Saturday, June 28, 2014

Current Exhibition: The Faces of America



dnj Gallery presents


The Faces of America


June 28 - August 30, 2014



Tam Tran, Tam is...Frida,
2013, digital print, 17" x 17"



R. Dean Larson, HydroGraphic 150,
2013, archival inkjet print, 12" x 18"



dnj Gallery is pleased to announce its current exhibition, “The Faces of America”. This group photography exhibition will feature artwork by dnj Gallery’s artists. These artists explore various themes including self-identity, culture, and environment, while using an array of traditional and experimental photographic processes.


Please note we will not be holding an opening reception.




2525 michigan avenue, suite J1
santa monica, california 90404
310.315.3551

For directions to our gallery, please click here.
dnj Gallery is now on Artnet, so be sure to check us out!
dnj Gallery is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

"Now You See It" Photography Exhibition at the Met


Now on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Photography and Concealment


March 31–September 1, 2014 




"Photography is a medium prized for its capacity to expose, lay bare, make visible. For many artists, the camera is, above all, a tool for revealing what would otherwise remain unnoticed. As Diane Arbus once said: "I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them." At the root of this artistic impulse is a keen fascination with that which is hidden, obscure, or hitherto unseen. This exhibition presents a selection of contemporary photographs and video from the permanent collection that variously explores the medium's dynamic interplay between concealment and revelation.

Some of the artists featured here use the camera to reveal subjects or places ordinarily hidden, as in Vera Lutter's majestic view of the interior of a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant or Miguel Rio Branco's lush image of a tapestry's seamy underside. Others address instances of geopolitical obfuscation: Fazal Sheikh's aerial photographs of the Negev desert in southern Israel record the traces of Bedouin villages that have been transformed into forests or farmland, while Mishka Henner collects images of stylishly censored high-security sites on Google Earth. In Vault (2011), Thomas Demand takes his inspiration from current events, meticulously re-creating a storeroom in which thirty missing works of art were discovered during a recent police raid.

The tension between publicity and privacy—the simultaneous desire to be looked at and to evade the merciless gaze of the camera—animates the work of artists as diverse as Arbus, Lutz Bacher, Jack Pierson, and Taryn Simon. In her video, The Nightingale (2003), Grace Ndiritu explores the tradition of the veil and its complex poetics of exposure and effacement. Complementing the contemporary works on view is a selection of earlier photographs in which the primary subject is hidden or obscured—a brief anthology of playfulness, shame, and seduction."

There will also be an exhibition tour on July 19, from 10:30am-11:30am. For further information on this exhibition, please see the Met's website.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Make Music Day at Bergamot Station

Make Music Day at Bergamot Station

Saturday June 21st


MMLA


Bergamot Station Arts Center
and Recreation and Parks Commissioner Phil Brock present:


Saturday June 21st
3:00pm to 8:30pm
People's Park at Bergamot Station Arts Center


Please join us for this free summer solstice celebration!
Join in, sing, play, or just listen!

MOO MOO MUSICA
JEFF GEOFFRAY & FRIENDS
JENNIFER LOCKHART
TALL BONES
CUICANI
MASTERS OF NOW

PACK A PICNIC*BRING YOUR FAMILY & FRIENDS*MAKE MUSIC
Come by foot, by bike, by car.

Make Music Day Santa Monica is happening on Saturday, June 21st
at Tongva Park, Palisades Park, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Colorado Center Park, Hotchkiss Park & Douglas Park.
(See your local Neighborhood Association website for schedules.)




2525 michigan avenue, suite J1
santa monica, california 90404
310.315.3551

For directions to our gallery, please click here
dnj Gallery is now on Artnet, so be sure to check us out!
dnj Gallery is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Adaptations - New Exhibition at SCA Contemporary

Adaptations, a new exhibition at SCA Contemporary in Albuquerque, NM, showcases artwork about living with a serious disease, such as cancer. This group exhibition features work by Amy Cinkscales, Valerie Roybal, and Patrick Nagatani, who are artists and curators of the show. Adaptations opens Friday, June 20, and runs through August 24.



Adaptations
Opening reception:
5-8p, Fri., Jun. 20
524 Haines SW, 505.228.3749
FREE



An article from Albuquerque’s Intelligent Alternative by Katherine Oostman discusses this upcoming exhibition further:

"The single constant in life is that it changes. None know this better than the artists of the exhibit Adaptations. This collection showcases pieces inspired by the process of living with, and around, a detrimental disease such as cancer.

The project, put on by SCA Contemporary, combines the work of local and national artists presenting pieces of sculpture, painting, collage, mixed-media, photograph and installation art. It includes the work of Lea Anderson, Heidi Pollard, Patrick Nagatani, Leigh Anne Langwell, Tara Massarsky, Dana Burgy-Gautschi, Valerie Roybal, Amy Clinkscales, Linda Mae Tratechaud, Randi Ganulin, Andre Ruesch, Barbara Crawford and Carol Chase Bjerke. Together, these artists have created a space filled with expressions of grief, anger and bewilderment, but also compassion, understanding and camaraderie.

