____

(paradise) . January 25 – March 1, 2025. Sohyong Lee, Rudik Ovsepyan, Danica Ribi, santoni kina, Keywan Tafteh, Tiago Da Cruz. Group exhibition.

4478 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016.

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 25, 6pm - 9pm.

_ _

_____________________________________

|

Sohyong Lee (b. Chun Cheon, Korea) is a multidisciplinary artist who primarily works with sculpture, video, and installation. She received an MFA in Art-Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in Sculpture from the College of Art & Design, EWHA Womans University. Sohyong has shown her work at Cevera Yoon Gallery(CA), UTA Artist Space LA (CA), The Reef (CA), EWHA Art Gallery (Seoul, KR), Gallery Well (Seoul, KR), GyeomJae JeongSeon Art Museum (Seoul, KR), UM Gallery (Seoul, KR),  Yihyung Art Center (Seoul, KR), Kosa Space Gallery (Seoul, KR). Her work has been featured in Voyage LA Local Stories. She works and lives in Los Angeles, California.

_

As a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture and installation, I explore the visualization of subtle, momentary nature of the mundane, or in other words the daily instances that elude our habitual and linguistic perceptions. My work illuminates volatile ideas that hover at the edge of consciousness within the complexity of an ever-changing world, engaging in a contemplative examination of ungraspable senses we often overlook in daily experience.

By sustaining attention to the seemingly mundane things, each observation, however small they may be, becomes a catalyst for a deeper exploration. – An unexpected contrast, a trace of thoughts that reside in fleeting moments and how those nuances are transcribed through our mind. – Those inquiries are translated into a visual vocabulary through various techniques and modalities including molding, casting, crafting, integration of found objects, video, projection, and interactive coding. Through creating analogical relationships, I create intersections that initiate unfamiliar dialogue with the familiar, where fleeting moments find their visual voice in minimal, poetic forms that suggest rather than a declaration. Through this contemplative approach, I seek a pathway to revisit the fleeting nature of perception itself, reflecting on the significance of the profound impact of unnoticed facets of life, and guiding us toward an unexpected territory of insight, a renewed relationship with the ordinary.

|

Born in 1949 in Leninakan, Armenia, Rudik Ovsepyan became a member of the Artists’ Union of the USSR (CCCP) in 1982, eventually being banned for his refusal to paint in the propagandistic style of “social(ist) realism” (while continuing to produce and show abstract works). From 1966-1969, he attended Terlemesyan Fine Art College in Armenia. In 1974, graduated from the prestigious state State Academy of Theatre and Fine Arts in Yerevan. Facing the widespread destruction of the 1988 Spitak earthquake, as well the evolving political turmoil surrounding his abstract painting, Ovsepyan and his family moved (by boat) to Germany in 1990, where he became a member of the Fine Art Association of Germany (in 1994). There, several solo and group presentations of his work occurred in gallery, state, and museum exhibitions. In 2000, a major exhibition of Ovsepyan’s abstract works with oil and paper produced between 1996-1999 was presented by the German ministry of Education, Science, Research and Culture of Schleswig-Holstein (presented in Kiel). Later that year, Ovsepyan immigrated to the United States and began working on new bodies of work, including Labyrinth, Magaxat, and Zaun, while also beginning to produce mixed-media sculptures.

Ovsepyan’s works are included in public and private collections in Russia, Europe, Israel, Canada, and the United States, including: UNESCO, Geneva, Switzerland; Pushkin Museum, Moscow; Museum of Modern Art, Armenia, Yerevan; Museum of Modern Art, Georgia, Tblisi; Sparkasse Schleswig-Holstein, Germany; Sparkasse, Muenster, Germany; Provincial Versicherung; Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, Kiel, Germany.

