DAVIS
Chris Finley’s "Drool, Snatch, Clean and Jerk" presents fractured faces — and some not so fractured — evocative of Picasso, the subject of which is weightlifting. Distorted and visceral, Finley focuses our visual attention on Olympic weightlifters poised in intense moments of exertion, performing the snatch as well as the clean and jerk. For those not versed in lifting terminology, the snatch is a continuous motion event involving lifting the barbell; the clean and jerk creates two lifting movements.
Read more here & in print ArtScene, Vol. 36, No. 10
PAPER MAGAZINE: NSFW THE ART OF THE DICK PIC BY EVA SEALOVE
Consider the penis. It's a highly-charged, highly-fraught, highly-symbolic, highly-sexy (to some people, at least) and sometimes a very silly thing to have. Don't freak out, but with the advance of smartphones we are living in the age of, as Dan Savage puts it, the "portable porn factory" in our pocket. A dick, if you've got one or are in the presence of one, has become infinitely replicable in cyberspace. Snap a pic, send it. Solicited or unsolicited (seriously, don't), the ether is swimming in phalluses.
ART LTD: MAY/JUNE 2017 – IN THE NEWS; CONGRATULATING SANDEEP MUKHERJEE ON HIS GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP BY M. ENHOLM
The Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the recipients of the 93rd annual Guggenheim Fellowship awards. Selected from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants 173 awards were given to a diverse group of scholars, artists, and scientists. Established in 1925, the Foundation has granted more than $350 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals. The 2017 recipients in the Creative Arts/Fine Art include: Derek Boshier, Burkhart Cassils, Mahwish Chishty, Joseph DeLappe, Lesley Dill, Harry Dodge, Eugenio Espinoza, Elana Herzog, Nicholas A. Hill, Byron Kim, Kathe Kim, Jennie Jieun Lee, John W. Love, James Luna, Shari Mendelson, Sandeep Mukherjee (seen above), Paul O’Keeffe, Jefferson Pinder, Hunter Reynolds, Kay Rosen, Paul Rucker, Zinadu Saro-Wiwa, Jeanne Silverthorne, Roy Thurston and Leslie Wayne.
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST: SANDEEP MUKHERJEE RECEIVES THE PRESTIGIOUS 2017 JOHN SIMON GUGGENHEIM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP BY NILOFAR HAJA
Selected among a pool of 3,000 applicants, the Pune-born, Los Angeles-based artist—known for his abstract landscape paintings using acrylic inks and paints on textured surfaces and materials—was selected in the fine arts category.
HUFFINGTON POST: ADAM ROSS: UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD BY SHANA NYS DAMBROT
Wim Wenders’ 1991 avant-garde epic Until the End of the World was a globe-spanning tech-infused romance in which a major plot point was the invention of a headset that could record memories in such a way as to then be able to show them to others, bypassing the viewer’s optic nerve and transmitting them whole, complete with images, like films beamed directly into the viewer’s neocortex, such that even a blind person could, in neurological terms, see them. So that happened.
Read more here
ART AND CAKE: COLE CASE’S POETIC VISION AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY GENIE DAVIS
At Chimento Contemporary through March 25th, Cole Case’s “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt” is a beautiful, poetic exhibition of luminous but empty landscapes, Los Angeles scenes that seem to come out of a dream but are created from meticulous observation.
ARTILLERY MAGAZINE: CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY: COLE CASE BY EVE WOOD
Cole Case is a man obsessed with: airplanes, the night sky, palm trees, runways, depopulated public spaces and his own private plethora of nostalgic memorabilia. Armed with these iconographic signifiers, Case, in his second solo exhibition with Chimento Contemporary, has painted a series of eight gorgeously rendered oil paintings that both commemorate and celebrate the oft ignored public arenas where people conduct the business of their lives.
ARTSCENE: RECOMMENDATIONS: COLE CASE CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA BY GENIE DAVIS
“Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt” is a finely wrought example of Cole Case's delicate, terse style. The exhibition’s title is as poetic as the works themselves, taken from a drawing in Kurt Vonnegut’s book "Slaughterhouse 5." Working with landscapes that are primarily desolate, Case’s subjects include beaches, harbors, neighborhoods under flight paths, and seascapes that are barren except for an evocatively-placed palm, a lone freighter, towering airplanes. Eight evocative paintings are joined by a series of works on paper. Viewers see elements of realism and the surreal, a naturalistic style contrasting with a subject matter that is often hauntingly skewed. The ghost of Rousseau inhabits these works.
HAMPTONS ARTHUB: CRITIC’S VIEW: FIVE BOOTHS NOT TO MISS AT VOLTA NY THIS YEAR BY CHARLES A. RILEY
"Mutual Reentanglements 2" by Sandeep Mukherjee. Courtesy of Chimento Contemporary.
