dnj gallery visitors

Opening Reception Photos: Helen K. Garber/Brassai and Other Vintage Noir Photographers

2012-01-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who made it out last Saturday for our artist reception. Here is a fantastic slide show of the evening to enjoy. Thanks again!

dnj Staff

Bergamot Station: Holiday Toy Drive—Bring Art Supplies For Underserved Kids!

2011-12-14T16:56:00.000-08:00

Throughout the evening of Friday, December 16, ABC7 & SoCal Firefighters' 19th Annual Spark of Love Toy Drive will be collecting kid-friendly art supplies in conjunction with Bergamot Station's 30 OPEN DOORS art walk. Bring new, unopened art supplies and toy donations to be collected as you enter Bergamot Station from Michigan Ave. More info about the charity here: Spark o f Love

WHEN: Friday, December 16, 2011 / 5-10 pm

VISITOR INFO: Free Admission / Valet Parking Available

WHERE: BERGAMOT STATION
2525 Michigan Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90404
www.bergamotstation.com

Bergamot Station Art Walk "30 Open Doors"

2011-12-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

BERGAMOT STATION ANNOUNCES AN EVENING OPEN HOUSE EVENT CELEBRATING SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S ORIGINAL ART WALK

INDULGE IN AN EVENING OPEN HOUSE CELEBRATION FEATURING FINE ART, GIFTS, FOOD, SPIRITS, MUSIC AND PERFORMANCE

Santa Monica’s legendary art complex BERGAMOT STATION comes alive with 30 OPEN DOORS, a colorful open house in honor of our remarkable past, present and future as the centerpiece of West Coast art. During 30 Open Doors, guests will view work by acclaimed artists at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and nearly three dozen galleries during our one-night-only extended hours.

Come explore all that Bergamot Station has to offer, including fine jewelry, handmade papers, fine florals, holiday gifts and more!

WHEN: Friday, December 16, 2011 / 5-10 pm

VISITOR INFO: Free Admission / Valet Parking Available

WHERE: BERGAMOT STATION
2525 Michigan Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90404
www.bergamotstation.com

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artists, Richard Gilles and Dale Johnson!

2011-12-13T11:53:00.000-08:00

Richard Gilles and Dale Johnson are among the 20 finalists for the Emerging Focus International Photography Competition. They will be premiered at Photo LA which runs from January 12-16, 2012.

Benjamin Lowy Featured on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart

2011-12-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to dnj artist, Benjamin Lowy! To see the episode, please click here.

Len Prince News - Ruby Star Benefit | Fundraiser | Silent Auction

2011-12-09T17:07:00.000-08:00

Hope you can make it out "for a rare evening where art, film and music will meet, to support and celebrate break-though feature film, RUBY STAR. All proceeds from this fundraiser and silent auction will benefit this unique film project scheduled for pre-production in 2012."

The featured 1994 cibachrome portrait of Drew Barrymore by Len Prince will be auctioned on the evening with 50% of proceeds being donated to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Wednesday December 14, 2011 from 6 - 8 PM

The FLAG Art Foundation
The Chelsea Arts Tower
545 W 25th Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10001

Works of art generously donated by the following internationally recognized artists:

Eva & Adele
Grimanesa Amoros
Donald Baechler
Tracey Emin
Louise Fishman
Bill Jensen
Lluis Lleo
Jack Pierson
Len Prince
John Sonsini

Dale Johnson Wins Pollux Awards Photographer of the Year Award 2011

2011-12-01T12:22:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Dale Johnson, for taking the top prize during the Worldwide Photography Gala Pollux Awards 2011. Dale has been invited to exhibit at The Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires, Argentina in January 2012 and will debut a solo show here at dnj Gallery in June of 2012.

Benjamin Lowy's New Book

2011-11-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Benjamin Lowy, for the recent release of his new book titled, Iraq|Perspectives. The book is now available for purchase in stores and online.

In addition, Benjamin will also be doing a book signing at the ICP Book Store in New York on Friday December 2, 2011 from 6 - 7:30pm.

"Then and Now" Opening Photos

2011-11-29T13:29:00.000-08:00

A big thank you to all who made it out for dnj's "Then and Now" exhibition opening! Here is a slide show of images to enjoy from amazing evening.

Dylan Vitone at the Carnegie Museum of Art in "Picturing the City: Downtown Pitsburgh, 2007-2010"

2011-11-09T15:13:00.000-08:00

Picturing the City: Downtown Pittsburgh, 2007–2010
September 23, 2011–March 25, 2012
Gallery One (Works on Paper Gallery)

Experience Pittsburgh through the lenses of nine photographers who call the city their home. Inspired by the city’s century-old tradition of documentary photography, The Heinz Endowments asked photographers to record the current renaissance of Downtown, as told through its rivers, parks, buildings, and transportation systems, and brought to life through the celebrations and challenges, faces, and personalities of the people who live and work there. The artists of the Downtown Now Photography Project—Melissa Farlow, Jim Judkis, Richard Kelly, Kenneth Neely, Annie O’Neill, Mark Perrott, Martha Rial, Renee Rosensteel, and Dylan Vitone—focused on changes, large and small, in Pittsburgh today. This exhibition presents 80 works selected by curator of photography Linda Benedict-Jones from the final Project archive of over 400, providing ample evidence that after more than 100 years, photographers continue to marvel over our unique urban landscape.

Picturing the City: Downtown Pittsburgh, 2007–2010 is organized by Linda Benedict-Jones, curator of photography.

Darryl Curran News - LACMA

2011-11-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

dnj Gallery artist, Darryl Curran, has an image in LACMA's Hammer Building, Level 3 along with several other prominent artists featured in Angeles, 1960 - 1980, which runs through February 12, 2012. Congratulation Darryl!

This installation of work from the permanent collection represents a chapter in the larger photo history of Los Angeles, focusing on the freewheeling use of process employed by photo-based artists during the 1960s through the 1980s. The installation features work by Robert F. Heinecken, Jerry McMillan, Darryl Curran, and Susan Rankaitis.

In 1960, Heinecken, as the head of the Photography Department at UCLA, became known for promoting a photo practice that was varied and often camera-less. Jerry McMillan utilized the populist photo cube that was a fixture in the 1970s home to create photo-sculpture, and generated photo “drawings"—simple manipulations of paper that result in abstractions. Darryl Curran’s photolithographic prints place the artist’s own photographs alongside mass-produced images or logos, creating a hybrid that focuses on our littered environment. Susan Rankaitis created tonal abstractions made solely from chemicals “painted” in layers onto photo-sensitive paper, transforming the way we perceive photography, a conversation that continues today.

Benjamin Lowy's "Storylines" reviewed in ARTSCENE (Nov.)

2011-11-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

dnj's own Ben Lowy's Storylines written as "Continuing and Recommended" exhibitions in the November ARTSCENE

Benjamin Lowy is best known as a photojournalist who has worked for both Corbis and Getty Images. Having covered numerous wars and traveled worldwide covering conflict with his digital camera, he began using toy cameras, such as a Diana or Holga, in 2004 that allowed for an overlapping of images. Originally intended to save film, these overlapping images became the project "Storyline" which, according to Lowy became a panoramic image representing an idea or space that he could not illustrate with his digital cameras. Lowy's images present narratives unfolding over time. The black and white as well as color images are montages of multiple square frames presented in an extended horizontal format. The images from Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, rather than capture a decisive moment or image of action, imply a storyline and the sense of simultaneity. The photographs gain a cubistic aura. The topic and location are still specific to the ongoing conflicts worldwide, but Lowy's presentation in these works is humanistic and narrative. For example, in "Afghanistan 02, 2007" Lowry could combine two views of a crowded outdoor scene showing people moving in and out of the frame as the street recedes in two opposite directions, thus creating a powerful compositional component (dnj Gallery, Santa Monica).
Jody Zellen

Tom Stone Featured on "The Good Men Project"

2011-10-29T12:45:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to Tom Stone for his recent feature on "The Good Men Project"! If you would like to see some of Tom's images in person, please stop by dnj Gallery at Bergamot Station for a visit.

"It’s in the Eyes"
BY JACK VARNELL

Renowned portrait photographer Tom Stone shoots with a discriminating eye, but it’s the eyes he shoots that remind us of our mission.

A vital part of the Good Men Project is to model the behavior we espouse and discuss here, safe within the confines of our “Project.” It is all smoke and mirrors or bullshit if we don’t. The luxury of coming into contact with the people who share a curiosity about and willingness to openly discuss what it means to be a “good” man is only a part of the picture. We also get to see the integrity and feel the impact that someone who lives by a code, by a set of values and morals worthy of passing along, can have. Tom Stone is one of those people.

As a writer, I long to present the world with a point of view. A focal point that the world presents to me sent through the words. Sometimes words feel so inadequate.

Tom Stone has been creating connections in the communities he visits for years. On the streets with people who never share anything of themselves. Trips are planned in the coming months to Appalachia and Haiti. An acclaimed portrait photographer, he is able to tell the stories you normally might need words or a news photographer to tell if he was less talented.
We present a few representative works from Tom here, and would refer you to his site, Tom Stone Gallery, with the knowledge that a large part of his body of work is available for sale. In most cases the prints are signed, limited and a minimum of fifty percent of the price goes directly to charities he supports. A majority of the rest goes to funding the next project. Consider that as we enter the holidays.

I am including the Artists Statement from Tom’s Website because frankly, I haven’t ever seen a better one and to try and out do it would be dishonest and an insult to the man himself.

As you look at Tom’s work, notice the connection of one human to another; a connection in love, in compassion, and in awareness that the world is beautiful even in its ugliest places. It’s in the eyes.

◊♦◊

Artist Statement:

I photograph people who skirt the edges of things; people whose connection to the broader flow is murky or obscured. Mistaken as more, less or different than they are; they aren’t really seen and don’t really belong. That’s everyone sometimes; but some more often. I try to establish a line for a moment. I hope to connect. And I see the most beautiful and the most heartbreaking things.

To my thinking, the original human trauma is our separation. We are too close not to need each other; and too far to trust each other. We rely on dubious senses and clever devices to interact; but we are alone in our thoughts. Lonely, insecure and uncertain; we pair, we group, we associate. We try to belong and we seek to exclude. We form bonds by geography, religion, economy and otherwise. But it is all precarious. We come together and we drive apart.

And we climb our ladder. We step away from those who don’t belong and help those who do. We are connected rung by rung—though less and less—as we push and pull. But some do not climb; and below, the earth is littered with them. They fit too poorly. They stand apart. They stand without.

And what of them; these ones who don’t belong or who are excluded; who don’t fit or don’t try? Is there nothing they value? Is there nothing of them we value? I count it as a measure of our ignorance, the depth of poverty in the world. It’s a glaring marker to how far we have not come. Yet it has also driven our advance; on less fortunate backs and against less fortunate fate.
But is there really no connection there? Does such fate—whether choice or circumstance—speak nothing of us? Tell me we do more than advance in place; with so many left behind. Or promise me we can do better. Say we can reflect ourselves; us and them. That we can see the ways we overlap and distinguish the ways we grow apart. And pledge that we can learn; to fit all of our misshapes; to reward value beyond charity and beyond the marketplace; to be better to each other; to be better ourselves. And promise me it could be a better world. Or tell me we are at our best.

Tom Stone News

2011-10-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Tom Stone, for his recent image features in "Rethinking American Poverty" by author Mark R. Rank. The article is extremely thought provoking and is paired perfectly with Tom's moving images of American poverty. Here is a link where you can purchase the full article. Thank you to both parties for shedding light on this issue.

Article Introduction:
It’s a fundamental paradox: in America, the wealthiest country on earth, one also finds the highest rates of poverty in the developed world. Whether we examine children’s rates of poverty, poverty among working age adults, poverty within single parent families, or overall rates of poverty, the story is much the same—the United States has exceedingly high levels of impoverishment.

Tom Stone Photographs Occupy L.A. 2011

2011-10-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

dnj Gallery artist, Tom Stone, photographs during the Tom Morello Rally for Occupy L.A.! Check out the great shots here. Thanks to both Tom's for all you do!

dnj Staff

Michael Eastman at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art

2011-10-01T15:04:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Michael Eastman, for the recent opening of Faded Elegance: Photographs of Havana by Michael Eastman at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art!

The exhibition will run until December 31, 2011 with a family day taking place Sunday, November 6th from Noon – 4 p.m. If you are in the Oklahoma City area be sure to stop by and view some of Michael's beautiful images in person!

Art Review: 'Photography into Sculpture' at Cherry and Martin

2011-09-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

The Getty driven PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: ART IN L.A. 1945 – 1980 is off to a great start and the Cherry and Martin Gallery is a fantastic example of what we can expect to see in the coming months with their Photography into Sculpture exhibition featuring dnj Gallery artist Darryl Curran!

Be sure to check out dnj Gallery's "Then and Now" exhibition opening November 19th as part of PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: ART IN L.A. 1945 – 1980.

Robert Heinecken

“Photography Into Sculpture” was a groundbreaking show when it appeared at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, and it is significant still, in its reprised version at Cherry and Martin. On its first go-round, the show introduced to New York and the other cities on its two-year tour a new, expansive mode of photographic art that originated on the West Coast. This time, as a fine exemplar of the Getty-driven Pacific Standard Time initiative, “Photography Into Sculpture” reintroduces L.A. to a momentous chapter of its own history.

MoMA curator Peter Bunnell organized the 1970 show, spurred by his encounter with the work of Robert Heinecken (then teaching at UCLA) and crystallized by an exploratory visit to Los Angeles. Of the 23 artists in the show, most were from the West Coast and nine came from L.A. Cherry and Martin has rustled up most of the original pieces that Bunnell selected, works that dissolved the photographic image’s age-old marriage to paper, freeing it to swing with plastic, wood, glass, fabric and more.