|

Danica is an interdisciplinary artist. Their recent sculptural works investigate identity and autonomy through examining dissociative spaces—moments where constructs of selfhood dissolve – and we are offered a chance to recompose. But what kind of being will emerge when left to survive in the space between presence and absence? They combine material works with found objects, detaching them from their conventional purposes and reimagining their modes of operation.Danica’s recent work with performance has given them a critical outlet to recontextualize themself within their Basque heritage. Using voice and movement as mediums of resistance against hegemonic pressures. Danica is receiving their BFA at Otis College of Art and Design with an emphasis in Sculpture and New Genres. They are from Burlingame, California and is currently based in Los Angeles, California.

|

santoni kina is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Kenya, living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Their work records the body as a site for investigation, where themes around identity and intimacy can be explored. Producing through a range of mediums and methods , santoni works to understand their community, positionality and consequent experience.

They are currently pursuing their BFA at Otis College of Art and Design and attended Yale Norfolk School of Art 2024.

|

Keywan Tafteh, a Russian/Iranian/American artist, refuses to limit himself to a single medium. Using a combination of drawing, painting, collage, photography, video, computing, sculpture, and sound, Tafteh blurs the confines of genre to create sensory and emotional work.

Born in Austria and denied citizenship due to his parents’ refugee status, Tafteh immigrated to the United States as an infant. To this day a complicated cultural identity and questions of origin are foremost in his mind.

His creative process is informed by multiple painful and joyous themes: geographic and cultural displacement, the addiction of a loved one, otherness, technological innovation and the sheer joy of observation. Ancient Persian and Russian folk art resonate with his heritage and are of particular interest to Tafteh. This interest is complicated by the transformation of these formerly tolerant societies to institutionalized homophobia. His work explores this societal shift. In short, he creates art that serves as a coping mechanism while celebrating life.

Tafteh studied at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, and at the ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, California. He is currently enrolled at the University of California San Diego, where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Arts, with a minor in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts.

In addition to his studies, Tafteh taught introductory robotics workshops during the summer of 2019— both at Southwestern College, Chula Vista, California, and at San Diego State University, San Diego, California. During the pandemic, he taught a introductory JavaScript/HTML course at UC Riverside. These workshops were through Upward Bound, a program offering low-income high school students the chance to study at major universities.

|

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Tiago Da Cruz is a visual artist making work in and around the mediums of both Drawing and Photography. Tiago is working with making enlargements on gelatin silver paper that undergo iterative cycles of inversion. He is interested in working within the medium of photography through fading of images in the process of solar and lunar exposures on light sensitive paper.

He often uses expired and found materials, collapses time through prolonged exposures, records memory, and refuses use of “new material,” essential for his processes of queering and breaking down photographs. In 2022, Tiago received their BFA in Photography from California College of the Arts. He was selected as one of the exhibiting artists of the 2024 Forecast exhibition at SF Camerawork. Tiago currently is based in Los Angeles, California where he lives and works. 

_

Through my process of fading images, I reflect on the instability and temporality of traditional photographic image making. I am concerned with expiration; expired material collapses time into a sheet of photo paper. I expose expired light sensitive gelatin silver paper for prolonged periods of time to the light from the sun and moon over the course of hours, days, and weeks. By embracing the natural decay and transformation of images over time, my work invites viewers to reconsider the temporal nature of all things, including artistic expression. Integrating fragments from my images into books and onto gelatin silver photographs, I incorporate physical pieces like test strips from my darkroom process.

My practice  merges memory, abstraction, and time through distortions of analog photographic processes. My way of working with traditional processes is expressed in non-traditional notions of permanence in art-making by manipulating images through iterative exposures to natural light on expired materials. I question the stability of a photograph by tracking and exhibiting its transformation. I use my darkroom-printed photographs as paper negatives and positives, exposing them with a new sheet of expired light sensitive paper. This results in a monochromatic image softened by the dislocation of visual clarity. All of my photographic works are able to be used as paper negatives or positives and can be viewed as part of my process or included as finished works. As each iteration unfolds, traces of the original images dissolve into soft fading photographs, shifting to less recognizable forms.

___________________________________

_______________________________________________