At the 10th anniversary of VOLTA NY, which kicked off on Wednesday, up-and-coming artists dig into subjects like cultural diversity and immigration, and even Donald Trump’s supposed sex practices, keeping the messages up to the moment. As per the norm, all 96 exhibitors were asked to showcase the work of just one or two artists, making it all the easier to cherrypick the fair’s break-out stars.
Sandeep Mukherjee, Mutual Reentanglement 2, Chimento Contemporary, Los Angeles
Making its New York fair debut is Los Angeles’s Chimento Contemporary, whose founder, Eva Chimento, says that she “always wanted to do something crazy at an art fair.” That’s what she’s aiming for with her mural installation by Sandeep Mukherjee, who has developed a fascinating technique working with Duralene. This thin polymer, which the artist likens to a “synthetic paper,” hangs on the booth wall in ten five-by-seven-foot sheets, each painted in countless layers of acrylic paint.
LA TIMES: DATEBOOK: A FRANK ROMERO RETROSPECTIVE, MOHOLY-NAGY AT LACMA, ULAY AT THE DEPART FOUNDATION BY CAROLINA A. MIRANDA
This exhibition — the first solo exhibition by the artist at Chimento — brings together eight new oils paintings by an artist who is obsessed with landscape of the decidedly non-pastoral kind — airport flight paths, harbors or sporting arenas.
ART AND CAKE: WHAT’S HOT IN L.A.? ART EVENTS YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT
Kim Schoenstadt, Sightline Construction No.12, 2015, Vinyl and metal bench installation.
Bench: 71 x 23 x 19 ½ inches. Vinyl: 69 ½ x 39 ½ inches
KIM SCHOENSTADT, SIGHTLINE CONSTRUCTION NO.12, 2015 AT THE LAPIS PRESS. RECEPTION, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2017, 4PM - 7PM
THE HUFFINGTON POST: PHOTO L.A. AND MOPLA UNITE JANUARY 12 - 15, 2017 BY KATHY LEONARDO
Laura London, Rockstar Moment Series: Rock Star Moment 5, 2000, Color Photograph, 30” x 30”, Edition of 3
Photography has become one of the most popular forms of art. Now with photography driven websites such as Instagram, Facebook, etc., the medium has attracted a multitude of new fans, students, and users. photo l.a. has been celebrating the art of photography for the past twenty-six years.
2016
LOS ANGELES TIMES: DATEBOOK: OBJECTS THAT REMIX AFRICAN AND AMERICAN, PAINTINGS OF SHANGRI-LA, PETER SAUL BEFORE HE WAS POP BY CAROLINA A. MIRANDA
“Straight Outta Bushwick,” at Chimento Contemporary. Organized by Patricia Hamilton, who used to run New York’s Hamilton Gallery of Contemporary Art, this exhibition brings together a selection of works by artists from the Schweitzer/David Gallery in Brooklyn, from a neighborhood that has been a hotbed of arts activity for just over six years.
ARTDAILY.ORG: PÉREZ ART MUSEUM MIAMI CELEBRATED FEMINISM WITH LARGEST PHOTOGRAPH OF SOUTH FLORIDA FEMALE ARTISTS
305 artists braved the inclement weather to make history. Photo: Amanda Bradley.
MIAMI, FLA.- On the morning of December 10, 2016, Pérez Art Museum Miami partnered with Los Angeles-based artist Kim Schoenstadt to organize a historic event – Now Be Here #3 – a gathering and photograph of South Florida female and female identifying contemporary artists. 305 artists braved the inclement weather to make history. This community gathering comes at a time when issues of gender equality and identity are at the forefront of cultural discourse in the United States.
SOUTHFLORIDA.COM: SOUTH FLORIDA FEMALE ARTISTS TO UNITE FOR GROUP PORTRAIT AND TO MAKE A FEMINIST STATEMENT BY PHILLIP VALYS
On Saturday, Dec. 10, more than 400 female artists will huddle in front of the Perez Art Museum Miami to shoot a group portrait and celebrate gender equality in the art world. The project, titled "Now Be Here #3," is the brainchild of Los Angeles conceptual artist Kim Schoenstadt, who aims to draw attention to underpaid and underrepresented female artists.
HUFFINGTON POST: CRITIC’S PICK: THE POWER OF INTIMACY IN ENOC PEREZ’ AND CARLOS ROLON/DZINE’S COLLABORATION AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY LITA BARRIE
Bigger is not always better, although large scale artwork is more attention-grabbing in a fiercely competitive, commercialized art universe. Enormous art fairs, expansive architectural white cube galleries and monumental fabricated art works made in factory-like studios take center stage today. So it is refreshing to find a gem which goes against the trend.