Bunnell later recounted a revelatory visit to Richard Jackson’s Pasadena studio, where the artist showed him a set of negatives produced by a shutterless, handmade camera. Bunnell asked Jackson if he had printed the images and remembers the artist answering, “Am I supposed to? Must I?” The conventional, causal route from negative to print was no longer a given — in California, at least — but instead simply one option among many.

In Jackson’s “Negative Numbers,” two large film negatives are taped to plexiglass panels and propped up in front of bare light bulbs on a wooden table. In each image, Jackson’s ghostly figure appears behind a row of numbers — his Social Security number and draft number — that he wrote in the air with a flashlight during the exposure. That the government-assigned numbers are darker and more prominent than Jackson’s own faint bodily form gives this record of private performance a subtle political edge.

Other artists in the show infused their work with a Pop sensibility, conceptual twists and visual puns. Michael de Courcy’s cardboard cartons printed with images of birds, the sea and sky reads like a lyrical riposte to Warhol’s Brillo boxes of just a few years earlier. Jerry McMillan’s paper bag fashioned out of a photograph of a wrinkled paper bag delightfully fuses image and object, and is one of many lighthearted tweaks on the referential function of photography.
Some of the works in the show are goofy, dated and clumsy — Lynton Wells’ lifesize stuffed photo-doll, for one — but the takeaway lesson overrides such weaknesses. Such is the folly of a single linear historical narrative: Just when a cohort of artists in the late ’60s were dematerializing art, asserting its importance as idea more than thing, others, gathered in this show, were busy materializing it in new ways. They reveled in photography’s tactile possibilities and shifted the medium’s operative verb from "taking" pictures to "making" them.

By: Leah Ollman

Cherry and Martin
2712 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 559-0100

Cynthia Greig News

2011-09-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

Several of Cynthia Greig's "Nature Morte" photographs and videos will be included in the upcoming exhibition titled, "Nothing to Say" which opens this Friday at The University of Michigan's Jean Paul Slusser Gallery in Ann Arbor.

Curated by fellow artist Kathleen McShane, the exhibition is concerned with examining nothingness, quiet, less is more, what is there and not there, and nonsense. The title comes from John Cage who commented, "I have nothing to say, and I’m saying it" when referring to his 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence performance. The exhibition suggests that "nothing" can actually evoke "everything," or at least an unexpected fullness (as in Cage’s silence).

September 9 - October 7, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, September 9, 6-9 pm

Exhibiting artists include:

Lynne Avadenka
Jim Cogswell
Iris Eichenberg
Cynthia Greig
Paul Kotula
Michael Krueger
Melanie Manos
Stephen Prina
Jon Swindler
Cody VanderKaay

Jean Paul Slusser Gallery
The University of Michigan
2000 Bonisteel Blvd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Darryl Curran News

2011-09-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Darryl Curran, for his inclusion in Photography Into Sculpture taking place at the Cherry and Martin Gallery September 10 - October 22, 2011.
There will be an opening reception Saturday, September 10 from 6-8pm.

Carl Cheng, U.N. of C., 1967, film,
molded plastic, Styrofoam and Plexiglas,
15 x 20.75 x 9 inches

Cherry and Martin will restage curator Peter Bunnell's landmark 1970 exhibition, "Photography into Sculpture", at the gallery as a part of the Getty Museum citywide initiative, Pacific Standard Time.

Photography into Sculpture stands as one of Peter Bunnellʼs great contributions to the history of photography. Described in the original wall text as “the first comprehensive survey of photographically formed images used in a sculptural or fully dimensional manner,” Photography into Sculpture brought together a cross-section of artists from across the United States and Canada. The show encapsulated the radical gestures of late 1960's photographic practice, both inside and outside the photo world. Los Angeles-based artists such as Robert Heinecken, Richard Jackson and Jerry McMillan were brought by Bunnell into a context with such remarkable figures as the Fluxus artist Robert Watts and early Vancouver photo-conceptualists Michael de Courcy and Jack Dale.

The exhibitionʼs legendary tour began at the Museum of Modern Art and continued on to The Krannert Art Museum, The Menil Collection, the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Phoenix Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and, finally, Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. The full artist list was: Ellen Brooks, Robert Brown, Carl Cheng, Darryl Curran, Jack Dale, Michael de Courcy, Karl Folsom, Andre Haluska, Robert Heinecken, Richard Jackson, Jerry McMillan, Bea Nettles, Ed O'Connell, James Pennuto, Joe Pirone, Douglas Prince, Dale Quarterman, Charles Roitz, Leslie Snyder, Michael Stone, Ted Victoria, Robert Watts, and Lynton Wells.

The majority of the original works from Photography into Sculpture will be on view at Cherry and Martin. Also included in the show will be a number of related artworks by the Photography into Sculpture artists from the same time period. Cherry and Martin has confirmed participation with all of the original artists except Karl Folsom, Ed OʼConnell, Joe Pirone and Leslie Snyder. Any information as to their whereabouts would be deeply appreciated, as the gallery has thus far been unable to locate these four artists. Cherry and Martin will organize a catalog that will include a new interview with Peter Bunnell about Photography into Sculpture; new essays on the exhibition; new photography of the objects; and a selection of original source documents.

Helen K. Garber News

2011-08-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Helen K. Garber, for wining third place in the FINE ART : COLLAGE PRO category of the 2011 International Photography Awards competition!

To see more images from Helen's amazing Encaustic Noir Series, please stop by the gallery at Bergamot Station for a visit.

LA Times Review - Andrew Uchin

2011-08-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

A big congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Andrew Uchin, for his recent review in the Culture Monster section of the LA Times! And thank you to Sharon Mizota as well for writing such a wonderful review!
Andrew's show will be on view a dnj until September 10, 2011 so be sure to stop by the gallery for a visit and see this amazing body of work in person!

As books are increasingly made of pixels instead of paper, it's not surprising that their quaint physical form should become fodder for artists. Andrew Uchin's spare photographs of the covers, spines and other parts of old tomes at dnj Gallery look like little abstractions, but are also paeans to the appealing physicality of books.

Isolated on white grounds, the images sometimes evoke painting. An illustration from a children's book is mottled all over with abrasions, suggesting a very slow, quiet form of action painting. The back of “Voices in Stone” is a plain gray expanse punctuated by a white library checkout card. It looks as if it were carefully placed to resemble a Hans Hoffman painting.

In other cases, the works are small jokes. "Art and Anarchy" is opened to the dedication page, which reads, "To Diane, who refuses to read it." In "The Tyranny of Words" the book is missing entirely, leaving only the dust jacket: words about words about the tyranny of words. At times these ploys are too cute. The cover of "Visual Thinking" has been ripped off, leaving the title page fuzzy behind a translucent white end paper. The corner of a book bearing the running figure of the Modern Library series is creased upward, as if he were turning pages in his haste.

Uchin's images are strongest when they record the personal and often emotional attachments we form with books, charting how intellectual engagement takes physical form. In "Josephine," we see only the page edges of a book lying on its side. Across the edges, someone has written "Josephine" in large letters, and at each end, the words "Black Boy." The edges become a highly personal alternative spine — it's impossible to tell whether the book is titled "Josephine," or whether it is a copy of Richard Wright's "Black Boy" that belonged to someone named Josephine. Regardless, it's poignant evidence of a unique relationship one is unlikely to develop with an iPad.

-- Sharon Mizota

dnj Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 315-3551, through Sept. 3. Closed Sun. and Mon.

"Splash! Liquid Energy Splattered" Reviewed By Ventura County Star

2011-08-03T13:10:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery, artists, Annie Seaton and Bill Sosin, for their inclusion in "Splash!" and the recent review in the Ventura County Star!

Exhibit Standout:
'Splash' Exhibit in Oxnard Explores Fascination With Water

Put artists next to water and their creative juices flow. Inspired by coastal waters, Southern California artists have found plenty of ways to interpret wet. "Splash! liquid energy spattered," an exhibition on display through Aug. 21 at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, celebrates our fascination with water.

The collection features 60 traditional and nontraditional artworks in diverse media by California artists. Themes represent water's recreational allure, beauty and transparency both realistically and abstractly. The images explore the impact and experience of water, from manufactured pools to natural waterways.

The 22 featured artists are John Budicin, D.J. Hall, Carolyn Hesse-Low, Margie Livingston, Joel Meyerowitz, Brad Miller, Stephen Mirich, Bobbie Moline-Kramer, Maria Luisa Morando, Elizabeth Patterson, Roxie Ray, Blakeney Sanford, Annie Seaton (whose "Big Surf" image is pictured here), Brooke Shaden, Bill Sosin, Rich Stich, Adam Thorman, Daena Title, Roger Weik, Daniel Wheeler, John Wimberley and Peter Zokosky. The collection is on loan from participating artists and fine art galleries throughout California.

The Carnegie Art Museum, 424 South C St., Oxnard, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 1-5 p.m. Sundays. A donation of $3 is suggested. For more information, call 385-8157 or visit carnegieam.org.

Michael Eastman "ARTnews" Review - Summer 2011 Issue

2011-08-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Michael Eastman, for his recent "ARTnews" review on his Plexagraphs series!

Dog Days of Summer Sale - dnj Gallery

2011-07-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

Please join dnj Gallery for a weekend art sale taking place August 5th and 6th!

dnj Gallery will offer 10 % off all photo books and gallery miniature edition prints ranging from $40 - $100.

Several Bergamot Station galleries, including the Santa Monica Museum of Art, will also take part in the Dog Days of Summer Sale, so be sure to mark your calendars.

Opening Reception Photos: Out of Con(text) Featuring Andrew Uchin

2011-07-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who made it out for Saturday's opening of Out of Con(text)! Here are some great photos to enjoy.

dnj Staff

Elliott Wilcox Featured on LENSCRATCH

2011-07-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Elliott Wilcox, for his recent feature on LENSCRATCH! In addition, we want to send a big thank you to Aline Smithson for her continued support of dnj Gallery and our artists! Thanks Aline!

dnj Staff

David Trautrimas is Featured in the September Issue of "B&W + Color Magazine"

2011-07-23T16:07:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, David Trautrimas, for his recent review in "B&W + Color Magazine"!

Spotlight: David Trautrimas
"B&W+Color Magazine," September 2011, p. 134

"I'm not necessarily fascinated by the act of photography in and of itself," says Toronto-based photographer David Trautrimas. "It's the first and usually least complicated step in a long process of assembling an image. I'm much more interested in what happens after the shutter closes. That's when the real fun begins."

For the past eight years Trautrimas has been creating wondrous and unlikely worlds where fantasy collides with an incredible future that might exist in some alternative universe. Think Jules Verne meets Buckminster Fuller. Somewhere between the neural synapses of Trautrimas' mind and the digital relays in his Mac pro computer lies a realm of mythic landscapes with a distinctive retro-futuristic look to them. Viewing his work is like seeing early 1900s magazines with artists' renditions of what the world might look like in 100 years.

Growing up in Toronto, Canada, Trautrimas was addicted to that great old British television show The Secret Life of Machines, hosted by two mad scientist/artists. They would explain the inner workings of modem appliances by taking them apart and doing crazy things, like creating a giant burning pyramid of old television sets.

"There was so much promised that failed to materialize," he laments. "Things like jet-packs and architecture inspired by space travel. This is my way of creating a future that we were denied."

Trautrimas' recently completed series, "Spyfrost," is a sly homage to the various secret govermment projects perpetrated during the Cold War, such as the CIA's mind-control program MKULTRA. He wanted to evoke quasi-military operations with ambivalent ambitions, shrouded in an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue. He hypothesized the origins of iconic modern appliances by reassembling them into top-secret Cold War military outposts. These colossal structures, hybrids of both machinery and architecture, stand as weaponized ancestors to common household objects such as refrigerators, lawnmowers and washing machines. The series elicits the uneasy balance between the era's use of technology to enhance standard of living with its capacity to precipitate global catastrophe.

"My images are the result of blending dozens of photographs of multiple objects such as art deco coffee pots, bathroom scales, electric razors and such. Once I've found an object of interest I'll tear it down to its component parts, photograph the individual pieces, and start building them into architectural structures in Photoshop."

The inspiration for this series came from a review of an exhibition held several years ago at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Titled "Cold War Modem," it looked at the role of design during the Cold War. The article mentioned a telecommunications tower built in Czechoslovakia that housed a hotel and dining room for the military.

"This combination of machinery and architecture fit nicely with my previous bodies of work. With the Spyfrost Project I wanted to combine the technological aspects of my creations with a futuristic architectural element. I wanted to create a plausible explanation of the origins of our common household appliances."

A typical image may be the result of hundreds of photos painstakingly combined in the computer. "The majority of the images in my archives were photographed with specific projects in mind," he says. "But there's also a large collection of random places and things that may be of use in the future. For example, I just took day-trip to Buffalo, and went on an impromptu art deco tour of the downtown area. I took hundreds of images of building details: windows, archways, landscaping - none of which I have a current use for, but I never know what I'll need in the future.

"I've been attending a very interesting lecture series here in Toronto called 'Architecture in Combination,' that invites artists to present the: work and talk about how their work uses and relates to architecture. A few months ago I presented my Spyfrost photographs and it led to a fascinating discussion, with real structural engineers, on the feasibility of constructing my buildings. The consensus for the evening was that if I found a patron rich and eccentric enough, I could probably have some of these built."

By David Best

Artist Reception: Out of Con(text) Featuring Andrew Uchin

2011-07-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

Please join dnj Gallery on Saturday, July 23, 2011 from 6-8pm for the opening of our new exhibition titled Out of Con(text) featuring Andrew Uchin.