The original idea to create a space for art fueled by major illness came from Clinkscales, Roybal and Nagatani, artists and curators of the show. At first, they fondly referred to the project as “the disease show.” However, as Roybal faced her second diagnosis of stage-four cancer, she meditated on the process of continuing to live with a disease that would not go away."

You can read the full article here.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

LA Times Article on Overdevelopment at Bergamot Station

The Los Angeles Times article by arts reporter Mike Boehm on the overdevelopment issues which face Bergamot Station Arts Center.



"It's been 27 years since the last train rumbled into Santa Monica's Bergamot Station. For the last two decades, the former rail depot has enjoyed a second life as an arts complex, with its corrugated steel rail-yard warehouses repurposed as homes for art galleries and the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

Now the trains are about to return: A new station for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Exposition Line is being built alongside the Bergamot Station arts complex. When the line opens in a year or two, it will deliver riders to the arts hub's doorstep.

Santa Monica city officials are now faced with deciding what kind of arts hub riders will step into — the funky-but-chic one that now exists or something a bit more elegant and likely to generate more substantial tax and lease revenues for the city. The question has put the art museum and the 40 other arts district tenants, most of them commercial galleries, on opposite sides of the tracks."

You can read the full article here.


Save Bergamot pic

How can you help? 

Please continue your support.

- If you haven't already, PLEASE sign our PETITION NOW!
- Share the petition with friends through e-mail or on Facebook and help get the word out.
- "Like" Bergamot Station Arts Center on Facebook and stay tuned for updates on our campaign.
- Send a message to Santa Monica City Council members and tell them why you support the preservation of Bergamot Station and the survival of its tenants.

With your help we will remain a vital part of L.A.'s thriving art scene for another 50 years and more.

Thank You,

Bergamot Station Gallery Cultural Association

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Save Bergamot Station Arts Center from Overdevelopment

Save Bergamot

The Bergamot Station Gallery Cultural Association (BSGCA) is reaching out to the arts community and the public to inform you of the imminent destruction of Bergamot Station Arts Center, should the City of Santa Monica proceed with its current development plans. Dozens of business owners, hundreds of employees, and an endless number of artists and their families as well as the Santa Monica arts community at large, are in serious jeopardy.

We need your support in an effort to save Bergamot Station from overdevelopment. We do not want another Grove or Shopping Mall to replace this unique and historic complex, which has thrived against all odds for over 20 years as well as providing exceptional arts programming and community service. All three development teams under consideration for the contract with the City of Santa Monica propose a massive overhaul to the property which will result in the disruption and closure of many of our businesses. Current development proposals threaten to:

-DECREASE THE NUMBER OF ART GALLERIES
-ADD RETAIL SPACE
-ADD CREATIVE OFFICES
-ADD A HOTEL
-ADD BARS AND RESTAURANTS
-ADD UNDERGROUND PARKING, WHICH WILL DESTROY BUSINESSES ONSITE AND WILL NOT ACCOMMODATE THE NUMBER OF TENANTS WHO WILL BE ADDED TO THE SITE

We, as over 40 art galleries and cultural businesses, respectfully cannot support the City’s plan to turn Bergamot Station into one of these three concepts:


Save Bergamot-3 designs


We have been asking our patrons, associates, friends, artists, and supporters to help us preserve our businesses and our beloved community of galleries and arts related businesses by signing a petition to request that the City of Santa Monica Officials cease plans for redevelopment until the survival of the core tenants of Bergamot Station is ensured.

Thus far, thanks to the overwhelming support in our efforts to help preserve the integrity of Bergamot Station Arts Center, we have gathered over 8,000 signatures on our online petition and have received thousands of powerful statements about the necessity of keeping the heart and soul, THE GALLERIES, of Bergamot Station alive.

We deeply appreciate the community's response to our call to action and have been encouraged by the latest news that the Santa Monica City Council has postponed the vote to select a development team. We now have more time to gather endorsements and to reinforce our core mission - to retain all of the galleries, non-profits, and arts-related businesses that are such a vital resource for the City of Santa Monica and beyond.


Save Bergamot pic



- If you haven't already, please sign our PETITION.
- Share the petition with friends through e-mail or on Facebook and help get the word out.
- "Like" Bergamot Station Arts Center on Facebook and stay tuned for updates on our campaign.
- Send a message to Santa Monica City Council members and tell them why you support the preservation of Bergamot Station and the survival of its tenants.

With your help we will remain a vital part of L.A.'s thriving art scene for another 50 years and more.

Thank You,

Bergamot Station Gallery Cultural Association

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Harvard-Westlake School Opening Reception "What Remains"

Last weekend dnj Gallery held an opening reception for Harvard-Westlake photography students. In their exhibition entitled "What Remains" these middle and high school students explore a multitude of directions in their digital and analogue images. 

"What Remains" will be on view at dnj Gallery through June 21, 2014.