LA WEEKLY: 5 ART SHOWS TO SEE IN L.A. THIS WEEK BY CATHERINE WAGLEY
Dream house
Artists Enoc Perez and Carlos Rolón, both of whom have roots in Puerto Rico, made each object in their current show at Chimento Contemporary together, although not while in the same place.
LA WEEKLY: 11 THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU'RE IN DOWNTOWN L.A. BY CATHERINE WAGLEY
Back in October we published our 2016 Best of L.A. issue, our annual roundup of everything we love the most in Los Angeles (and there's a lot). Certain neighborhoods have a tendency to perform better than others, and downtown just happens to be brimming with some of the coolest, most award-worthy stuff in the city. Whether you're killing time before a show or making a special trip to sightsee in your own city, here are 11 things to make sure to check out downtown.
LA TIMES - CULTURE: HIGH & LOW WITH CAROLINA A. MIRANDA: “CARLOS ROLÓN/DZINE AND ENOC PEREZ,” AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY
Rolón, better know as Dzine, and Perez have teamed up for a show that explores immigration, aspiration and identity (partly inspired by the artist's shard roots in Puerto Rico.)
HYBERALLERGIC: IN BROOKLYN, 600 WOMEN ARTISTS UNITE FOR A PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTEN CLIFFORD
A group of 600 female artists convened at the Brooklyn Museum for "Now Be Here #2," which has be called the largest group portrait and female-identifying artist in New York.
ARTNET®NEWS: 600 FEMALE ARTISTS TOOK THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM BY STORM THIS WEEKEND BY RAIN EMBUSCADO
On Sunday morning, at the invitation of the artist Shinique Smith, 600 female and female-identifying artists converged at the Brooklyn Museum for a group photograph.
LA WEEKLY: CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY: BEST ART SHOWS IN A BATHROOM BY CATHERINE WAGLEY
Like most galleries, Chimento Contemporary has a main room and a smaller space for projects. Unlike most, however, it also has a "Curated Loo" - or art shows in the bathroom.
ART AND CAKE: SALLY BRUNO: “SURF SKATE SNOW” AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY JACQUELINE BELL JOHNSON
Sally Bruno's solo show SURF SKATE SNOW is up right now at Chimento Contemporary. The show consists of six oil paintings in a whiter than white gallery space.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: ‘NOW BE HERE’ TAKES A PORTRAIT AND MAKES A GENDER STATEMENT BY JORI FINKEL
LOS ANGELES — A group of 733 female artists gathered on Sunday in the sunny courtyard of the Hauser Wirth & Schimmel gallery for “Now Be Here,” which its organizers call the largest group portrait of working artists taken in this city’s history.
[ZITININE] BETA: LA'S 9 BEST FEMALE GALLERIST VIA ALLIE POHL BY ADREN SHORE
LA-based conceptual artist Allie Pohl has had it with society’s unrealistic beauty and body standards—for XX and XY chromosome holders and beyond.
HUFFINGTON POST: MARC FICHOU'S PLAYFUL INSTALLATION AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY LITA BARRIE
Marc Fichou is a French-born, L.A. based artist who consciously defies categorization. This playful defiance makes Fichou a free spirit in the art world who refuses to be limited by restrictive definitions of what it means to be an artist.
ARTNEWS: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
“Marc Fichou: Outside-In” is on view at Chimento Contemporary in Los Angeles through Saturday, July 9. The solo exhibition presents
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MARC FICHOU "OUTSIDE IN", HUFFINGTON POST
Inter medial artist Marc Fichou’s new installation OUTSIDE-IN at Chimento Contemporary offers the closest thing you can get to a look ...
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DESIGN MIAMI BLOG: "MARC FICHOU: OUTSIDE-IN AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY"
Fichou seeks to achieve a paradoxically solid expression of the fluid mental, creative, neurological process of unending in-between that is human consciousness, using finite tangible forms and imagery.
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ARTILLERY MAGAZINE, MARC FICHOU
Imagine being able to chart the interior of someone’s brain—to witness ideas as they begin to take shape between ecstatically
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FRENCH MORNING, LOS ANGELES, MARC FICHOU
Marc Fichou se considère comme un artiste « intermédia » – un terme hérité du mouvement d’art contemporain ...
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ARTILLERY: CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY - LAURA LONDON BY ANNABEL OSBERG
Like fairy tales about to reach sinister climaxes, Laura London’s new photographs present spuriously romanticized views of female youth. Each portrait’s idealized setup is tempered by a portentous feeling that something is amiss.