The exhibition will showcase nine dnj Gallery artists including Michael Eastman, Richard Gilles, Cynthia Greig, Annie Seaton, Bill Sosin, Tom Stone, David Trautrimas and Dylan Vitone.

This exhibition will run from July 23 - September 3, 2011

Andrew Uchin Featured on "The Photo Exchange" Blog - dnj Gallery

2011-07-13T10:57:00.001-07:00

dnj's group show titled Out of Con(text) featuring the work of Andrew Uchin has been featured on "The Photo Exchange" blog! Thanks for all your hard work Jim McKinniss!

Out of Con(text) will run from July 23 - September 3, 2011 with an artist reception held on Saturday, July 23, 2011 from 6-8pm.

Laura Parker News

2011-07-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

Congratulations dnj Gallery artist, Laura Parker, for her inclusion in "No Mirrors" taking place at Rayko Photo Center June 16 - August 2, 2011.

Chris Colville

Laura Parker's "Rotations & Rubbings" Series Reviewed in ArtScene

2011-07-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Laura Parker, for her recent review in ArtScene Magazine! "Rotations & Rubbings" is Laura Parker's second solo show at dnj Gallery and will run through July 16, 2011.

If you would like to see more of Laura's work in person, please stop by the gallery in Bergamot Station.

CONTINUING AND RECOMMENDED EXHIBITIONS, JULY/AUGUST, 2011

The two series of color photographs presented in Laura Parker's exhibition "Rotations and Rubbings" are made both with and without the camera. In the "Rotations" series Parker combines a projected image with a photogram so as to create a disconnect between the observable and the fabricated. Each image contained inside the circle is an abstracted landscape that is silhouetted against a black ground. The multiple panel works cascade up and down the wall, evoking the movement of the natural landscape. The "Rubbings" series consists of photographic abstractions made from rubbing the exposed and developed paper's surface, which exposes the colors underneath. Each of Parker's rubbings starts and ends as a circle that serves as a perfect complement to the “Rotations.” Both bodies of work explore what is possible when the real and the imagined are juxtaposed (dnj Gallery, Santa Monica).

Jody Zellen

David Trautrimas' Spyfrost Project in Seoul Korea

2011-06-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

A big congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, David Trautrimas, for his recent inclusion in the Imagine Earth exhibition taking place in Seoul Korea.

On June 3rd the group exhibition 'Imagine Earth' opened at the Korean Arts Centre in Seoul Korea. Several works from "The Spyfrost" series and one from "Habitat Machines" are included in the show. For the official exhibition website please visit jigusangsang.co.kr.

Ginny Mangrum News

2011-06-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Ginny Mangrum, for her inclusion in The Brooklyn Artists Gym’s group exhibition titled Voyeur opening this Saturday, June 25, 2011. If you are in the Brooklyn area, definitely stop by to see the show which features over twenty artists.

Brooklyn Artists Gym is an artist studio and gallery facility in the Park Slope/Gowanus area of Brooklyn, New York. BAG’s mission is to help make it possible for artists to further their work and careers at a reasonable cost.

Ginny Mangrum, House,
archival lightjet print, 16" x 20"

Pasadena's Armory Center For The Arts "Street Sight" Exhibition

2011-06-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artists, Jane O'Neal and Darryl Curran, for their inclusion in the Armory's Street Sight exhibition opening next Saturday, June 25, 2011!

An opening reception, free and open to the public, will take place on Saturday, June 25, from 7-9pm.

Jane O'Neal, A&W Sunset, California,1976,
cibachrome print, 16" x 20"

Armory Center for the Arts is pleased to present a major exhibition of Southern California street photography from the late 1960s through early 1980s entitled, Street Sight. The exhibition, organized by curator Tim B. Wride, will be on display in the Armory’s Caldwell Gallery from Sunday, June 26 – September 11, 2011. Exhibiting artists will include Adam Bartos, Darryl Curran, Bevan Davies, John Divola, Judy Fiskin, Robbert Flick, Dennis Hopper, Graham Howe, Grant Mudford, Jane O’Neal, Marvin Rand, Seymour Rosen, Ed Ruscha, Julian Wasser, and Terry Wild. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated publication with a scholarly essay by the curator.

Street Sight takes into account the factors that contributed to the post-war shift in Southern California-based photography from imagery that was picturesque, image oriented, and anecdotal in nature, to a more conceptually motivated style of representation and object-making that was decisively suburban, process-oriented, and experiential. The artists whose work is included in the exhibition have made a prepositional shift away from the description and distillation of activity and inhabitants that are seen on the street to an emphasis on those elements, extensions, and experiences that are not just of the street, but, of the street that is dominated, defined, and experienced by the automobile.

For artists Robbert Flick and Ed Ruscha, this resulted in a meditative celebration and typology, respectively, of the parking lot. Darryl Curran elevates the conflation of sexually charged imagery with the shapes and icons of gasoline stations into totems of a new potency. The typologies of Bevan Davies, Judy Fiskin, John Divola, and Seymour Rosen overlay economic and architectural accumulations made possible by the car’s fluid access to broad geographies. Jane O’Neal’s saturated color imagery provides the
experience of the street from within the car with carnivalesque garishness, while images by Marvin Rand and Julian Wasser use montage and time-exposure strategies to formally distill the motion of the street. Adam Bartos celebrates the two ends of the
spectrum of road quality with his cinematic treatment of a freeway overpass and a hillside overlook. And, for Australian transplants Graham Howe and Grant Mudford the traces, boundaries, and borders of streets themselves elicited formal responses that underpin insightful psychological descriptions of both place and medium.

Street Sight is an examination of the quintessentially automobile-centric Southern Californian experience of place. This type of experience is distinguished from a “roadtrip” sensibility in so far as it is predicated on a day-to-day reliance on getting from place to place by car. For those in the region, the car is an indispensable appendage for accessing the flow of daily life; it is the tool through which they understand the spaces and map the environment in which they live. For artists in the region whose interests veered toward their understanding of “place,” this meant a reliance on new ways of contextualizing, cataloguing, codifying and transcribing their experience. Theirs was a pioneering moment that drew from the emergent sensibilities that informed New Topographics, embraced the unbridled nature of their art making community, and seamlessly internalized the unique street culture that cemented the disparate geographies of Southern California. Theirs was a new way of seeing, a different mode of experience, and a conceptually charged means of mapping that created a potent, postmodern approach to street photography.

“Street Sight” is on view in the Susan and John Caldwell Gallery at the Armory Center for the Arts, 145 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA, 91103. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Sunday, noon-5pm. $5 suggested donation. Armory members, students, and
seniors are free. The Armory is easily accessible from the Gold Line Memorial Park Station in Pasadena. For information about Armory exhibitions and events, please call 626.792.5101 x122. or visit the Armory website at www.armoryarts.org

Helen K. Garber News

2011-06-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

dnj Gallery artist, Helen K. Garber, is putting her beloved "Miss Lucy" up for auction at Bergamot Station via the Santa Monica Auctions this Saturday and Sunday - June 18/19th 2011.

Here is the link to her catalogue listing: http://www.smauctions.com/g.htm

An unusual offering at the upcoming Santa Monica Auctions, Bergamot Station on June 18/19th is a functional object of art - the re-use of a 1955 Shasta 5th Wheel Trailer that was found stripped and abandoned in the forest in Idyllwild, CA by Venice artist, Helen K. Garber.

Ms. Garber got permission to remove the trailer from the local ranger station, had it towed down the mountain by Banning Discount RV, who then stored her for 6 months, repaired for her for travel and prepared her for her useful status as the first mixed media mobile projection hub.

Duce, the renowned graffiti writer who had collaborated with Helen on their Night View Collaboration the year before, created a 4-sided mural depicting the state of the US economy in 2010.

She was used for 3 installations as the center projection hub of Group SC 2009, An Intimate View of Southern CA, in collaboration with MINARC, Santa Monica and 50 fine art photographers who documented their own neighborhood in Southern CA over the course of the year. We projected their stories to rear view screens through 4 windows in Miss Lucy, one on each side. The screens were set 90 degrees from each other (see youtube video link below). The territory covered from San Diego to Palm Springs, North to San Ynez and all through LA County and Orange County too. www.galleryskart.com/groupsc2009 for more info on the project. The projection equipment and slide shows are not included in this sale.

Miss Lucy traveled to Bergamot Station for Month of Photography's Opening Night 2010 and then later to Pershing Square to be the centerpiece of the Autumn Lights Festival, 2010.

To see her in action at the Autumn Lights Festival, please watch this short you tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPw4ae2Uw18

She would make an excellent outdoor sculpture, child's playroom or fantastic dog house for a loving home. The interior is stripped, and she locks securely, registered with the DMV, so she can also help out by storing or hauling things . She is truly a functional object of art.

Miss Lucy will be auctioned in the company of important work by prestigious artists such as Frank Gehry, Richard Avedon, Ed Moses, Larry Bell, Raymond Pettibon and Dennis Hopper.

Laura Parker Featured on COAGULA's Weekend Bender

2011-06-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

A big thank you to Bryan Chagolla and COAGULA Art Journal for including dnj Gallery artist, Laura Parker, in the Weekend Bender!

Laura Parker's second solo show titled, Rotations & Rubbings is currently on view through July 16, 2011, so stop by Bergamot Station for a visit!

Laura Parker, Rubbings (Labyrinth, Red IV),
2011, chromogenic color print, 23" x 23"

Laura Parker, Rotations (Collecting Pool), detail,
2010, 5 panel chromogenic color prints, 82" x 48" overall

Artist Reception: Elliott Wilcox and Laura Parker

2011-06-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who made it out for the opening on Saturday!

dnj Staff

Laura Parker News

2011-06-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

dnj Gallery artist, Laura Parker, will be taking part in No Mirrors: A juried show of camera-less photography at Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco this month. Congratulations Laura!

EXHIBITION ON VIEW: JUNE 16-AUGUST 2

ARTIST RECEPTION: THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 6-8PM

Artist Reception: Elliott Wilcox and Laura Parker

2011-05-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

Please join dnj Gallery on Saturday, June 11, 2011 from 5-7pm for Elliott Wilcox and Laura Parker's artist reception!

Elliott Wilcox, Real Tennis 05, c-print, 2009, 30" x 40"

Laura Parker, Rotations (Labyrinth, Red III), chromogenic monotype print, 2011, 20" x 20"

dnj Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition and American debut of “Courts” by the young British photographer Elliott Wilcox. In Gallery II, we present “Rotations and Rubbings” by Southern California artist Laura Parker.

In Courts, Elliott Wilcox photographs racquet, squash, and traditional ‘Real Tennis’ courts absent any games or players. With an interest in discovering the details that are overlooked, Wilcox focuses on the graphic qualities of the open spaces with an emphasis on bold, flat colors and formal, linear structures. Wilcox explains, “the vivid stains, ball marks, blood and scratches force the viewer to focus on these details rather then just the courts.” His rich colors and simple shapes create a strong exhibition.

This is Elliott Wilcox’s first solo show at dnj Gallery and in the United States. He has exhibited internationally. His Court series caught the attention of Charles Saatchi, and the famed collector shortlisted Wilcox for his BBC documentary television show, School of Saatchi. Additionally, his work was selected to be part of the exhibition PRUNE- Abstracting Reality at Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam (FOAM). He is the recipient of several awards including a Judges Award at the Nikon Discovery Awards, a New York Photo Award and has only just won a Lucie Award for the Discovery of the Year at the International Photography Awards.

Laura Parker resumes her examination of time, structure and curious ideas in relation to perception. Each photograph combines a projected negative and a photogram, an image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a photo-sensitive material and then exposing it to light. Her images then appear within a black field with a “light halo” around the object. In the end, each picture results in a circle. “From the planetary to the simple hollow of a bowl, I find myself attracted to the circle. It is perfectly balanced, there is a reference to optics and to the human eye, and a circle holds the tension between both unending movement and utter stillness.”

Laura Parker is collected privately throughout California and the United States. She earned her BFA, Magna cum Laude from UCLA and her MFA from CalArts, Valencia. She currently lives and works in Pasadena, CA. Her work was recently selected to be part of Influential Element: Exploring the Impact of Water, Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California. Parker also had an exhibit, with some of this work, at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California. This is her second solo show at dnj Gallery.

"Plexagraphs" Exhibition Featured in California Homes Magazine

2011-05-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Michael Eastman's Plexagraphs exhibition is currently featured in the Calendar section of California Homes Magazine!

To see more images by Michael Eastman, please stop by the gallery or visit our web site.

This exhibition will run through May 28, 2011.

dnj Gallery - VIP Room For "Incognito" 2011

2011-05-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

dnj Gallery would like to thank the Santa Monica Museum of Art for inviting us to host the 2011 VIP Room for their annual Incognito event! It was a pleasure working with you all! Here are a few pictures taken by Helen K. Garber to enjoy. Thank you!

dnj Staff

Michael Eastman and Maria Luisa Morando Exhibitions on "The Photo Exchange"

2011-04-27T11:31:00.001-07:00

dnj Gallery would like thank Jim McKinniss for his recent blog post on The Photo Exchange regarding Michael Eastman and Maria Luisa Morando's current exhibitions!

Plexagraphs and Silver are currently on view through May 28, 2011 at Bergamot Station, so be sure to stop by for a visit.

dnj Staff

Michael Eastman, GW 2, 2010,
plexagraph (plexi w/lightjet print), 30" x 30"

Maria Luisa Morando, Silver V,
2009, c-print, 48" x 48"

Cynthia Greig News

2011-04-06T17:15:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Cynthia Greig, for her recent inclusion in Fred Torres' LIVE FROM DETROIT group exhibition opening next Thursday, April 14 from 6-8pm!

