The Museum Project 2012-2015 Opening Reception

A very special thanks to all who attended the opening reception of The Museum Project this past Saturday night!

This exhibition runs until October 31st.

Our normal gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 11am-6pm.

"Backyard Oasis" Reviewed in the Los Angeles Times

The backyard swimming pool can be an object of desire or a sign of suburban sterility, an icon of the good life or a symbol of its demise. The Palm Springs Art Museum’s new show, “Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography,” looks at these contradictions and provides a revealing peek at this fixture of Southern California life, one that dots the landscape but nonetheless often remains hidden from view.

The photographs, taken from 1945 to 1982, are just plain fun to look at — the exquisite skill of the photographers, pretty bodies in pretty settings, recognizable pieces of recent cultural history. But a closer look uncovers a much more thought-provoking exhibition.

“I had been wanting for a really long time to do a show that looked at cultural geography,” the idea that place is not just its physical coordinates but also “the ideology that makes up people’s imagination of a place,” said Daniell Cornell, senior curator.

Life seems perfect in the 1970 photograph “Poolside Gossip” taken by Slim Aarons — from the pose of a lounging woman and her flip hairdo, to the glassy blue of the generous-sized pool, to the purples and blues of the mountain view.

The group of partygoers in “We Don’t Have to Conform,” a 1971 photograph shown at top by Bill Owens, practically screams Southern California stereotypes. Seven people, drinks in hand, sit in a hot tub with their feet raised at the center, touching, forming a leg tepee.

But “Abandoned Pool,” taken in Perris Valley by Loretta Ayeroff just three years later, turns the symbolism on its head, making the “pool a symbol of everything that that was wrong,” a despairing, empty place, plagued by water shortages. Joe Deal’s “Backyard Diamond Bar” is a 1980 photograph of a lawn planted in a kidney pool shape, surrounded by crowded, haphazardly cared-for lots.

“The pool is such a defining element,” Cornell said, and as the suburbs became a symbol of failure, an isolating trap particularly for women, the swimming pool takes on a different role.

But there is a resilient twist in the story as a group of boys finds those empty pools. Craig Stecyk’s work shows the boys skateboarding in them.

The exhibition also traces “a great period of experimenting in photography,” how the medium moved from an architect’s working tool to fine art, such as the 1947 Julius Shulman photo of Raymond Loewy’s Palm Springs home, Cornell said. There are other, often intersecting, streams too: celebrities, including Esther Williams, Rock Hudson and Marilyn Monroe; the notion of physical desire; and architecture and landscape.

Included among the 140 images — some on display for the first time — are photographs by Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, David Hockney and Diane Arbus.

The exhibition ends with Hockney’s gorgeously painted pool. His Polaroids, on display for the first time since 1982, delineate the transition to Postmodernism and, Cornell said, suggest life in a fragmented world.

“Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography” runs through May 27 at the Palm Springs Art Museum, 101 Museum Drive, Palm Springs; (760) 322-4800. It is part of Pacific Standard Time, the arts initiative that also includes “Breaking Ground: Chinese American Architects in Los Angeles,” running until June 3 at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles; and the ceramics show “Clay’s Tectonic Shift: John Mason, Ken Price and Peter Voulkos,” running until April 8 at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery of Scripps College in Claremont.

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

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

Opening Photos: Jane O'Neal and Robert von Sternberg

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

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

Photo LA Reviewed by Examiner.com

DNJ Gallery artist, Jane O'Neal, was spotlighted in Examiner.com's review of Photo LA 2010!


Jane O'Neal, Blue Pool, Orange County,
Cibachrome, 16 x 20 inches, 1976

The Santa Monica Civic Center was beaming with people crowding in to get a first look at this years' artists. In the crowd, I spotted people from all backgrounds, ages and worlds. From your avid fine art collector to your rebellious college student, there were even a few kids running around. Two little girls caught my eye more than anything, they must have been about 7 years old. They were complete opposites no matter how you looked at it, but what made me smile was how comfortably they fit in at Photo LA. As if they'd been there a million times before, seen all the art and all the people.