ARTILLERY: GIRL POWER AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY - LAURA LONDON, COLE CASE AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY BEVERLY WESTERN
Last night found us in Downtown LA at Chimento Contemporary for Laura London’s show. We’ve been following London’s “girls” for quite some time, so we were anxious to see the newest crop of female adolescents usually featured in her work.
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HUFFINGTON POST: LAURA LONDON: RELOCATION AT CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY BY SHANA NYS DAMBROT
Photographer Laura London has a mantra. “Personal, universal; observation, imagination.” Her most indelible images are animated by the meticulous and intuitive calibration of these dynamic dualities.
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LOS ANGELES TIMES: WHAT EXACTLY AM I LOOKING AT? THE INTRIGUING WORK OF ARTIST ROY THURSTON BY CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT
Roy Thurston traffics in perceptual ambiguities at the busy intersection of painting and sculpture. The sensation of being in a gallery yet not being quite sure what you’re looking at is strange but rewarding.
VISUAL ART SOURCE: ROY THURSTON AND MONIQUE PRIETO, CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY, LOS ANGELES PREVIEW BY ANDY BRUMER
It wasn’t until last month that scientists finally “heard,” then graphed the presence of the those remarkably enduring “gravitational waves” which resulted from the collision of two massive black holes in space some 1.3 billion light years away.
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ARTILLERY: KIM SCHOENSTADT BY PETER FRANK
Kim Schoenstadt’s approach to visual art conflates two and three dimensions, crawling up the wall and on the floor, gelling into freestanding objects even as it elaborates on a kind of drawing-in-space that seems at once to leak from and to enmesh the sculptural, even functional, constructions.
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WALLPAPER* MAGAZINE - OFF THE WALL: KIM SCHOENSTADT'S NEW WORK MASHES UP 2D AND 3D REPRESENTATIONS BY CHARLOTTE JANSEN
Kim Schoenstadt’s research into architecture began almost by accident, waiting for buses in lobbies in Chicago.
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BE-ART MAGAZINE: ESTABLISHED ARTIST SELECTION: LA ARTIST, KIM SCHOENSTADT
"We take the opportunity of that wonderful exhibition at Chimento Contemporaryto highlight excellent Venice-based artist, Kim Schoenstadt."
"Because of the consistency and singularity of her work with a constant evolution to it, Kim Schoenstadt is now part of our Selection of Best Ultimate artists."
Read more here.
HUFFINGTON POST: KIM SCHOENSTADT’S ARCHITECTURE OF THE MIND BY SHANA NYS DAMBROT
Kim Schoenstadt’sabiding interest in architecture skews toward the interpretive, allegorical, palimpsestically repurposed, aspirational, never-built, and even fictional edifices of the last century.
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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO L.A.'S DOWNTOWN GALLERIES
Check us out on this great list!
Read more here.
LOS ANGELES TIMES: IN SANDEEP MUKHERJEE'S MURAL, A MODULAR APPROACH TO NATURE BY CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT
A seductive 50-foot mural by Sandeep Mukherjee is composed from 10 modular units, each painted in a lush abstraction that suggests the moist environs of a tropical jungle.
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NOTES ON LOOKING: SANDEEP MUKHERJEE: MUTUAL ENTANGLEMENTS BY DAVID BELL
As I sat staring at the pattern on the back of the seat in front of me during a three-hour flight from Houston to Los Angeles, I contemplated Sandeep Mukherjee’s impressive painting installation,Mutual Entanglements, at Chimento Contemporary, the last art exhibition I saw before leaving on a four-day trip to Florida to visit my family. I was without a book or a pen during the flight; all I had was the back of the seat and my mind’s wanderings.
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ARTDAILY.ORG: CHIMENTO CONTEMPORARY OPENS WITH INAUGURAL EXHIBITION OF SANDEEP MUKHERJEE'S WORK
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Chimento Contemporary announce their inaugural exhibition “Mutual Entanglements” with new work by Los Angeles-based artist Sandeep Mukherjee. For over a decade Mukherjee’s work has considered the notion of abstraction as a method to make moving pictures of thought. Pursuing multiple paths via portraiture, the performing body, architecture as folding, and erasure as abstraction, the work continues to explore the tension between process, affect and representation.
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ARTILIKELA: SANDEEP MUKHERJEE JUST IS BY MOTO OKAWA
At newly opened Chimento Contemporary, Sandeep Mukherjee’s panoramic paintings just are. Spanning across the two jointed walls, these ten paintings, collectively titled as Mutual Entanglements, quietly float in the space, seemingly hovering over the white floor. The sight offers neither an excitement nor a disappointment. It just is. As a result, a meditative engagement transpires.
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