LIVE FROM DETROIT
curated by Monica Bowman, Director of The Butcher's Daughter

Artists include:
Kevin Beasley
Susan Goethel Campbell
Kate Daughdrill
Christina Galasso
Dick Goody
Cynthia Greig
Chido Johnson
Leon Johnson
Laith Karmo
Nate Morgan
George Rahme
Marvin Shaouni

This endeavor is aimed at creating fresh discourse beyond economy and geography and offers a fresh perspective on the work happening in our community today. Creative culture moving forward: steadfast in the goal to transform our lives in the image of our design.

From the Fred Torres Collaborations press release:

Curator Monica Bowman says it best, "Artists working in Detroit have access to almost unlimited resources: raw materials, land, vast enclosed spaces, low rent, a viable community committed to cultural renewal. Choices beyond blind circumstance. Through economy we have reclaimed and rediscovered abundant options and fleeting luxuries: time, space and the notion of closeness. Our work: symbiosis for the sake of sustainability (i.e., what I need you may have: what can I offer you?)"

The artists in LIVE FROM DETROIT have a unique view of the socio-economic developments of the past few years and are able to interact and react to the events shaping Detroit, producing an exciting commentary about the state of one city, on the soil of another. This exhibition creates context for artists operating within a certain geographical boundary. It exposes their work to a national audience and illustrates the scope of their imprimatur. The goal is to foster discourse about community, materials, social intimacy and sustainability. Works on view include collage, installation, monoprints, objects d'art, painting, photography, public interventions/relational aesthetics, sculpture, video and works on paper.

Fred Torres Collaborations
527 West 29th Street, Third Floor, New York, NY 10001

Huffington Post and Artweek LA - Michael Eastman Exhibition

2011-04-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

We would like to thank Bill Bush for his recent post on dnj Gallery artist Michael Eastman and his new Plexagraph exhibition running now through May 28, 2011. Thanks for all you do Bill!

dnj Staff

In this new series, Eastman focuses on much smaller objects, windows and building design elements. Opens March 26 at dnj Gallery.

Michael Eastman, GW 2, plexagraph, 2010, 30" x 30"

Michael Eastman's prior work featured photographs of richly colored American landscapes and captivating architectural settings. In this new series, he focuses on much smaller objects, windows and building design elements. As before, Eastman portrays a nostalgic elegance. But the artwork is as much about the presentation of the photograph, as the photograph itself. Eastman has developed a new process, a layered, sculptural photograph. As he states, "I have worked with all kind of mediums and surfaces and techniques that seemed to mostly 'artify' the surface of the image but left the image still only representational. After years of exploration, I discovered a new medium that enabled me to create abstractions and print them so they now were my photographs of my paintings."

This is Michael Eastman's second solo show with dnj Gallery. He has exhibited across the country and his work is included in several esteemed institutions, such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The International Center of Photography, The High Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Opening Reception Photos: Michael Eastman & Maria Luisa Morando

2011-03-31T13:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all who made it out for Saturdays opening for Michael Eastman and Maria Luisa Morando! Here are a few images to enjoy.

dnj Staff

Maria Luisa Morando Artist Talk - MOPLA Event

2011-03-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

Maria Luisa Morando will be giving an artist talk here at dnj Gallery on Saturday, April 16, 2011 from 4-6pm in participation with MOPLA!

Silver V, c-print, 2010, 48" x 48"

Maria Luisa Morando: Silver

dnj Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite J1, Santa Monica, CA 90404

Admission: Free

Exhibit: March 26, 2011-May 28, 2011

Opening reception: March 26, 2011, 4-6pm

Artist talk in association with MOPLA: April 16, 2011, 4-6pm.

Maria Luisa Morando continues her comments on the ocean and the landscape of the coast. Like memories, her images are both familiar and elusive. Morando’s intentionally overexposed images erase the distracting details in the landscape and provide a moment or time without limit. Her scenes offer a true sense of space. As the art critic Michael Buitrón writes, “Because of the lack of sharp detail, it becomes impossible to explore the images for their specificity, and instead they open up and play to any seaside memory the viewer cares to pour into them.”

Maria Luisa Morando is collected privately throughout England, France and Italy and recently sold two photographs at the Foundation For Woman Artists in London England. She has exhibited across the United States, with an emphasis in Southern California.

Helen K. Garber News

2011-03-31T12:45:00.000-07:00

Helen K. Garber is pleased to announce that her first encaustic piece sold will be part of a prestigious exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Helen's Silverton Falls image will be exhibited along with 450 additional photographs starting July 20 through October 9, 2011.

Congratulations Helen!

If you would like to see additional images from Helen's new Encaustic series, please stop by the gallery.

Out of the Dark Room: The David Kronn Collection

This exhibition is drawn from a collection of more than 450 photographs brought together by the Irish born American collector David Kronn. The collection ranges in content from 19th century Daguerreotypes to the 20th century photography of Edward Weston and August Sander and works from award-winning contemporary photographers, such as the husband and wife team of Nicolai Howalt and Trine Sondergaard, and the Japanese photographer Asako Narahashi. It is particularly strong in its representation of Harry Callahan, Kenneth Josephson, Irving Penn and Brett Weston.

Out of the Dark Room presents a selection of 165 works across all photographic media. It explores themes emerging through the collection like portraits of children, abstracted landscapes and portraits of artists, such as Irving Penn’s Frederick Kiesler and Willem de Kooning, New York, 1960. There are numerous iconic works, examples being Herb Ritts’s image of pop star Madonna from 1986; the portrait of Laurie Anderson by Robert Mapplethorpe from 1987; or Dr Harold Edgerton’s time-lapse photograph of a boy running from 1939. Dr Kronn is a paediatrician with a specialisation in medical genetics, a fact which underlies the many images of children in the collection – Diane Arbus’s Loser at a Diaper Derby, 1967, for instance; or Martine Franck’s images of children from Tory Island (1994-97), and Irina Davis’s poignant portraits of children in a Russian state orphanage (2006-2007).

The exhibition is curated by Seán Kissane, Head of Exhibitions, IMMA, and is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue published by IMMA that includes texts by Susan Bright, Seán Kissane, David Kronn and Carol Squiers.

Buzz Spector Comments on Michael Eastman and Maria Luisa Morando Exhibitons

2011-03-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

Buzz Spector -- “I just want to say how good a pairing you’ve made of Eastman’s Plexagraphs and Morando’s overexposures. Here you have two photographic projects in which images of distance that are also emotionally distancing are countered by phenomenal affects that draw viewers back in.”

Thanks Buzz!

dnj Gallery Staff

Michael Eastman, GW 2, plexagraph, 2010, 30" x 30"

Maria Luisa Morando, Silver V, c-print, 2009, 48" x 48"

Richard Gilles Exhibition

2011-03-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

dnj Gallery artist, Richard Gilles, is opening a solo show of never before seen images taken during public demonstrations on the streets of San Francisco at Axis Gallery in Sacramento this Saturday, March 12th from 6-9pm.

Titled Had Enough? (and other questions of pride) - Photographs from the 90s, the majority of Richard's images were taken during the annual gay pride parades. It is a question of pride that brings most people out onto the street for public displays of their beliefs in an attempt to bring the spotlight on a problem or an inequity.

If you are in the area be sure to stop by and take part in this historically relevant exhibition.

Axis Gallery
1517 19th Street, Sacramento, CA 95811
info@axisgallery.org
916.443.9900
Hours: Saturday & Sunday 12pm to 5pm or by appointment

Opening Reception: Michael Eastman & Maria Luisa Morando

2011-03-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

Please join dnj Gallery on Saturday, March 26, 2011 from 4-6pm for the opening reception of Michael Eastman's Plexagraphs and Maria Luisa Morando's Silver exhibitions.

March 26, - May 28, 2011

Michael Eastman, GW #2,
plexagraph, 30" x 30"

Maria Luisa Morando, Silver V,
c-print, 20" x 20"

dnj Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition of the newest work by the artist Michael Eastman, entitled “Plexagraphs.” In Gallery II, we present the artist Maria Luisa Morando with her current series, “Silver.”

Michael Eastman’s prior work featured photographs of richly colored American landscapes and captivating architectural settings. In this new series, he focuses on much smaller objects, windows and building design elements. As before, Eastman portrays a nostalgic elegance. But the artwork is as much about the presentation of the photograph, as the photograph itself. Eastman has developed a new process (patent pending), in which he prints two nearly identical shots on different pieces of Plexiglass. The result is a layered, sculptural photograph. As he states, “I have worked with all kind of mediums and surfaces and techniques that seemed to mostly artify the surface of the image but left the image still only representational. After years of exploration, I discovered a new medium that enabled me to create abstractions and print them so they now were my photographs of my paintings.”

This is Michael Eastman’s second solo show with dnj Gallery. He has exhibited across the country and his work is included in several esteemed institutions, such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The International Center of Photography, The High Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Maria Luisa Morando continues her comments on the ocean and the landscape of the coast. Like memories, her images are both familiar and elusive. Morando’s intentionally overexposed images erase the distracting details in the landscape and provide a moment or time without limit. Her scenes offer a true sense of space. As the art critic Michael Buitrón writes, “Because of the lack of sharp detail, it becomes impossible to explore the images for their specificity, and instead they open up and play to any seaside memory the viewer cares to pour into them.”

Maria Luisa Morando is collected privately throughout England, France and Italy and recently sold two photographs at the Foundation For Woman Artists in London England. She has exhibited across the United States, with an emphasis in Southern California.

Please contact the gallery for more information or images.

Annie Seaton News

2011-02-12T12:36:00.000-08:00

Here are a few instillation shots from Annie Seaton's recent exhibition at the Pacific Shores Cafe in Redwood California.

dnj Staff

Annie Seaton News

2011-02-12T12:17:00.000-08:00

Last Fall dnj Gallery artist, Annie Seaton, participated in an exhibition in Dublin California. Here are a few instillation shots from the show to enjoy.

dnj Staff

If you would like to see more of Annie's work in person, please stop by our new home at Bergamot Station!

Opening Photos: Jane O'Neal and Robert von Sternberg

2011-02-09T16:26:00.001-08:00

A big thank you to all who turned out for the inaugural exhibition at dnj Gallery for Jane O'Neal and Robert von Sternberg last Saturday!
Here are a few pictures from the evening to enjoy.

dnj Staff

Bergamot Installation Update

2011-02-03T16:43:00.001-08:00

The installation of Jane O'Neal and Robert von Sternberg's exhibition is underway at dnj Gallery! Hope you can all join us for the opening this Saturday, February 5th from 4-6pm at our new home at Bergamot Station.

February 5 - March 19, 2011

Jane O'Neal
Environmental Memory: Part II - Taking Flight

Robert von Sternberg
Intersection

Jane O'Neal - dnj Gallery artist

Mark Giorgione - Assistant Director of dnj

Exhibition Update

2011-02-02T15:24:00.000-08:00

Bill Sosin News

2011-01-29T13:26:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Bill Sosin for your recent placement of two photographs in the permanent collection at LACMA. Two additional pieces were selected from Mr. Sosin’s City Rain series that were previously acquired at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

If you would like to see more of Bill's images, please stop by dnj Gallery.

LACMA Selections:

Bill Sosin, Street Light, archival
inkjet print, 2006-2009

Bill Sosin, Metaphor, archival
inkjet print, 2006-2009

Santa Barbara Museum Selections:

Bill Sosin, In the Loop, archival
inkjet print, 2006-2009

Bill Sosin, Local Knowledge, archival
inkjet print, 2006-2009

Bill Sosin News

2011-01-28T16:54:00.001-08:00

Benjamin Lowy News

2011-01-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

dnj Gallery artist, Benjamin Lowy, recently spoke at the SoHo Apple Store and sent out information on his most current activity. Here is a link to view a slideshow of some of his favorite images in 2010. Enjoy!

An iphone photo from the ViDi project: iPhone Afghanistan essay

I hope this promo finds you well and that you are off to a great start in 2011. This year started with my Oil on Water essay featured on the New York Time’s Lens blog. Also, on the one year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, Newsweek.com hosted a video I produced chronicling the earthquake aftermath. On Monday January 24 at 7pm, I will be speaking at the SoHo Apple Store covering a retrospective of my work and my current iPhone project ViDi. I hope to see you there.

Since my last promo, I have completed assignments for the Wall St. Journal, ESPN, Fortune, Business Week, Inc., Fast Company, Vogue.com and Daily Beast. My Disaster in the Gulf series was featured in Fraction J magazine and my Storylines and Iraq Perspectives projects were projected on the exterior wall of the Corcoran Museum during Foto Week DC. I have also been selected as a finalist in the Duke First Book Prize this year.

On a personal note, I am happy to announce that my wife, Marvi Lacar and I are expecting our second child this summer! Mateo is now a mobile and very active 1 year old.

I will be en route to Afghanistan on January 25 and will be available for assignments after the 1st of February.

Mobile: +1.917.412.4985
Email: ben@benlowy.com
AIM/Skype: jaminlowy
Url: www.benlowy.com
Twitter: benlowy
Facebook: Benjamin Lowy Photography
Blog: www.benlowy.tumblr.com

LENSCRATCH Reviews Photo la 2011

2011-01-25T13:54:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the shout out Aline!! We love all that you do for photography! :-)

Melissa Parkerson from dnj Gallery
featuring the work of Maria Luisa Morando

Photo L.A. 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011

This past weekend, photo l.a. celebrated its 20th Anniversary as the longest running art fair west of New York and the largest photo-based art fair in the country, drawing over 10,000 attendees. It brings together photography dealers from around the globe, displaying the finest contemporary photography, video and multi-media installations along with masterworks from the 19th century. photo l.a. is honored to have played a significant role in the cultural life of Los Angeles. It has been essential in transforming the art/ photography landscape of Los Angeles by increasing public awareness and acceptance and the inclusion of photo-based art in almost all contemporary galleries and museum exhibitions.