It goes to show that in the art world, there is room for all kinds of people. No matter how old or, as I learned today, how young.

Enough about the people, on to the art. The civic center was set-up with wall to wall photographs. Photos from the early years of photography dictating how far its come, to the modern technology used today. You could find a classic print on original photo paper or a vintage image printed onto fogged glass. Offering a truly diverse combination of creative photography.
Of the few pieces of art that I found profoundly intriguing were Blue Pool, Orange County from 1976 by Jane O'Neal, a print where you can see that it's vintage from the image but the boldness of the colors pop in such a modern way. Another was A Mad Day Out from 1968 by Stephen Goldblatt, from his days working with The Beatles. Goldblatt, known for his work as a Motion Picture Director of Photograph, is one of many artists that donated art to be sold by Fotovision-a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing documentary photography.

Whether it was the vast array of art, the complimentary hors d'oeuvres or just the open bar, Photo LA kicked off to a perfect opening night. At every turn, you could find someone deep in a creative exchange or admiring art on the wall or even just, sitting back and taking it all in. I over heard a woman commenting how the event was "so LA," a good thing I'm assuming.
All in all, after attending for the first time, I can't understand how anyone could start off the new year without attending even one night of Photo LA.

DNJ Gallery Holiday Editions Now Available

DNJ Gallery is pleased to present Holiday Miniature Editions - a special series of limited edition, photo-based works by eleven gallery artists. The works vary in size and edition, and range in price from $40- $100. A limited number of full-set editions are available for $500. 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. DNJ Miniatures are available for purchase individually or as a full set. Please contact the gallery for further information. office@dnjgallery.net

Click the Holiday Miniature link above or the artists links below to scroll through all available images.

Miniature works are available by:

Maria Luisa Morando, Annie Seaton, Jane O'Neal, Jona Frank, Richard Gilles, Darryl Curran, Laura Parker, Bernadette DiPietro, Anne Veraldi, Patrick Wymore and Dylan Vitone


Maria Luisa Morando


Annie Seaton


Jane O'Neal
See Environmental Memory: Part I - Home Grown
series for all available miniatures by Jane


Jona Frank


Richard Gilles


Darryl Curran
Images available in three colors shown


Laura Parker


Bernadette DiPietro
Call gallery for all available
miniaures by Bernadette


Anne Veraldi


Patrick Wymore


Dylan Vitone

Jane O'Neal Featured in WHITEHOT Magazine

July's issue of WHITEHOT Magazine features a review of Jane O'Neal's Environmental Memory: Part - I Home Grown, which was on display at DNJ Gallery from April 25 - June 20, 2009. For more information about Jane's work, please contact the gallery.


Jane O'Neal, Orchid Cactus Flower #3,
2009, archival inkjet print, 44" x 30"

by: Shana Nys Dambrot

Jane O’Neal acquits her flatbed scanned portraits of flora and root systems with whiffs of the semi-clinical, sexualized near-abstractions of Edward Weston—an obvious comparison if for no other reason than subject matter. Due to advances in technology, the feats of the flatbed scanner, and her eye for fleshy, saturated palettes, her images are undeniably literal and escape all sentimentalism. There remains a bit of a lepidopterological feeling due to the march across the wall of mostly same-size/scaled, identically-framed specimens. There is also a definite anthropomorphism to her images of roots, flowers, and vegetables, which is hardly a scarcity in art’s big book of thematic tactics, yet never gets old. In this thread are the gnarled root-fingers of Root Ball (44 x 30 inches), and the clitoral character of Blue Java Bud (44 x 30 inches) with its cauterized umbilical stem nub and enfolding husks like a carved wooden mask or tribal talisman. But many aren’t about people at all. In Orchid Cactus Flower #1 (44 x 30 inches), the waxy texture of the leaf, like star fruit, is inviting rather than threatening. It has a bit of magic to its luminosity that seems to radiate from within, its translucent flesh refracting light like glazed pigment might in a painting. The flushed and ruddy, royal purple parchment skin and dynamic fling of glistening, intense spring green on Red Onion (44 x 30 inches) is impossibly gorgeous and hasn’t a thing to do with the human body. The approach to color and texture here is a painterly one, while the detail, the sheer amount of mass and surface, that it is possible to achieve in digital photography both supports and supplants that element of her style.

