Feb08

February 9 – March 8, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 9th, 6 – 10 pm

Miguel Osuna

Sam Seawright

Lawrence Asher Gallery is proud to present the second solo exhibition of Miguel Osuna. Miguel continues to explore contemporary landscape imagery through an innovative breakthrough in material and application. These new works expertly examine space and movement. Miguel uses photo-realism as a starting point moving toward abstraction with committed, specific gestures completing this powerful imagery.

Concurrently, LAG introduces painter Sam Seawright to Los Angeles from New York City. Sam uses skillful techniques to create abstractions examining the beauty and complexity of flower and fauna. Precise, expressive brushwork combine form, color and manipulation of light to present sensory delights.

Please join us for the opening reception of these exceptional solo shows on Saturday, February 9th, 2008, 6 – 10 pm. Lawrence Asher Gallery is located at 5820 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and adjacent to the Craft and Folk Art Museum. Free parking is available on Wilshire Blvd. and behind 5858 Wilshire Boulevard. Enter on Stanley Ave. For more information, please call 323.935.9100

Miguel Osuna - A familiar vista, banal as it may seem on the surface, triggers a thought, a moment or perhaps a familiar feeling.

I use representational methods to springboard into various degrees of abstraction. Architectural, engineering, urban and natural references help me create environments familiar and sometimes forgotten. I carefully position these references according to their impact on the total effect in the painting.

The partial section of a bridge span in a painting creates a gravity conflict. How far are the supports from the edge of the painting? Are they even there... the viewer will resolve these questions drawing from his or her own experience. The cropped trunk of a tree implies a continuity that the viewer is responsible to implement. The photographic feel of the works intends to engage and "trick" the viewer. Once involved, they will hopefully resolve or propose answers to the different questions.

- M. Osuna, 2007

Born and raised in Mazatlán, Mexico, Miguel Osuna received a degree in Architecture from U.A.G. in Guadalajara, Mexico. He has presented numerous solo exhibitions throughout California and his native Mexico and participated in group shows in both the U.S. and Europe.

Recently his work was included in the exhibition "Salon Ibero-Americano - 21st Century Ibero-American Art", a survey of contemporary artists from Latin America, Spain and Portugal at the Katzen Arts Center of American University in Washington, DC. His paintings were also part of the 2005 exhibition "Espejos” (Mirrors), a survey of the work of contemporary Mexican artists living in the United States, presented by the InstitutoCultural de Mexico, in Washington DC.

In December, 2006, he presented his solo exhibition "Landscape" at the Mazatlán Museum of Art. Osuna's work has been noted and featured in art publications like ArtNews and Art LTD.

For 2008, Osuna has already scheduled a solo exhibition during February and March in Los Angeles, at Lawrence Asher Gallery. Also scheduled for 2008 are solo shows in Guadalajara, Mexico and a group show in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Miguel lives and works in downtown Los Angeles.

Sam Seawright - My paintings exist on the ever- shifting and ambiguous border between abstraction and representation. I paint intuitively. The finished painting is never easily resolved but reveals itself in layers over time. Through a series of intimate interactions and reflections, I attempt to make the idea of the painting and the paint inseparable. I believe in painting’s imaginative powers, its ability to be both paint and image and yet more than the combination of the two. Paint is liquid, sensual and unpredictable. My art is the result of my continual desire to draw near to the sensory aspect of the flowers and landscapes that speak so deeply to me.

Once I feel connected to a subject, I paint quickly and spontaneously using calligraphic marks, allowing my unconscious to guide my gestures, reacting to the moment and evaluating later. Out of this process arises a pictorial ambiguity where perception and metaphor are in tension. Flowers provide the ideal vessels for this exploration; they are loaded with centuries of historical, mythological and poetic references as well as scientific, medicinal and social uses. They tease us with their beauty and humble us with their complexity.

My sources are from the rural Georgia landscape of my youth, memories of my parents’ deep religious faith as well as their love of nature. I collect images to use as departure points for my work; these images also serve as anchors to the representational world and fuel for my internal dialog. These images include 19th century botanical etchings, seed catalogs from the 30’s, museum post cards as well as my own photographs.

I believe in the possibilities of achieving spiritual content through the compelling metaphors of flowers and landscape. Spirituality addresses the deepest part of what we cannot know. I see no contradiction in leaving questions unanswered in my art, faithfully recording what I see and feel without knowing what the image means. I strive to make my paintings speak of something singular, easy to understand yet enigmatic.

Sam Seawright was born in Toccoa, Georgia, in 1959. He received his BFA from the University of Georgia in 1982 and his MFA from the University of Texas in 1986.

He has since participated in numerous exhibitions in New York and Georgia. Sam lives with his wife Tara in Manhattan.