In 2004, Photo LA was created as a public event, and each year for 4 1/2 days, the public immerses itself in all things photography. In addition to the exhibition fair, numerous lectures, events, and seminars were being offered. Photographers such at Uta Barth, Arthur Tress, and Amy Arbus provided lectures, presentations on independent printing and publishing, panel discussions on a variety of topics were offered, and daily collecting seminars were available. Across the street, Center hosted Review LA (to be featured next week), and there were photography openings at venues across the city.

Close to 60 galleries and publishers set up booths, filled with photography and books for sale. The galleries came from as far away as China, Australia, and the Netherlands, but the show also included local galleries. It was an opportunity to not only be exposed to a terrific range of imagery, but see trends in print sizes, matting and framing, pricing, and color vs black and white. Five years ago, the fair was filled with large scale color prints, the last two years were dominated by small black and white classic prints--this year was a more balanced offering of scale and approach.

most images by Noelle Swan Gilbert

Annie Seaton News

2011-01-25T13:16:00.000-08:00

Congratulations Annie for your recent Photo la review on Truffle Hunting: Fine Art Experiences of Quality and Resonance! To see more of Annie's work in person, please stop by dnj's new home at Bergamot Station.

Annie Seaton, Wyatt, c-print with acrylic inks, 12" x 12"

Annie Seaton, Wyatt, c-print, 12" x 12"

Photo LA- A Few Truffles in the Miasma
by Herr Müller on January 14, 2011

Art Fairs can be grind. I’ve worked them from the vantage point of the dealer, showing and selling prints for 8 hours straight. I’ve worked them from the vantage point of an exhibiting artist. And then I’ve “worked” them as a passionate and undauntable visual consumer. To winnow the wheat from the chaff is made only a tad easier by the concentration of a single venue. But then, the walk in Chelsea or the drive in LA actually provides a moment of visual peace between art encounters. Six of one, half dozen of another.

Photo LA, in its 20th Anniversary rendition, is currently at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and runs through Monday. The fair looks good, well laid out, well lighted and user-friendly. The art on display runs the gambit from sublime to ridiculous, but this can be said of any fair, of any caliber. But we’re in the business of TruffleHunting, so here then a few notable standouts:

Annie Seaton

A new discovery for me was Annie Seaton, shown at DNJ Gallery which recently moved to Bergamont station. Cutout surfers from one photograph reappear on a facsimile painted ground of another. The paradigm is elegant and well executed. Modestly scaled and intelligent, Ms. Seaton has managed to deface in order to recreate.

Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan is and has been one of my favorite artists for many moons. Tom Gitterman is showing a handsome image of Elenor, the artist’s wife, muse and subject throughout his career. Aside for my personal love for the silhouette, the composition is divine and bold. It veers into abstraction and then gently manages to reassert itself into a portrait. The image is both intimate and veiled and thus divinely mysterious.

Bill Eppridge

Photography as journalistic tool and witness has always been important. There’s no greater picture in this genre at the fair than this marvelous campaign shot of Bobby Kennedy riding in a convertible in Indianapolis in 1968. Bobby is riding with the Fearsome Foursome and Prizefighter Tony Zale. The image is by Bill Eppridge and can be seen at Monroe Gallery of Photography

Robert Heineken

Another personal favorite in the history of Photography is Robert Heineken. A conceptual artist wielding the medium of photography in the 70′s and 80′s, Heineken was deeply ahead of his time. The dime a dozen MFA grads that are pumped out of Academic institutions at a dizzying rate only wish they could have his wit and charm and intelligence. At Barry Singer there are two excellent examples of his work. Polaroid photograms of art school lunches. Items from a salad bar and a neatly dissected submarine sandwich act as subject matter. Original, funny with a soupcon of fuck you make the result a perfect blend of commentary and art. Further examples of Heineken’s Recto/Verso series can be seen at Stephen Daiter‘s booth from Chicago.

David Graham

At Light Work, one of the most successful and enduring Non-for-profit organizations in the nation it must be said, there’s a great print by David Graham that ominously and wittily sums up the state of our financial landscape. Billboards are a deeply American phenomenon but it may not get any more perfectly American than this. The booth is filled with remarkable examples of great artists, all at reasonable prices, each one donated in support of the ambitious programming.

Wegee

Lastly I will leave you a triptych by the irascible Wegee at Louis Klaitman & Robert Tat Gallery . Yes, I say, a three-ring circus should be a triptych. Of course! The middle image may just be the world’s most perfect double exposure with the observed and the observers fusing into a single image.

James Robie Retrospective at CSUN

2011-01-22T16:30:00.000-08:00

dnj Gallery would like to send out a big congratulations to our dear friend, James Robie, for his upcoming retrospective titled "My Life as Art: James Robie" taking place at CSUN Art Galleries next month!

My Life as Art: James Robie

February 12 - March 26, 2011
Reception: Saturday, February 12 | 4-7 pm
Gallery Talk: Monday, February 14 | 10 am

James Robie, Shrine

James Robie’s exhibition “My Life as Art” features paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and graphic design spanning more than 40 years of his creative output.

According to the Gallery’s director James Sweeters “What’s interesting about this show is to not only to see the artistic development of Robie’s fine art but his development as a graphic designer, a profession he skillfully learned working first as a production artist with several prominent Los Angeles designers and later after he formed his own design firm in 1978.” Robert Bucker, Dean of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication added “It would be hard to determine by looking at this show if Robie considers himself a designer who paints or a painter who’s a designer. He’s approached each discipline with a focus and dedication that would make each one a success and perhaps it’s a moot point to ponder the question.”
Robie said, “My journey through life is reflected in my work. As I have grown as a person so my work has evolved and grown whether as a sculptor, painter or graphic designer.” The exhibition charts this journey. There are experimental prints and paintings made early in his career. Large soft lyrical figurative paintings of the 70s and early 80s cumulating in several fine beach scenes composed from photographs taken at Venice beach. Sculptures shown include several wood wall reliefs, and an assortment of wood and stone pieces that combine complex carving, many of the intricate carved pieces are carved from one solid piece of wood, with painted and metal oxidized surfaces.

Robie’s current graphic design projects and abstract paintings have mutually evolved from his earlier visual expression into a serious exploration of abstract thought and composition. With his recent work in both areas as powerful as he has ever produced.

Whether designing for large national clients or fueling his personal passion, Robie’s art has marked a journey of explorations, discoveries, achievements and fulfillment. CSUN Art Galleries is pleased to welcome the public to a decade-by-decade look at the evolution of his art.

Laura Parker News

2011-01-22T16:14:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery aritst, Laura Parker, for her recent inclusion in "Influential Element: Exploring the Impact of Water" being held at the Long Beach Museum of Art January 13 - April 3, 2011.

Laura Parker, Collecting Pool, 2010, 82" x 48"

Ginny Mangrum News

2011-01-22T15:39:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Ginny Mangrum, for her inclusion in Gallery 180's juried exhibition to benefit Heartland Alliance titled "Photo '11"!

Ginny Mangrum, Subway, archival lightjet print, 16" x 20"

January 17 - March 3, 2011
Charles Gniech, Exhibition Curator
Gallery 180 of The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago

photo '11 is a national juried exhibition presenting a snapshot of the imagery currently being produced with—or through—the photographic process. The show is produced in conjunction with the annual Art of Human Rights® event to benefit Heartland Alliance. Commissions from the sale of work included in this exhibition, will be donated directly to Heartland Alliance to help with their work in supporting human rights. Proceeds will help Heartland Alliance provide housing, healthcare, economic security, and legal protection services to more than 200,000 people whose lives are threatened by poverty and danger, including those living with HIV/AIDS. When the show selections were finalized, each accepted artist was asked to submit a statement defining their work. This document is the result of that material.

Benjamin Lowy News

2011-01-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

dnj Gallery artist, Benjamin Lowy, and his amazing images taken after the Deep Water Horizon disaster was recently featured on the New York Times Lens blog! Congratulations Benjamin!

Benjamin Lowy, 2009

In addition, Benjamin's Haiti: Aftermath video has been hosted on Newsweek.com, so be sure to check it out!

Bergamot Station Opening

2011-01-19T17:00:00.001-08:00

Thank you to all who made it out for our Bergamot opening on January 9th! We are so very excited for the move and our beautiful new home. Here are a few images to enjoy!

Annie Seaton Pop-Up Group Show

2011-01-05T16:48:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Annie Seaton, for her collaboration and participation in an amazing group show taking place in Culver City later this month!

Annie Seaton, Surf Gang, Venice Beach, acrylic ink and c-print on wood panel, 24" x 20"

Artists Ray Beldner, Brendan Lott, Sonja Schenk, and Annie Seaton are pleased to announce their upcoming exhibition, Misappropriation. The pop-up show, which takes place during the Art Los Angeles Contemporary Art Fair, includes paintings, mixed media, digital prints, and small-scale installation all using and misusing found photo-based imagery. The exhibition will be on display at Studio Orange in Culver City, California from January 23-30, 2011.

Since the early collages of Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp’s use of found object for his series of “ready-mades,” artists have felt free to use, reproduce, appropriate and incorporate materials found within popular culture and society. These raw materials reflect and embrace the world around us: snippets of newspapers and magazines, film and TV excerpts, snapshots, advertisements, news headlines, bits of text, characters, fragments of song, and so on. Artists used this source material just as artists have used raw material for thousands of years.

Now with the ubiquity of computers, digital cameras and the Internet, artists have access to the world’s greatest libraries, image databases, and interactive tools at their fingertips. As a result, traditional artistic practice is changing once again as artists explore the potential of these new technologies and incorporate them into their working methodologies. For each of these artists, the Internet and digital technology play a vital role in their creative processes.

Appropriation as an artistic practice and visual strategy is not new to contemporary artists, but the case that this exhibition makes is that the Internet enables a new kind of appropriation or borrowing, a “mis-appropriation” which is the intentional—sometimes humorous, sometimes dark—misuse of someone else's material. In this case, their images or their likenesses.

Each artist in the show collages images they have taken or found on the Internet or elsewhere, and they re-purpose and re-contextualize them in a way that reflects on their origins. They are in a sense “meta-images” misappropriated for the purpose, in part, to reflect on the picture’s original purpose and meaning.

Review: William Eggleston's "On The Road"

2011-01-05T14:40:00.000-08:00

A big thank you to Richard Risemberg for his recent review of dnj Galleries William Eggleston exhibition on view now through January 29th.

William Eggleston, Untitled, circa 1988, vintage chromogenic coupler print, 7.5 x 10 inches

"William Eggelston's "Democractic Forest" and the Evil of Banality"

Although nowadays no one thinks twice about including photography as one of the fine arts, the medium took a long road to acceptance. The very objectivity that its early developers prized was held against it--even though rampant manipulation of photographic images began within a year or two of photography's birth in france and England around 1839. Indeed, an entire school of self-consciously manipulated photography--posed, lighted, soft-focussed, painted-over, and more--grew as part of an effort to make the craft seem less "automatic" and thus somehow more "poetic."

For decades documentary photography was regarded as a kind of "mere" journalism or record keeping, and it required intense efforts by early 20^th century photographer Berenice Abbot, for example, to "rehabilitate" the reputation of great Parisian documentarian Eugène Atget, whose photos now reside on museum walls worldwide, though he himself thought he was making "mere" records.

From the 1930s on, however, the idea took that the choices made in framing a scene from life and controlling the exposure and tone to emphasize certain elements constituted a set of aesthetic controls that qualified the results as "Art." However, this label was generally reserved for black and white photography, whose capacity to emphasize spaces and volumes was said to set it apart from the "mere" literalness of color work.

Enter William Eggleston, born in 1939 in the rural Deep South--on a cotton plantation in Tennessee, in fact. Early on, someone gave him a camera, which fascinated him; encounters in the 1950s with the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank--"documentarians" all, who now also grace museum archives--led to his own decision to "become" a photographer. But with one significant difference: Eggleston decided to work in color.

Color photography was not new then, but was considered fit only for illustration and advertising. But the subjects that Eggleston--a hard-drinking southern eccentric--photographed illustrated mostly the peculiarities of the American landscape and advertised the follies of our treatment of ourselves and the lands that nurture us. Through a long and possibly haphazard path, Eggleston became one of the earliest and most significant explorers of the meaning of sprawl and the American automobile-dominated landscape.

Currently showing at dnj gallery in Los Angeles is an exhibition of two of Eggleston's many series of work. One deals with Graceland, Elvis Presley's house in Memphis, now become a shrine to his memory; the other, called (by Eggleston) "The Democratic Forest," explores what I call "blandscapes," those emotionally-hollow spaces that constitute James Howard Kunstler's "geography of nowhere." Graceless architecture, bleak streets, junkpiles and trashheaps, parking lots, odd ends of cars and traffic signs, elements of control and disorder jumbled together with a total disregard for the souls or the bodies of the people that must inhabit these invisible prisons but whom you never see in his pictures--perhaps because there is really no place for them in the places they themselves have built.

Where Hannah Arendt spoke of the "banality of evil," Eggleston's photos quietly shriek of the evil of banality. Lost in discussions of the environmental impact of sprawl is its effect on the soul in daily life--an effect that Eggleston's images gently but relentlessly throw in your face. Perhaps more than any graph depicting watershed degradation, cancer clusters, or oil reserve declines, Eggelston's photos tune your psyche to the everyday horror we have made of America's streets, towns, and hearts in our worship of the automobile and of the throwaway society.