O’Neal’s subjects (aside from the fact that her real subject is photography itself,) in any case her “sitters” or pretexts are, so to speak, natural models, photogenic at every instant and from any angle. But eerily, it is also clear that nothing on display is still alive. It’s all been plucked, pulled from the earth, harvested in some way; it may be ripe and even edible, but it is all already dead and dying. That’s where some of the most humanity in the work reveals itself—not on the explicitly formal level of a Weston, but on the spiritual, existential level of an organic life. Orchid Cactus Flower #3 (44 x 30 inches) is the only picture that captures movement—there are petals photographed mid-fall; very sexy hot pink petals, seductive and alluring, on their way to hitting the ground with a dramatic flair, the up-arching stalk and face/center of the bloom straining toward the “sky” with poignancy; the humanoid stance to its bodily form and pose hinting at consciousness. This image is Romantic almost to the point of the tragic, chronicling the closest activity these inanimates can claim to a narrative arc. The diptych Cavendish Floral Bud and Cavendish Floral Stalk (2008, 44 x 30 inches each) adds the fraught energy of relationships to this equation with its male-female pairing. A richly detailed, multi-faceted bronze, muscular husk with its disheveled mop of curly “hair” and sweet cap of green stalks rests on one side, and a more feminine form of the same species, its dusky pink flower still modest but emerging from under the protective chastity of the husk rests on the other. They are separate but eternally linked, like sides of a coin, or the gender divide they represent as metaphor and metonymy—and there is more material for sexual projection in them as any Rorschach test-giver could dream of. But then again, people seem to love to see themselves in pictures.

Jane O'Neal: Environmental Memory: Part - I Home Grown Reviewed in art ltd. Magazine

Art ltd. Magazine features Jane O'Neal's Cavendish Floral Stalk in Marlena Doktorczyk's review of Environmental Memory: Part I - Home Grown, which was shown at DNJ Gallery from April 25 - June 20, 2009.

by marlena doktorczyk-donohue

my brain harvests - then constructs - fabrications - of irony - delight - fear and dread – Excerpt, Jane O’Neal, artist’s statement

To analogize Jane O’Neal’s recent incursion into backyard fauna to Georgia O’Keeffe’s distantly similar content seems to completely miss the point; namely, the fresh technical aspects and innovations that make this work unique in a sea of still-lifes and a decade of digitally-based photo images. We know Jane O’Neal for her naturally lit, night cibachromes capturing people-less motel facades, abandoned shopping carts, and backyard swimming pools in the incandescent high pitched hues of backlit neon. What made these stunning—besides O’Neal’s impeccably eccentric eye and dead-on technical instincts—was that the absent humanity was like a breath over the scenes, always suggesting a human presence.

In her new work, O’Neal presses backyard plants—onions, bananas, flowering cacti—onto her scanner then makes nuanced, calibrated ink jet prints on archival paper. Although once again we humans, bursting with what Deleuze called all our “overwhelming versatility of desire” are absent, our generic need and our irreversible decay is suggested in absentia via things related to us: a turgid, red-orange persimmon caught both from the stem-top and in profile such that tiny dots of over-ripening suggest living flesh, or a mature star cluster about to birth a few more universes. Because the scanner renders such unusual and unpredictable relationships of depth/light, because the digital medium provides for an array of intense, tinsel-y saturated color, and because O’Neal is so skilled at what is left in, removed or exaggerated, each work looks like an enlarged page from those medieval hand-drawn botanicals, either created or viewed on really mellow acid. Due to the light of the scanner and the artist’s skill, many images get this sort of Kirlian aura around them, reminding us of studies that purported to “photograph” the life force around plants. Others are crisp with a radioactive luminosity and 3-D sheen, calling to mind gardens propagating out of control and glowing oddly after a nuclear catastrophe. The works swing from the intensely erotic to the sadly senescent; they speak indirectly to the complex relationship between lived life and dues ex machina, and they point to the heart of what is human though no humans are spied.

For a printable version of this review click here!

