David Trautrimas News

Congratulations to dnj Gallery artist, David Trautrimas, for his upcoming solo exhibition titled "By Facet & Scale" talking place at The Al Green Gallery in Toronto Canada! If you are in the area David's work is a must see for anyone who loves photography and architecture.

You can also see several of David's images at dnj Gallery located at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica.

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

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

David Trautrimas' Spyfrost Project in Seoul Korea

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.

David Trautrimas ARTnews Review

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. :-)

Artist Reception Photos

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.

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

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"

David Trautrimas Included in MOCCA Exhibition

Congratulations to DNJ Gallery artist, David Trautrimas, for his inclusion in MOCCA's "Empire of Dreams: Phenomenology of the built environment" exhibition which opens Saturday, June 19, 2010 and runs through August 15, 2010. The exhibition is curated by David Liss and showcases several Contemporary artists from Toronto.


David Trautrimas, Storm Crown Mechanism, 2010, digital print on
archival paper, 40” x 30”

The things that we build embody our highest aspirations and our essential instincts to survive. They also express our will to find place, to establish dominion over territory, over our destiny. Empire of Dreams is an exhibition of recent work by artists that looks at ways in which we exist within our built environment – the phenomenon that is our experience and interaction with structures and architectures that shape complex sensory and cognitive relationships to our surroundings.

Empire is manifest through physical structure - the built environment - and also through intangible and arbitrary structures: economics, politics, and the social and cultural constructs that influence identity and our perception of our place in the world. The artworks selected and produced for Empire of Dreams convey the artists’ insightful and timely discourses around our ever-shifting relationships to architecture, urbanization, economic and cultural paradigms, utopianism, existing and imagined space; the physical and the fluid structures that characterize empire and define who we are.

The artists’ backgrounds are diverse yet are filtered through the common lens of living in Toronto, Canada in the year 2010. Though the exhibition and the artwork do not always reference Toronto specifically, this shared experience of living in a large urban centre inevitably reflects conditions of existence common to all of us in the age of globalisation, of an emerging global empire. Through a remarkable range of approaches, techniques and in various media, the works in Empire of Dreams awaken within us new understandings of our surroundings, of the worlds that we build and inhabit.

Empire of Dreams also includes a magazine-format publication documenting the exhibition, including text from the curator, interviews with participating artists, and contributions from prominent guest writers and theorists, produced in collaboration with new Toronto-based art journal One Hour Empire.

ARTISTS:
Dan Bergeron/ Joda Clément with Nigel Craig/ Liam Crockard/ Dorian FitzGerald/ Sara Graham/ Alberto Guedea Zamora/ David Han/ Janet Jones/ Yvonne Lammerich/ Tristram Lansdowne/ An Te Liu/ Samina Mansuri/ Alex McLeod/ Jade Rude and Bruno Billio/ Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak/ T&T (Tyler Brett and Tony Romano)/ Josh Thorpe/
David Trautrimas