Photography speaks with light (and occasionally texts found in the scene or imposed on the image). Despite their frequent use of road signs, signs over storefronts or gas stations, and the ubiquitous advertising that poxes our American cities, these images exist within an aura of silence--the silence of souls that have forgotten how to speak. Epic poetry in light, they are as much elegy as song, and a warning of what we must leave behind if we are to find our lives again.

Suzy Poling Review in the SF Weekly

2011-01-05T14:18:00.001-08:00

Suzy Poling's "Zone Modules" project was recently featured in the San Francisco Weekly! Congratulations Suzy!

Sensory Saturation

By Heidi De Vries

In 1920, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp constructed one of the first known instances of kinetic art. Their piece was a motorized sculpture; it used painted planes of glass that created an optical illusion as they turned, incorporating movement into what had previously been a stationary art form. The influence of Ray, Duchamp, and other boundary-pushers is clear in Suzy Poling's solo exhibit, particularly in her futuristic experiments with light and vision. It's the setting for tonight's closing performance for Zone Modules. Projected video bounces off sculptures hanging from the ceiling or leaning against the wall, with screens and reflective material fracturing her images into unpredictable patterns. In another gallery, bare fluorescent lights arranged around the floor starkly illuminate a series of black-and-white painted collages, while a kaleidoscope-like sculpture mounted in the center of the room uses geometry to shift your perspective of the work into mind-bending repetitions. Poling is as skilled at manipulating sound as she is optics, and when she performs music as her alter ego, Pod Blotz, she immerses the audience in a river of tape loops, synthesized drones, and vocal improvisation with a distinctly dystopian edge. Appropriate, then, that for her closing she has asked two other bastions of the Bay Area DIY music scene to play, woodwind punks Death Sentence: Panda! and dark-and-glitchy noiseniks Chen Santa Maria.

Suzy Poling News

2011-01-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Suzy Poling, for her recent review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian!

Suzy Poling, installation view of "ZONE MODULES" 2010

Let your mind's eye travel through the "Zone Modules" of Suzy Poling

VISUAL ART/MUSIC Suzy Poling greets me by the half-open front gate of Queen's Nails Projects and hands me a Sapporo tallboy. It's freezing outside, and not much warmer inside. And dark. But not for long: within moments, she's turning on a projector at the top of a tall ladder, running tape through a bulky Pioneer tape deck on top of a giant Moog, and spinning transparent mobiles that are suspended from the spaces' ceiling, all while explaining her thoughts on making art and the ideas behind her current show, "Zone Modules." Analog sounds growls like an electric beast. The big square room expands to an outer space with rough edges, as projector light refracted from glass and mirrors floats like electric stars across a gray-silver moon on one a wall.

"I think I'm into it," Poling wonders out loud, looking at the wall fixture. "In this exhibition, there's an overall idea of future decay." She's telling the truth, not spinning an artist's statement, and yet there's also a current of energy and motion coursing through the room. At a certain point I realize that things are moving all around me, including behind my shoulder, a corner-of-the-eye feeling that is disconcerting and exciting — in terms of immersion, it evokes Bruce McClure's and Anthony McCall's explorations of live cinema, or an inverted version of the effects created by Yayoi Kusama's infinity rooms. "I think people want to get in touch with infinity rooms [right now]," Poling agrees, when I mention Kusama. "It makes sense to get in touch with the planet we're on and everything around it."

This is just the beginning of "Zone Modules," and just a hint of the constantly intersecting sonic and visual energies at play in Poling's broader art endeavors, a growing and morphing constellation that connects colorfully primordial photos of geysers to layered, artificial experiments in grayscale. We walk to the next room, a small black space with an old black-and-white television in one corner tuned to an eternal 1920s movie dreamscape. "Everyone really liked this room for some reason [at the opening]," Poling says with a shrug, as swirling fog gives way to a close-up of a cut jewel on the small screen. "It's like hanging out in a black room with a boob tube — it's a classic hypnosis."

The relaxed humor and pleasure in this room, though "experiential," as Poling put it, is not common in today's art world. It puts me in mind of Cary Loren, a friend of Poling's from Detroit (and a member of the influential noise band Destroy All Monsters), whose viewpoint possesses a similar enjoyment of pop culture mutation — one that's not kitschy, but imaginative in a raw, imperfect, individual manner. Poling's years growing up and exploring the abandoned spaces of Detroit and then Chicago are central to what she's making today. "It's so cold and there's some strange individuals there," she says affectionately, when I bring up the Midwest. "I drew a lot of my inspiration from the Congress Theatre, this old movie palace from the 1920s on Milwaukee Avenue. I used to live inside it. I started [ the musical project] Pod Blotz there, because I could bring an organ up onto the stage."
For around a decade, Poling has lived in Oakland, perhaps the closest thing that California has to offer to those kinds of urban autonomous zones. As we move to another room in "Zone Modules" and she talks about a geometric costume she used to wear to early Pod Blotz shows — "I thought, 'I love theater of Bauhaus, I love Dada, I love the Vienna actionists, and I'm going for this !" — I'm struck by the unashamed enthusiasm for different periods and styles of art, some outre or out of fashion, within her work. To say it's refreshing in these jaded times would be an understatement. But this isn't naïve art — it's gradually formulating a personal vision informed by everything from optics and opthamology to Russian avant-garde posters. "I'm not going to deny these things — I like [Laszlo] Moholy-Nagy!," Poling exclaims at one point.

"I could reinstall this installation a bazillion different ways and it would always be different," Poling says, as a characterful projected object darts like a dragonfly around the corner of an adjacent room. Not all artists could make such a claim, and fewer still could say it and have the idea be exciting. Poling credits the endless potential for combinations present in "Zone Modules" to curator Julio Cesar Morales's insights about what to leave out of the show, but I think it also has something to do with the her experiences collaborating with artists on an international scale, and her kinship with them. Along with her best friend Kamau Patton, she was part of Official Tourist, an artist group that included members from Bosnia and Japan. "I'll relate to a friend in Belgium in Dolphins into the Future who makes psychedelic spacey new age music," she says, when talking about the music of Pod Blotz. "But then I also really relate to Haters in Los Angeles. They make totally different kinds of music, but they have a deep respect for each other."

In the back room of "Zone Modules," Poling's paintings — which layer paint over vinyl and and paper to create interruptions in form and shape — share space with geometric sculptural and light experiments. I stare into the triangular eye of a metallic sculpture in the center of the room and through a tetrahedral passageway, spy another trangle, this time painted. "I like having the ability to just go into making art with people," Poling says. "That feeling that the creation station is out there."

John Beasley to Preform in Down Town Los Angeles

2011-01-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

Please join dnj Gallery artist, Helen K. Garber, on January 8th at 9pm at the The Blue Whale in down town Los Angeles for a night of jazz music with Grammy nominated John Beasley!

Helen and John collaborated on the Urban Noir project and she is so proud to see that his peers agree with her assessment of his talent - he is amazing and great live.

Jazz Times: John is truly an amazing pianist, imaginative composer, creative improviser and arranger. And with Positootly he created an album that people will look back as one of the first Jazz classic albums of the 21th century.

Helen K. Garber, World Trade Center, from her Urban Noir series

WHEN: Saturday, January 8, 2011

WHERE: Blue Whale
123 Astronaut E S Onizuka Street, 3rd Floor, LA, CA 90012 (map)
Validated Parking 2nd Floor

COST: $10

TIME: Two sets: 9pm and 11pm

BAND: Bennie Maupin (sax), Oscar Seaton (drums), Kevin Brandon (bass), John Beasley

MUSIC: John Beasley Poistootly! Jazz Circle will feature music from GRAMMY-nominated Positootly!CD which showcases
Beasley's original, propulsive, multi-layered compositions from funk and soul to bop, bossa nova, and nuevo tango
along with three choice covers.

CLUB: (213) 620-0908 - http://www.bluewhalemusic.com/

YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1h8LWQReiE

David Trautrimas Is Featured On LENSCRATCH

2011-01-05T12:32:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, David Trautrimas, for his recent feature on Aline Smithson's LENSCRATCH blog! To see more of David's work, please stop by the gallery.

David Trautrimas, Terra Thermal Inducer, 2009,
archival digital print, 22 1/2" x 35 1/4"

Earlier this year, the dnj Gallery in Los Angeles, featured an exhibition by Canadian photographer David Trautrimas. His other-worldly creations take modern appliances and reassemble them into top secret, Cold War era military outposts. David's work has resonated with American and Canadian audiences and he has a roster of exhibitions, grants, awards, and publications that reflect that we are children at heart, allowing our imaginations to believe that these habitats are possible.

Artist Statement:
In The Spyfrost Project, these skunkwork structures, hybrids of both machinery and architecture, stand as colossal weaponized ancestors to common objects such as refrigerators, lawnmowers and washing machines. Fashioned with aspiring futurism, yet an ominous sense of militaristic purpose, these installations link the parallel development of capitalism's postwar consumer culture and the Military Industrial Complex.

To create these Cold War structures, suitable source materials — such as the previously mentioned refrigerators and lawn mowers — are completely dismantled and photographed, then, by digital means, meticulously reassembled into strikingly original structures. This technique is a continuation of the process used in my previous two bodies of work; those being residential and industrial structures, respectively.

The most dramatic evolution from my previous work is the process for creating the landscape of each structure. For this new series great effort has been taken to photograph landscapes throughout North America that have a direct connection to the narrative of the series. I've travelled from one of the epicenters of Cold War activity, Los Alamos and the state of New Mexico, to more regional locales, such as Prince Edward County, home to many Avro Arrow tests, and abandoned Pine Tree and D.E.W radar bases in Central and Northern Ontario. Each location was thoroughly documented, allowing the fictional bases to be situated in the real landscape of the North American Cold War experience.

dnj Gallery is Moving to Bergamot Station

2011-01-04T17:23:00.000-08:00

Please join dnj Gallery as we officially make our move to Bergamot Station! There will be a selection of our gallery artists' work on view for this special event and there will be a reception taking place on Sunday January 9th from 12-4pm. We hope to see you there!

dnj Gallery
2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite J1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
(323) 931-1311 or (310) 315-3551

Cynthia Greig News

2010-12-09T16:28:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Cynthia Greig, for her upcoming solo exhibition titled "Cynthia Greig: Subverting The (un)Conventional" at the Oakland University Art Gallery in Rochester, MI! The exhibition will run from January 7 - February 20, 2011 and there will be an opening reception on Friday, January 7th from 5-8pm.

To see more of Cynthia's work in person, please stop by the gallery.

Cynthia Greig, Representation #37 (Camera),
2006, c-print, 20" x 16"

Cynthia Greig has shown her photographs nationally and internationally in numerous solo exhibitions most recently at the Witzenhausen Gallery, Amsterdam, DNJ Gallery, Los Angeles, and the UNO Art Space, Stuttgart. Her work is represented in major collections including the George Eastman House International Center for Photography, Rochester, NY; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Coleçao Foto Arte/Arte 21, Brasilia. This is her first solo project in Michigan and spans two decades of work.
A conceptual artist, Greig uses the authority of photography to challenge conventions of image making about gender, identity and truth. Whether exploring nineteenth century mores as a reflection of our own conformity, or testing the limits of appropriation, ideology, or respectability, her work is often embedded in autobiography or its fictional antithesis. Her provocative photographs demonstrate the undermining eye of her underlying antiauthoritarianism, which is inherent in all her work.
Greig’s artistic practice divides her interests into discrete bodies of work. She fuses conventions and anticonventions into a revealing and intriguing view of how both can be subverted and manipulated to change attitudes, raise questions about the truth of an image, and challenge assumptions about what is real, what is desirable, and what is false.
This exhibition reprises New Eden: The Life and Work of Isabelle Raymond (1993-present) and includes an installation/reconstruction of a 19th century room containing some of Isabelle Raymond's photographs. Recent bodies of work represented in this survey exhibition include: Likeness of Being, Nature Morte, and Growth Gravity. The exhibition includes a seventy page full-color catalogue.

Bill Sosin News

2010-12-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

If anyone is in Chicago over the holidays, please stop by JS Graphics to see some of Bill Sosin's "City Rain" images in their display windows! They will be on display from December 9th – January 15th, so be sure to swing by. If you're in LA and want to see more of Bill's images in person, please stop by dnj Gallery.

David Trautrimas ARTnews Review

2010-12-04T15:11:00.000-08:00

dnj Gallery artist, David Trautrimas, is featured in the December issue of ARTnews magazine! Congratulations David! If you would like to see more of David's work in person, please stop by the gallery some time. We are more than happy to pull out images for review. :-)

Suzy Poling News

2010-12-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

A big congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Suzy Poling, for her solo exhibition at Queen's Nails Projects in Valencia San Francisco!

Curated by Julio Cesar Morales, "Zone Moduled" is a geometric catalog of myth, chemical experiments and light interferences. Poling’s static collage work combines layers of paint, silkscreens and metallic materials that explore minimalism as well as optical overloads. This show encompasses painted collages, photography, video and installations with glass screens, mirrors, refractive lenses and sound. Concepts of early Science Fiction imagery and ideas of “Future” are played out in two dimensional form and then into fourth dimensional form as light refraction and kinetic experiences occur. The trajectory of the work all stems from a similar place as the build of materials is just as important as the dilapidation. The idea of materialism blurs with consistent break down of object, landscape, chemicals, video interference and light projections.

