Coagula Curatorial is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by West Coast artist Christian Spruell.

The show’s title, H Y D R I A, is derived from the Greek word for water (Water Jars). His upcoming exhibition will feature new paintings that contain the artists’ oeuvre, rooted in the Low Cool and Mission School aesthetics, circa 90’s San Francisco.

The goal of the exhibit is to replenish and to jolt life back into the viewer through electric underpainting, meticulous grids, Cross-hatching, and silhouettes using ink, acrylic, oil on canvas, wood, and paper.

The exhibition is curated by Maurizzio Hector Pineda and continues thru August 24.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Christian Spruell has exhibited Nationally notable exhibition in New York, Denver, and Los Angeles. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute and is an Alumni of the Skowhegan artist residency program. He currently lives and works in Southern California 

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Maurizzio Hector Pineda is a curator from EL Salvador who currently lives and works in Santa Ana, California. His most recent curatorial post was at the Torrance Art Museum. During his tenure at the museum, he co-curated The Gildless Age, 2016, and developed the 2017 SUR: Biennial with a focus on Cuban contemporary art for the TAM. This project was part of the Getty PST: LA/LA initiative. Mr. Pineda received his BFA degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2000. From 2001-2005 he was the owner and director of SWYS Gallery in Long Beach, CA, and has worked at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and for Regen Project in Beverly Hills. He has curated exhibitions for Togonon Gallery in San Francisco, was a visiting curator at The Tree House Gallery in Los Angeles, curator in residence at the NLE Curatorial Lab where he co-curated The Only Way Out Is Through (NYC) in 2014, and Curatorial Director at The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art in San Francisco from 2009-2012.

SHEREE ROSE
100 REASONS

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, APRIL 26

TIME: 7 – 11PM

Coagula Curatorial present One Hundred Reasons, artist Sheree Rose’s debut exhibition of her complete photographic series of one hundred spanked asses from the underground SM scene of the 1980s and 1990s. The series was shot by Rose and each photo was titled by the late Mike Kelley. The gallery will hold an opening reception on Saturday, April 26 from 7-11pm at their location at 974 Chung King Road, in the historic Chinatown district of Downtown Los Angeles. There will also be a one-time special performance at the reception with a surprise guest.

Beauty is pain and pain is beauty in the world of sadomasochism, a compelling paradox that pervades this group of photographs. The sheer mass of images bestows the body of work with a collective power, chronicling the aftermath of the pain willingly inflicted and endured within a dominant-submissive partnership. Individually, each serves as an intensely corporeal and intimate portrait of an anonymous subject, the bruises and lacerations like gestural marks and paint strokes on a canvas. These could be your friends, your family, your boss or your neighbor.

Rose was introduced to SM after meeting her collaborator in love and art, Bob Flanagan, in 1980. Re-examining herself after the end of a conventional first marriage, she connected with the thrill and community of fringe culture. Always interested in sexuality, gender and the movements they gave rise to, Rose found a new forum to freely explore these ideas. Photography became increasingly important to her as a means of blurring the boundaries between the private and public spheres and to convey the erotic experience as a multi-faceted part of the human condition. Because of her personal involvement, Rose had access to these clandestine clubs in Los Angeles that much of the population otherwise would not get a glimpse into. In this way her work is not voyeuristic, but rather an aware and artful signifier of abject experience.

The namesake of the series comes from a poem written by good friend and fellow artist, Mike Kelley, entitled “One Hundred Reason” from his book Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile. At a ten-year anniversary celebration for Rose and Flanagan, Kelley recited reasons numbered one to one hundred — each conceived, humorous names for paddles — while Rose simultaneously spanked Flanagan. This developed into a landmark video iteration.

Rose currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MA in Studio Art from The University of California, Irvine. Her solo work as well as that with Bob Flanagan has been exhibited in renowned institutions worldwide, including LACMA, the Tate in Liverpool, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, The New Museum and P.S.1 in New York, The Musee d’arte Moderne et Contemporain in Geneva and the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, among others.

MATJAMES METSON
A BETTER HOME FOR A QUIET WOLF

OPENING RECEPTION:

SATURDAY, MARCH 15 | 7 – 11 PM

Coagula Curatorial presents A Better Home for a Quiet Wolf, an exhibition of new work by acclaimed assemblage artist Matjames Metson. The gallery will hold an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, March 15 from 7-11pm at their location at 974 Chung King Road, in the historic Chinatown district of Downtown Los Angeles.

After a successful solo show at Coagula Curatorial in August 2012, Metson delves deeper into his affinity for discarded mementos/bric-a-bracs and on a larger collective scale than ever before. His intricate, labor-intensive application of layers and textures masterfully breathes life back into once forgotten objects. Despite being dislocated from their original context, photographs, matches, love letters, newspaper clippings, and other forms of utilitarian and personal effects are seemingly fated to meet, like a beautiful family tree of strangers. Their architectural presence, inspired in-part by sacred geometry and barn hexes, provides a literal and emblematic framework for these time capsules of frozen Americana.

The LA Times calls his work “intricate and ornate, filled with niches and doors and odd details, every surface worked over with care. It flirts with many of the traditional tropes of assemblage…it is the care that most distinguishes the work today: the sincerity, even tenderness, with which he treats his materials…(they) come with stories of their own, which he weaves into eloquent, finely wrought, 3-D compositions, no inch of which has gone bare or unconsidered..”

