Natural Selections

May 13 - July 1, 2017

Curated by Shannon Currie Holmes

ARTISTS:

Amabelle Aguiluz, Sarajo Frieden, Wakana Kimura, Karin Lanzoni, and Hiroki Yoshimoto

Brand Library & Art Center is pleased to present the artwork of Amabelle Aguiluz, Sarajo Frieden, Wakana Kimura, Karin Lanzoni and Hiroko Yoshimoto in an exhibition that embraces the fluid and instinctive nature of each artists’ practice while honoring the sophistication of their invention.

Purely non-representational or suggestively figurative, the works in this exhibition are deeply felt and allusive. Created in a variety of mediums, including painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, and installation, the works are inspirited by nature with vivid compositions of organic complexity. Intuitive forms emerge, driven by the technical facility of each artist, engaging the viewer in the thought provoking pursuit of meaning.

Amabelle Aguiluz expresses the flow of life as a vast web of interconnections using the medium of fiber as a symbolic map; linking us to the past, revealing stories about our culture, and connect us together. Her preference for using discarded fabrics allows her time to explore the process of transformation while collecting and analyzing the materials of her production. Aguiluz uses her art as a means to connect with history, nature and her surroundings.

Amabelle Aguiluz lives and works in downtown Los Angeles. Her practice incorporates clothing, textile, fiber sculpture, and installation processes that are presented as free form sculptures and often are incorporated into live performance, video, and photographs. She studied at Politecnico di Milano, Italy and graduated in 2011 from the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York BFA in Fashion Design. In 2012, she launched her own knitwear fashion label of experimental handmade clothing, textiles and accessories. Aguiluz’s work has been exhibited nationally and she is a member of the LA Fibershed.

www.amabelleaguiluz.com

Sarajo Frieden’s work is an exploration of color, shape, line, and form. She experiments with different mediums and employs a variety of methodologies. She is a hunter and gatherer of images, mining the history of abstraction, textiles, non-Western cultures, and the digital/virtual environment to bring together a multiplicity of discordant sources. Working this way she opens doors, dislocating preconceived outcomes, and enables shifts of perception and the limitless possibilities they suggest. Playing with movement and form in two-dimensional space she engages materials spontaneously, deliberately, and with improvisation. Frieden creates a space that allows for ambiguity and invites experimentation.

Sarajo Frieden received a degree in Painting and Printmaking from the University of California at Los Angeles. She is internationally recognized for her award-winning design and illustration work that includes film titles, books, textiles and packaging. She is a recipient of a fellowship to the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation Residency in New Berlin, NY as well as the Zeta Orionis Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Her artwork has been exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally she has shown in Australia, Japan, Italy, France, England, Scotland, Germany, Netherlands and South Korea.

www.sarajofrieden.net

Wakana Kimura’s artwork, monumental in size, appears to pay homage to the Abstract Expressionist movement of the West and the bold Zen Buddhist brush painting of her home country, Japan. The raw energy of the work, expressed in sweeping lines and splashes of color, is the initial seduction, but upon closer reflection the meticulous detail of the work emerges. Against the dynamic strokes of her calligraphic outbursts are fastidiously drawn patterns, symbols, animals, plants and deities from Buddhist iconography. The juxtaposition within the work arose from shifts in Kimura’s artistic and cultural perspectives over the last decade. Having focused her studies in Western abstraction, in particular on color, tone, and mark-making, she began looking for new inspiration in her work and was drawn back to Japan’s rich artistic heritage. The “markings” in her abstract work started to incorporate Japanese motif and what began with a single mark continued to build, facilitating a conversation, and now a visual communication between the East and the West.

Wakana Kimura graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts with BFA. After moving to the United States in 2007, she received her MFA from Otis College of Arts and Design in 2011. Her work has been exhibited throughout Japan and the United States, with recent solo exhibitions at the Pomona College Museum of Art and LA Art Core. Kimura is the recipient of a fellowship to the Artist First Foundation.

www.wakanakimura.com

Karin Lanzoni is interested in the small gestures we make in everyday applications. On our phones we swipe, skip, tap and flick. In the kitchen we zest, grate, spread, cut, crush, and sprinkle. To make her paintings, Lanzoni uses these very actions with paint. These small gestures are in contradistinction to the grand gestures of abstract expression and, instead, point to the intimacy we have with things in our hands. This intimacy is reinforced by the small format of the work. The paintings can appear as if they are cropped swatches of larger material forms; the micro views of unknown parts of the world with the painting taking on a physical presence resembling colorful soil, loam, silt and clay. Or in paradox, they can appear macro, like aerial views of lush country or oceanic floors.

Karin Lanzoni is an LA based artist, sometime curator and occasional writer. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has won several awards including the Nancy Graves Foundation Grant for her painting and sculpture. She recently published a book called How Painting Works, which has been placed in several collections including the Smithsonian and the Getty Research Institute. She has curated several exhibitions in Los Angeles, most recently an exhibition of 10 artists’ collectives at the Fine Arts Gallery at Cal State, Los Angeles.

www.periscopes.org

Hiroko Yoshimoto’s latest series, “Biodiversity” addresses the serious nature of the deteriorating biodiversity of species caused by human hands. Her colorful abstractorganic imagery conjure up the infinite variety and diversity of life forms like the microbes in a drop of water. The series reflects her ardent wish that life’s diversity would continue to flourish.

Hiroko Yoshimoto moved to Los Angeles from Japan as a teen. She has BA and MA inArt from UCLA. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States and internationally with solo shows at Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, Museum of Ventura County in Ventura, and Schneider Art Museum, Southern Oregon. She has curated numerous exhibitions including shows at the Museum of Ventura County and Ventura College. She was a founder of Studio 83 artists’ co-op (1983-1999) and Ventura College Friends of the Arts. She served as a member of the Ventura Municipal Art Acquisition Committee and is currently serving as a member of the Ventura Community Memorial Art Collection and the Museum of the Ventura County Fine Arts Committee.

www.hirokoyoshimoto.com