Along with 20+ static pieces, multiples videos and projections will be obstructed by reflective lenses creating visual modulations, ever changing geometry and light synthesis. Suzy Poling is also Pod Blotz, an experimental sounds project lavished with tape manipulation, organ drone and electronics.

dnj Holiday Miniature Editions 2010

2010-12-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

dnj Gallery is pleased to present Holiday Miniature Editions - a special series of limited edition, photographic-based works by fourteen gallery artists. Almost all of the pieces are 5" x 7," printed in an edition of ten and all are $100. (Two of the artists' work are panoramic in order to fit with their style.) Created to entice your inner art collector and encourage art-giving this holiday season, the miniatures provide an affordable way to build a contemporary photography collection. Please contact the gallery for further information. office@dnjgallery.net

Miniature works are available by:

Bernadette DiPietro, Helen K. Garber, Richard Gilles, Benjamin Lowy, Ginny Mangrum, Jane O'Neal, Laura Parker, Suzy Poling, Annie Seaton, Bill Sosin, Tom Stone, Andrew Uchin, Anne Veraldi and Robert von Sternberg.

Jane O'Neal, Red Shoe, 2010, archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Robert von Sternberg, Columbia Ice Field, 2009,
archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Bill Sosin, N.W Highway, 2010, archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Helen K. Garber,Westwood, 1999, archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Annie Seaton, Shred Mini, 2010, archival pigment print with
acrylic inks, 5" x 7"

Andrew Uchin, I Can, 2010, archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Richard Gilles, Mad Greek Espresso, 2010,
archival pigment print, 3.5" x 9"

Benjamin Lowy, PNG Yacht Club, 2006,
archival pigment print, 5" x 10.5"

Suzy Poling, Moss Beach, 2010, archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Bernadette Di Pietro, Artifact #6, 2007,
archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Anne Veraldi, Filament Detail, 2010,
archival pigment print, 7" x 5"

Laura Parker, Inverse Rubbing, 2010,
archival pigment print on Japanese Washi paper, 7" x 5"

Ginny Mangrum, Stored, 2010, archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Tom Stone, Skyler After the Rainbow, 2009,
archival pigment print, 5" x 7"

Laura Parker News

2010-12-01T13:09:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, Laura Parker, for her inclusion in "Influential Element: Exploring the Impact of Water" taking place at the Long Beach Museum of Art January 14 - April 3, 2011!

Laura Parker, Collecting Pool, chromagenic monotype prints,
installation of 5 panels, 82" x 48"

Influential Element will feature over 30 contemporary works by California-based artists who seek to explore the infinite ways in which water impacts our everyday life. The exhibition will feature works in a variety of media, including oil paint on a variety of surfaces, photography, video, color pencil, and mixed media. Furthermore, it is especially fitting that Influential Element: Exploring the Impact of Water debuts in a city in which water has historically played a vital and complex role, both from a recreational standpoint and as a major source of industry and commerce supporting Port operations. Not only will this exhibition offer breathtaking images of water, but it will also reflect upon our increasingly complex relationship with the element - immersing the audience in a visual conversation about this unique element.

dnj Gallery Welcomes Mark Giorgione To The Family

2010-11-20T14:13:00.000-08:00

dnj Gallery welcomes its new Assistant Director -- Mark Giorgione. Mark moved to Los Angeles in 2000 from Atlanta, Georgia. He studied Graphic Design and Art History at the Art Institute of Atlanta. Before joining dnj Gallery, he worked with the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts and Rose Gallery as Registrar, Head Preparator and Associate Director.

dnj Gallery is open Thanksgiving weekend (Friday, November 26th and Saturday, November 27th)! Please come meet Mark and see the Eggleston exhibit.

Opening Reception Photos- "William Eggleston: On The Road"

2010-11-17T16:23:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who made it out for our William Eggleston opening last Saturday! It was a great turn out and we all had so much fun. Hope to see you all again sometime soon. The exhibition will run through January 29th just in case you want to come back for round two. :-)

Here are some photos to enjoy!

Tom Stone - Stand Up For Kids Event

2010-11-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

Be sure to join dnj Gallery artist, Tom Stone, as he premieres his short film which documents his American Poverty and Street Kids series of photographs tomorrow at SPACE 15 TWENTY from 7-10pm. This is a not to be missed event, so we hope you can make it out!

Tom Stone Opening Reception Photos

2010-11-11T13:37:00.001-08:00

Thanks to all who came out for Tom's sneak preview event last Saturday! Here are a few photos to enjoy. :-)

Tom Stone Featured on LENSCRATCH

2010-11-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

dnj Gallery is pleased to announce that Tom Stone is currently featured on Aline Smithson's LENSCRATCH blog! Thanks for your continued support and interest Aline. :-)

Tom Stone
By: Aline Smithson

Tom Stone is not afraid to look at difficult subjects straight in the face. The opening image on his website is a testament to the that fact.

Tom Stone, Beavis: Young Homeless Man Beavis, San Francisco, August 2006, silver gelatin print

Tom was born outside Mexico City, and spent most of his childhood with his mother communally in Los Angeles' famed Source Family; and after its dispersion, in various nomadic settings in Hawaii and California. A graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Computer Science, he worked in Silicon Valley for a number of years in investment banking and in the technology industry.

He is a documentary photographer known for his portraits of people living along the edges of society. His photography shares perspective with the work of Dorothea Lange, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus and Sebastião Salgado.

His upcoming exhibition at the DNJ Gallery in Los Angeles opens with a sneak preview on November 6-9th. (Immediately following will be an exhibition by William Eggleston running through January 29th.)

I photograph people who skirt the edges of things; people whose connection to the broader flow is murky or obscured. Mistaken as less or different than they are; they aren’t really seen and don’t really belong. That is everyone sometimes, but for some it is more often. I try to establish a line for a moment. I hope to connect and through this I see the most beautiful and heartbreaking things. To my thinking, the original human trauma is our separation. We are too close not to need each other and too far to trust each other.

Click here to read the full statement and view additional images by Tom Stone.

LA Times Review - Dylan Vitone

2010-10-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

dnj Gallery is pleased to announce that Dylan Vitone's "Miami Project" was recently reviewed in the calendar section of the Los Angeles Times! Congratulations Dylan!

Dylan Vitone, Body Builders, 2009, archival inkjet print, 15 x 85 inches

Dylan Vitone Shows Some Skin
October 28, 2010 | 8:00 pm

By: Christopher Knight

Dylan Vitone makes wide-format panoramic collages that must be scanned, usually horizontally but in one instance vertically, rather than seen head-on as a single picture. Just over a foot high and as much as 7 feet wide, the color ink-jet photographs are visually consumed in bits and pieces. They invite participation in a perceptually heightened dance between seeing and being seen.

For his second show at dnj Gallery, the Pittsburgh-based artist focuses mostly on skin. Shot in Miami in 2009, his subjects include female bikini models, a men's body building contest, performers at a porn convention, an advertising fashion shoot and kids jumping off a pier into the ocean (the vertical panorama, emphasizing their free-fall). The quality is documentary, and a good deal of the pictorial liveliness comes from the friction between some subjects who knowingly pose for the camera (and for each other) and others who are caught off-guard.

Many of the panoramas include people who are themselves armed with cameras and taking pictures at the event. That turns the scene into a delirious roundelay of voyeurism and display, self-conscious and otherwise. Even the pleasure of kids jumping off the pier partly comes from their apparent desire to show off.

Vitone assembles multiple shots to achieve the panoramic scope. Wisely, he doesn't attempt to make the joints between photographs seamless. The result is a visual stutter, which seems crucial. Physical perfection, or some conception of it, is sought at these multifarious events, and Vitone's camera technique interrupts the flow.

One result is a feeling of temporal fragility — of time's passage and the camera's deceits. A pageantry of beauty and fun becomes unexpectedly poignant.

Helen K. Garber In Group Exhibition

2010-10-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

DNJ Gallery artist, Helen K. Garber, was chosen to participate in The Factory's group exhibition titled The 2010 Architectural Photography Show that will be running from October 23 - November 20, 2010. The opening reception is Saturday, October 23 from 3-6pm, so be sure to check it out!

The show "is a diverse, yet concentrated view of fine art architectural photography in Los Angeles. From the dramatic to the iconic, abstract to documentary, the works all highlight the unusual, the beautiful, the surreal and the compelling architecture around us." (The Factory web site)

The Factory
912 E. 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Laura Parker News

2010-10-20T14:38:00.001-07:00

DNJ Gallery artist, Laura Parker, will be showing images from her series titled From the Range: Pot Bottoms and Naked Eye Objects at Matrushka Construction on 3822 W. Sunset Blvd. and the artist reception will be held this Friday, October 22 from 7-9pm! Hope you all can make it out to enjoy some amazing art and hand-made clothing! :-)

To see more of Laura's series in person, please stop by the gallery.

Laura Parker, Naked Eye Objects (blue),
digital c-print, 20" x 20"

Bill Sosin News

2010-10-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

DNJ Gallery artist, Bill Sosin and his City Rain series, has been featured in a new book titled Migration: Lost and Found in America. The book features several US photographers, including local artist Dave Jordano. Congratulations Bill! :-)

To see more of Bill's City Rain series, please stop by the gallery some time.

You can pre-order the book here at Amazon for $32.97!

Bill Sosin, The Bridge, archival inkjet print, 2006-2009, 16" x 20"

Cynthia Greig News

2010-10-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

A big congratulations to DNJ Gallery artist, Cynthia Greig, for her recent inclusion in Photo Plus Magazine's October issue within the "Welcome to My Week" section! This large eight page spread follows Cynthia for one week and includes text and images, although in another language we can still appreciate the content within. Amazing Cynthia!! :-)

To see more of Cynthia's Representation work in person, please stop by the gallery some time.

Here are a few scanned pages from the article:

Helen K. Garber News

2010-10-13T12:05:00.001-07:00

A big congratulations to DNJ Gallery artist, Helen K. Garber, for her recent success during the Sotheby's/George Eastman House Auction! Helen's beautiful Noir image of the World Trade Center From Empire State Building went for $1,906.00 + $381 buyers premium and the image was the 15th highest in a lot of 224.

If you are interested to see some of Helen's Venice Noir images in person, please stop by the gallery some time.

Helen K. Garber, World Trade Center From Empire State Building, 1997

Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust Opening at Pan Pacific Park

2010-10-05T16:29:00.000-07:00

DNJ Gallery owners, Pamela and Randol Schoenberg, are very pleased to announce the official opening of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust on on Thursday, October 14th at 10am. Randol Schoenberg, among may others, has worked tirelessly on the development of this amazing space and the varied stories it tells, so please join us for the Building Dedication Ceremony and be sure to spread the word about this amazing new addition to Los Angeles.

Take a virtual video tour here

Artist rendering of the new museum

Museum Overview:

The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust presents the history of the Holocaust as objectively as possible. For this reason its exhibits present as many original artifacts as possible and display them in a way that allows them to tell the individual stories they contain.

The Museum’s architecture and layout play significant roles in how you experience your visit. You will notice the rooms descending and decreasing in light as you progress towards the darkest part of history; from there you will ascend and return to a world of normalcy and illumination.

Technology functions as a tool to enhance your experience, rather than as an end in itself. It takes several forms throughout the Museum. Audio guide players, for example, allow you to listen to the many narrative explanations found throughout the Museum. Be sure to pick up one of the printed guides depicting the personal life stories of several individuals whose experiences are told in stations throughout the exhibits.

A powerful and affecting interactive Memory Pool in the World That Was will help you build your understanding of Jewish life throughout Europe prior to World War II. You can explore a virtual photo album featuring photos from the Museum’s collection and the wealth of material in a data base gathered by Centropa: The Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation.

Other interactive exhibits, such as the 18 displays in the combined Deportation & Extermination and Labor/Concentration/Death Camps room, depict the breadth, depth and severity of the world the Nazis created. Monitors displaying actual footage taken during the Holocaust era present unforgettable images of a tragic history as it unfolded.

Wall displays throughout the Museum provide critical background to the history of the Holocaust. Images in The Rise of Nazism make up a pictorial timeline of the events from 1933 to 1938. Photographs and text along the wall of the Deportation & Extermination and Labor/Concentration/Death Camps retell the fates of Jews in several countries. Elsewhere, such as in World Response/Resistance/Rescue, highlight several of the rare but heroic efforts made by non-Jews to save Jewish lives.

Several exhibits depict the victimization of Catholics, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, political dissenters, and others targeted by the Nazis.

Three models detail specific aspects of Holocaust events. A model of the Hartheim Castle in Onset of War/Ghettoization/Extermination shows where the Nazis collected handicapped and mentally ill people and performed grotesque medical experiments on them.

As you pass from that room into the combined camp rooms, you will see a recreation of one of the train cars used to transport victims to the camps. A video monitor inside the car shows a scene of prisoners as they disembarked.

In the combined room you will see a scale model of the Sobibor death camp. Created by Thomas Blatt, one of the few Sobibor survivors, you will be able to watch video of Mr. Blatt explaining how the camp operates and how he and other prisoners staged the uprising that ultimately saved his life.

Other exhibits detail the challenges facing the relatively few survivors as they struggled to rebuild their lives after liberation. The Rotating Exhibit Gallery presents music of and about the Holocaust and artistic depictions of it and responses to it.

We invite you to visit our Museum. We trust you will discover your own highlights: images that provoke you; interactive experiences that will cause you to see history in a new way; facts that will astound you. Most importantly, though the Holocaust is the most tragic event in history, we believe your visit to the Museum will strengthen your personal commitment to making your world a better place.

Cynthia Greig News

2010-10-05T16:26:00.001-07:00

We are very excited to announce that DNJ Gallery artist, Cynthia Greig, has two upcoming exhibitions in 2010:

Cynthia Greig, Representation #63 (books), 2007, c-print, 18" x 30"

The first exhibition will be held at Clark Gallery in Lincoln, MA, November 2-27, 2010 and will be titled Cynthia Greig: Nature Morte.

