March08

elow, e-sicle

Bryan Ricci - Dogtown

Lawrence Asher Gallery is proud to present its first solo exhibition of Los Angeles painter Bryan Ricci. Bryan pays homage to the natural world and its wild creatures. He embraces a contemporary context as blurred color photographs provide the background to extremely detailed, pixilated paint-drop renderings of animals indigenous to Southern California.

elow (Israel Gutierrez) brings his urban, multi-cultural wonderland to Lawrence Asher for the third presentation of his paintings, mixed media creations and toys. Elow’s latest creations are the product of the completion of his first year at Art Center College of Design as an undergraduate and his twenty-something years growing up in East Los Angeles and Mid-City.

Please join us for the opening reception of these exceptional solo shows on Saturday, March 15th, 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. Parking is available on Wilshire Blvd. and behind 5858 Wilshire Boulevard. Enter on Stanley Ave. For more information, please call 323.935.9100

elow - My work is inspired by the various representations of regular urban life, such as toys, wallpaper, Graffiti, recycled paper, wrappings, and the sometimes forgotten urban art. The center of my work contains the radiance of popular culture that evokes meaningful pieces in time and space of my life as an artist. Using ideas, characters, and history as a concrete departure, the excitement of the unknown provokes the imagination to take my work to a final destination unveiling images never seen or imagined at the beginning of such work. The way I see life unfolding before my eyes is not any more shocking or inspiring than the way others perceive it. This is one of my reasons for using not only regular “art supplies” but also mundane materials such as carton boxes, fast food paper bags, shoe boxes, etc. The life and waste of today’s society turned into pieces of art. Childhood memoirs are also projected in my artwork. The reminiscence of a happy and gracious, but also ferocious and dangerous, childhood is also present in the form of a psychological therapy disguise. The disguise? An artwork. ~ elow

elow is an LA-based artist who grew up in East Los Angeles and since his youth has been attracted to the textured landscapes of his surroundings. He uses creative influences from street art, toys, typeface, and pop-culture to find his own style and techniques.

Since the age of nine, he has been fascinated with alternative styles of art that have helped him create a signature body of work. He incorporates nostalgic images from the past that add a sense of space and depth to the meaning of his work. A wide variety of materials has been used in his work, ranging from watercolors to digital printing, passing through Xerox copiers, plywood, paint-markers, and silkscreen. It is the layering and juxtaposition of old and new that ultimately give depth and meaning to his artwork.

Bryan Ricci - In my paintings, the worlds surrounding the spotlights display various images from the natural world. These are rendered as a blurred scene or as abstract, simplified shapes, tones, and patterns, as one might view them through perceptions shaped and altered by a technological society in which nature has become virtually obsolete. These abstracted, altered visions of our world are how I imagine we acknowledge, or fail to acknowledge, the natural world. We see only a version of what exists, a landscape glanced through a car window while speeding past or surveyed through weary, indifferent eyes.

The animals that exist within these scenes are spotlighted, emerging from their natural environments as if viewed through a magnifying glass and revealed in obsessive detail with a pixel-like digital quality. This creates an aesthetic visual contrast between lucidity and ambiguity, invoking a curiosity and inviting the viewer into the painting. Brought forth with such clarity and vibrancy, the creatures are now impossible to overlook.

I hope to bring to light the ever-increasing disparities between the limitedness of what we allow ourselves to see and the enormity and timelessness of the world that goes unnoticed. My paintings serve as a reminder of human ignorance and neglect, an invitation to look deeper, and a challenge to question and examine one’s own perceptions. ~ Byran A. Ricci

Bryan graduated from Purchase College School of Art and Design, SUNY in 2000 and has been consistently exhibiting locally since 2002. He works and lives with his wife in West Los Angeles.