One of Art Scene's Continuing and Recommended Exhibitions: Jane O'Neal's Environmental Memory: Part I - Home Grown

DNJ's current exhibition, featuring the work of Jane O'Neal, is featured in the June issue of Art Scene. This show is only open for three more weeks. Please stop by!


Root Ball, 2008, archival ink jet print, 44 x 34 inches

A. Moret

Rather than photograph plant life thriving and decaying in situ, Jane O’Neal brings a flatbed scanner to her backyard and scans birds of paradise, persimmons, and gnarled root balls. In her manipulation, handling, and recording of delicate objects O’Neal transforms natural elements into computer-generated objects. Therefore the prints in “Environmental Memory: Part 1--Home Grown” depict subjects that no longer exist. Instead O’Neal’s digital c-prints become the memory of her former home grown environment. Whether it’s “Apple Cactus,” depicting a rotted and blackened apple (a symbol of longevity and endurance), or “Persimmion #1,” in which O’Neal has granted us access inside the dying petals, “Environmental Memory” is a show about transition. “Root Ball” is an unearthed web of roots that appear to continue growing with ferocity even though they have been removed from the soil. The root is drenched in contrast--as it is still stained by the dirt and overexposed by the glare of the scanner. By uprooting the root ball, O’Neal demonstrates that “we’re all in transition,” and confirms that we are never living in a single environment but moving from one to the next (DNJ Gallery, West Hollywood).

ARTIST TALK WITH JANE O'NEAL

A big thank you to all the guests who attended Jane O'Neal's artist talk during the Muse Art Walk on May 30th. Jane gave a wonderful lecture which included information about her newest exhibition titled, Environmental Memory: Part I - Home Grown, now showing at DNJ Gallery through June 20, 2009, as well as information regarding her career as an established photographer.

Jane O'Neal and Anne Veraldi Exhibition and The Muse Art Walk

Jane O'Neal and Anne Veraldi's exhibition is currently running at the gallery through June 20, 2009, so please stop by and take a look.

Join DNJ Gallery at the LACMA Muse Art Walk taking place next Saturday May 30, 2009 from 12-8pm. Come join the gallery for an Artist Talk with Jane O'Neal at 1:30pm, and don't forget about our happy hour from 4-5pm!

The Muse ArtWalk 2009 is happening once again on the Miracle Mile. Four museums will be offering free general admission, more than twenty galleries will be participating in a self-guided tour, and restaurants throughout the area will offer special discount and offers. Be sure to check out the schedule of events for more programming information. Click here for a list of participating galleries within the Miracle Mile Area.

Later that evenng, Muse presents its ArtWalk 2009 After Party featuring Vaud & the Villains at the El Rey Theater. Doors to the After Party open at 8:30 pm. After Party general admission tickets are only $25 for Muse members, $40 for non-Muse members, and are extremely limited. Because you are on the DNJ Gallery mailing list, you can save $10 on tickets by entering the promo code musewalk. To purchase general admission tickets, click here, call 323 932-5861, or visit LACMA's box office.

We are excited to announce that DNJ Gallery is now on Facebook - the application where you get to share and keep up with lots of gallery news and happenings. Simply log on to your Facebook account or, if you don't have an account, you may register for one by clicking on the Facebook link provided here.

Opening reception for Jane O'Neal and Anne Veraldi

Please stop by the gallery to see Environmental Memory: Part 1 - Home Grown by Jane O'Neal and Melting Point by Anne Veraldi. The show will run through June 20, 2009.

View photos from the opening below:

Jane O'Neal and Anne Veraldi: Artist Reception Saturday April, 25 from 6 - 8 pm

DNJ Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition Environmental Memory: Part 1 - Home Grown featuring the photographs of Los Angeles artist Jane O'Neal. Gallery II features the work of Anne Veraldi in the show entitled Melting Point. Both exhibitions illustrate the artists' contemporary perception of their surroundings. This exhibition runs from April 25 - June 20, 2009.

Jane O'Neal, Persimmon,
44 x 44 inches, archival inkjet print

Anne Veradi, Ice #5, 20 x 30 inches, c-print