The second exhibition will be held at Witzenhausen Gallery in Amsterdam, November 13-December 11, 2010 and will be titled Cynthia Greig: The Matter of Life and Death.

Congratulations Cynthia and good luck!

To see more of Cynthia's work, please stop by the gallery or visit our web site at www.dnjgallery.net

Dylan Vitone Featured on Carnegie Mellon's School of Design Site

2010-10-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to DNJ Gallery artist, Dylan Vitone, for his recent review for "The Miami Project"!

Dylan Vitone, Car Shot, 2009, archival inkjet print, 15 x 60 inches

Professor Dylan Vitone’s Work Exhibited in Los Angeles

Dylan Vitone, associate professor of the School of Design, has his latest photography collection, “The Miami Project,” on exhibit this month at Los Angeles’s DNJ Gallery.

Vitone’s personal goal is to learn a visceral response to new cultures and groups of people. His photography is extremely successful at capturing a voyeuristic view of the social essence of a place’s ordinary people. His previous collections focused on Pittsburgh and South Boston, using black and white images to reveal the gritty working classes of these cities. “Working in the tradition of street photographers and social anthropologists such as Milton Rogovin and Bruce Davidson, Vitone makes extended portraits of communities through intimate observations of their everyday rituals,” said Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times.

While similar in style to Vitone’s previous collections, “The Miami Project” shows an extremely different face of American culture. These color photographs capture a glossy, hypersexualized narcissism one might find in Miami. Subjects include body builders, bikini models, and attendees of porn conventions.

Although Vitone’s style might sound like photojournalism, it is anything but that. “There is a fine line between truth and artistic expression” Vitone explained. His photographs have a surreal quality to them that helps the viewer understand that his images are an expression of his own personal interpretation of Miami.

Like his past collections, The Miami Project features urban panoramas that are up to seven feet long and less than a foot high. He also includes long, vertical images. He keeps the seams of the photographs visible, paying attention to breaks in the photos so that the viewer can see his sleight of hand.

The exhibition of The Miami Project will continue at DNJ Gallery from September 11 through November 5th. Vitone’s work can be found on his professional photography website.

“The Miami Project” was originally displayed in October 2009 at the Pittsburgh Center of the Arts, where he was named Pittsburgh’s Emerging Artist of the Year.

Artist Reception Photos

2010-09-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

A big thank you to all who attended last Saturday's opening for David Trautrimas and Dylan Vitone. Here are a few reception photographs for your enjoyment.

Helen K. Garber News

2010-08-31T13:32:00.001-07:00

Helen's Venice/Venezia portfolio was chosen as a finalist in the Critical Mass International Juried Photography Show which will include 175 finalists' work that will be juried by a prestigious group of 200 curators, publishers, editors and dealers from US and Europe! Good luck and congratulations Helen! :-)

If you would like to see more of Helen's images in person, please stop by the gallery some time.

Helen K. Garber, Canal, 2009,
archival digital print on canvas, 13" x 30"
and 22" x 54"

Chris Verene In The New Yorker

2010-08-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

DNJ Gallery artist, Chris Verene and his new book title Family, is featured in the Photo Booth section of the New Yorker!

If you would like to see some of Verene's images in person or would like to purchase a book, please stop by the gallery some time or visit our web site at www.dnjgallery.net.

The house on the cover of Chris Verene’s new book, “Family,” looks much like my house in Sag Harbor. A very tall, ailing fir tree once stood in front of mine. I had to take it down, as I was worried it would hit my house in the next hurricane, sure to come. Here my personal association with the book’s pictures ends.

The cover photograph of Verene’s inspiring book was taken in Galesburg, Illinois, in a world far away from Sag Harbor. The town mirrors the economic difficulties of our times: President Obama cited Galesburg as one of the areas worst hit by the downturn. The Maytag factory closed, and jobs became even scarcer than they were before, accelerating the town’s downward spiral. “Inspiring” may seem an odd word to use about pictures of an extended family living in a dying town, but his pictures are always tender, respectful, and loving. We meet cousins, aunts, grandparents, and parents, when they are happy and when their lives take bad turns, when they mourn or when they celebrate. Verene witnesses divorces, families breaking apart, death. His camera is focussed on jobless cousins, single mothers, elderly friends, all part of what he knows intimately. We see poverty, instability, and decline as part of daily life.

Verene describes himself a documentary artist; his pictures are authentic, and so is he. It is courageous of him and his subjects, who trust him utterly, to make these intimate images public. When I look at them, I understand a little better the reality of hard economic times in small towns all over America.

Verene is already working on his next series of pictures, which will center on his son. In the meantime, an exhibit will open at Postmasters gallery from September 10th to October 16th.

Photograms: Uniquely Simple Featured on Newsletter on The Arts Blog

2010-08-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

A big thank you to Diana Zlotnick for her recent blog post titled Wallace Berman and DNJ Photogram Show! Wallace Berman was an amazing artist and we are thrilled that you thought of our current exhibition while spotlighting his work. Thanks Diana!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 2010

NEWSLETTER ON THE ARTS
DIANA ZLOTNICK
June 2010
artgal333@gmail.com
www.notala.org

Robert Heinecken, Verso #5B, 1988, 14 x 11 inches

Wallace Berman and DNJ Photogram Show

Wallace Berman was a figure whose charisma brought many people together, which places him at the crux of the happenings of the California moderns throughout the 60s and 70s. Semina, his hand-printed mailer, served to introduce artists to each other, and created a circle of influence beyond his home, which was always open to his contemporaries, people who were later known as the Beat generation. His arrest, which resulted after his first Ferus show, led to his descent out of exhibitions, which makes reading his work—already mystical in its origins—all the more interesting today. For these reasons, it is no coincidence he has re-emerged today, as the face of the Pacific Standard Time exhibitions, for example, which will take place in various LA art institutions come 2011-2012.

Berman’s work is very anti-establishment, and very laissez-faire. In his collages everything is equal and just as significant; it is a compendium of everything in the world: whether it is Ghandhi placed next to sunlight in a beautiful tree, a dog in motion next to the world blowing up. To my mind, he is one of the first collagists to use the copy machine (then, called a verifax) in a self-conscious way—that is, with an approach that directly addresses circulation through reproduction and repetition, along with people like Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Heinecken. These artists were using multiple images—figurations of common objects—to compose one single image out of them using light-sensitive processes to print editions.

This month, the DNJ Gallery presents Photograms: Uniquely Simple, a group show that highlights several artists that may have been influenced by the work of Berman and others like him who worked with solarization and light-sensitive papers. Some of these artists include Darryl Curran (the guest curator or the show), Sheila Pinkel, and Marsha Red Adams. Robert Heinecken’s work also makes an appearance in the show, along with a photogram of his ashes made by Jason Lazarus.

Photograms: Uniquely Simple
July 17 - September 4, 2010
DNJ Gallery
154 1/2 N.La Brea
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323.931.1311

David Trautrimas and Dylan Vitone Exhibitions Featured on "Cultural Events In Los Angeles"

2010-08-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

A big thank you to Cultural Events In Los Angeles.com for posting our press release and images for our upcoming exhibitions featuring works by DNJ Gallery artists, David Trautrimas and Dylan Vitone!

This is a great site to find out what's happening in LA, so be sure to check it out!

Exhibition Dates: September 11 - November 5, 2010
Artist Reception: Saturday, September 11 from 6-8
Artist Talks: 5pm here at DNJ Gallery

David Trautrimas, Terra Thermal Inducer,2009, Archival digital
print, 22 1/2" x 35 1/4"

Dylan Vitone, Bikini Models on Steps, 2009, archival inkjet print, 15" x 85"

Annie Seaton Exhibition Updates

2010-08-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

A big congratulations to DNJ Gallery artist, Annie Seaton, for her inclusion in several upcoming exhibitions!

First, Annie will take part in the Art of Santa Monica held at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art this September. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, September 4th from 6-8pm, so be sure to check it out!

In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a book released by Jeffery Crussell titled Santa Monica that Annie will be featured in as well. The book can be purchased exclusively at lulu.com for $55.00.

Second, Annie will be debuting a new Surf series at the Dublin Point Emerald Business Park at ATT offices in mid September and the work will then travel to the Pacific Shores Center Cafe in Redwood City in mid to late October.

Third, Annie will be included in a Fall group show at the The Elaine Fleck Gallery in Toronto as a represented artist, and will be in attendance at the opening on October 2ed.

Michael Eastman Featured on LENSCRATCH

2010-08-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

One of DNJ's collected artists, Michael Eastman, is currently featured on Aline Smithson's LENSCRATCH blog. Thanks for the shout out Aline! :-)

Michael Eastman, Big Hole, c-print, 37" x 45"

The first time I encountered Michael Eastman's work in person was in a private home that had two large and luscious photographs flanking the foyer--it was an amazing experience to see his images of Cuban interiors, with brilliant color and incredible details. The DNJ Gallery in Los Angeles recently sent out an e-mail that the gallery has a number of pieces from Michael's amazing cross-country series, Vanishing America, available for sale...and though this is not new work, I certainly felt it was worth revisiting. The images below are at DNJ, and the ones that follow are also included in this series.

In 2003, Eastman began his three and a half-year project, traveling across the United States six times. Shooting with his 4x5 camera has made him a keen observer of the world, and given way to a developed poetic vision of what a more superficial observer would consider mundane architecture. Eastman’s images have a quiet painterly attention to light and space, which also translate beautifully to the colors of film. “Vanishing America” reveals the hidden jewels of the rural American buildings, recalling a history that in modern times has often been traded for corporate chains and mass uniformity. “The heart of our country is not along its highways, but in the small towns that dot the map along the way,” Eastman says about his work. There is a definite nostalgia for a part of our past slowly being demolished, but Eastman chooses to preserve what remains, taking subtle care as if he were an archeologist uncovering a long, lost civilization.

Images from Vanishing America
(images shown on this post are available for sell at DNJ Gallery)

Michael Eastman, Cairo, Illinois, c-print, 37" x 45"

Michael Eastman, Che-Che's, c-print, 37" x 45"

Michael Eastman, Le Happy, c-print, 37" x 45"

FORTH Magazine Reviews "Photograms: Uniquely Simple" & "The Daily Dose"

2010-07-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Check out this awesome review of DNJ's newest exhibitions curated by Darryl Curran! Thanks so much Carolyn!

Darryl Curran, Owl, Poinsettia Leaf, 2007, cyanotype
with multi-color gum pigment print, 30" x 15"

Photograms: Uniquely Simple
by Carolyn Blais

Unfortunately a photogram is not something you can eat. Nor is it like a telegram unless of course you count the fact that a photogram just may “speak” to you and relate a message. Well what exactly is a photogram you may ask? I was recently educated myself in this matter during the opening of the exhibition “Photograms: Uniquely Simple” at the DNJ Gallery this weekend. A photogram is a kind of photograph, except not really because no cameras or lenses are involved in its making. Instead, a photogram is made when an object or objects are placed “on top of a piece of paper or film coated with light sensitive materials” that are then exposed to film or light (DNJ Gallery Press Release). While the title of the exhibit may imply simplicity, photograms can in fact yield complex images that appear to have intricate designs.

The heat wave that rolled into Los Angles this past week did not stop locals from heading to Hollywood to check out all the cool photograms at DNJ on Saturday night. After climbing the very Grecian looking stone stairs to the second floor, I find the gallery to be packed with spectators. With complimentary Pellegrino in hand, I start to make my way through the small but pleasant space. In the first room is the work of the curator of the exhibit, Darryl Curran. Curran’s personal exhibit is called “The Daily Dose” and it includes 365 autobiographic photograms that were created every day over the course of 2007. By the looks of it, 2007 must have been a productive but fun year for the artist as I can clearly make out most of the objects used to make the photograms—a hammer, leaves, a slotted spoon, a wrench, scissors, paper clips, and buttons to name a few. The pretty, pastel colors used also seem to be an indication that 2007 was a good year. For me, I would love to have some of Curran’s photograms on my bedroom wall. The cheery colors and everyday objects seem to create a kind of calming ambience that would be perfect to wake up to every morning.

Moving on to the main gallery, I am met with a variety of photograms from nine other artists. Some of the first that I notice are the works of Elizabeth Bryant. Sort of reminiscent of X-rays, Bryant’s two “Police Target” photograms show the outline of two men in suits or uniforms who may have swallowed a slew of different objects from knives, to birds, to lizards. These pieces are difficult to describe, so you’ll have to go to DNJ to really see for yourself. While I think of Halloween when the local chiropractor would scan kids’ candy through the X-ray machine to make sure some psycho didn’t give out needle infested loot, I think the artist is trying to evoke a different affect—one that has to do with law enforcement and civil dis/obedience.

Lately I’ve thought it would be awesome to have dog. I can’t afford one, nor legally have one in my apartment. But apparently artist Julia Schlosser doesn’t have these issues. Either that or she is toting around items that belong to a dog in order to make a series of photograms. Her images show a tether and a leash, a dog hair, an e-collar, and K9 Advantix—everything one would need to have a Fluffy, or in this case a Tess, a C.J, and a Lucky (apparently the artist has or knows 3 dogs). These photograms are inventive and cool to look at, even if they make me long for that dog I’ve imagined.

The photogram exhibit will be on display until September 4th so be sure to check it out. Each artist gives new life to objects not normally seen in a creative light. The resulting images are not only interesting to look at, but uniquely developed.

Quick Look:
WHAT: “Photograms: Uniquely Simple”
WHERE: DNJ Gallery, 154 ½ North La Brea Ave, LA 90036
WHEN: July 17-September 4
WEBSITE: www.dnjgallery.net