His aesthetic inclinations for assemblage began during his youth in the half-desolate town of Charlottesville in Upstate New York, and later found his way into the lively city of New Orleans, and then migrated out west to Los Angeles after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which was a cornerstone event in Metson’s life. With loss, Metson rebuilt. “While staying in the tradition of great assemblage artists like George Herms and Robert Rauschenberg, Metson has created something fresh, with survival as the key concept.” (Joseph Lapin, LA WEEKLY)

A Better Home For A Quiet Wolf is the latest chapter of Metson’s studio practice.

Metson currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively which include shows at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Coagula Curatorial, and the Miami Project Art Fair, and will be a part of a four-person group show at the UCLA’s Fowler Museum later this year. A Better Home for a Quiet Wolf is Metson’s second solo show at Coagula Curatorial and runs from March 15 thru April 12.

ALYSON SOUZA

THE SPEED OF DARK

OPENING RECEPTION:

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1

7PM – 11PM

The speed of dark can accurately be said to be extremely fast, as fast as the speed of light. As quickly as the light appears, the dark disappears and vice versa. One could also say that the dark has no speed at all. It is always there. It is simply visually imperceptible in the presence of light, so the speed of dark is both extremely fast and completely stationary at the same time.

In the past my work was narrative. I used, people, animals, text objects and patterns, often all in the same piece. For this show, I concentrated on patterns in nature and in manmade objects. I used them not to tell a story, but to parallel and contrast. Much of the work in this show is about perception and the ability of an object, or a situation, to truthfully be two very different things simultaneously.

The installation piece is about the necessity to house polar opposites within one’s self. Much of life is spent coping with problems of too much and too little. Rarely are we given ideal quantities of the things we need or desire. Sometimes the only way to achieve a facsimile of balance is to alter our perception. Some strange peace can also be found in the recognition that there is no true balance in life. Some amount of chaos is integral, sometimes beautiful and possibly intentional.

-Alyson Souza

SHOW RUNS THRU FEB 22

CLICK HERE TO VIEW AVAILABLE WORK

TWO JOHNS AND A WHORE

Group Show Curated By Lisa Derrick

Coagula Curatorial presents Two Johns and a Whore, featuring artists John Fleck and John Roecker, two notoriously controversial and confrontational media artists, coupled with a group show by twelve artists exploring the literal, symbolic and allegorical nature of prostitution.

Curated by Lisa Derrick, this exhibit is a direct and unapologetic exploration of art, love, sex, and commerce.

Award-winning performance artist John Fleck pushes cultural buttons and tackles taboos with his self-scripted shows. In 1990 he and three other performance artists became known as the NEA Four. Lynchpins of the Culture Wars, they were denied funding by the National Endowment for the Arts because of right wing political pressure.

Fleck has won four LA Critics Circle Awards, eight DramaLogue, seven LA Weekly and two Backstage West awards, all for outstanding performance, and appeared in numerous films and television series, most recently True Blood.

Fleck’s first foray into studio art, like his performance art, conversely reveals both his interior workings and the transgressive humor he uses to layer and shield his vulnerabilities, while utilizing cultural references and his own body in mixed media expressions to further enhance the viewer’s experience.

Filmmaker and cultural deconstructionist John Roecker spent the majority of his childhood locked in his bedroom escaping reality, drawing pictures and dreaming of making films and music. He eventually grew up and made films and music. He still draws pictures to escape reality, and the results are on display for the first time at Coagula.

Roecker’s documentary series, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gay Porn Stars was banned by Amazon until media and activist pressure caused the sales giant to cave.

Svengali, Roecker’s neo-noir webseries, crossed gender and cultural boundaries, while his first feature length film, Live Freaky Die Freaky, managed to offend liberals and rightwingers alike while disturbing even hardened horror genre critics such as FanGoria Magazine.

His feature length documentary about Green Day, Heart Like a Hand Grenade will be released in 2014.

These two artists are joined in their first ever gallery show by a group of artists who respect and admire Fleck and Roecker’s works and outlaw, creative spirits.

Within the theme of prostitution, the concepts of sex, love, art money and “selling” oneself are laid bare.

Artists in the group show include: Anthony Ausgang, Kelly Blunt, Sheila Cameron, Jane Cantillon, Stacy Lande, Louie Metz, Rafael Reyes, Bradford J Salamon, Oriana Small (aka Ashley Blue), Mike Street, Kelly Thompson, and Mimi Universe.

The exhibition runs January 11, 2014 to January 25th.

Coagula Curatorial is open Wednesday Thru Sunday, Noon – 5 PM. Located at historic Ling’s Market in Downtown L.A.’s Chinatown the gallery is a leading contemporary art gallery founded in 2012 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Coagula Art Journal.

KIM DINGLE

WINE BAR FOR CHILDREN

OCTOBER 26, 2013 – JANUARY 4, 2014

Los Angeles contemporary artist, Kim Dingle, will show her first art installation in Los Angeles since 1997 and will merge her restaurant and studio practice by curating a Boutique Wine and Craft Beer shop at Coagula Curatorial art gallery in Chinatown’s historic Ling’s Market (974 Chung King Road, Chinatown, Los Angeles, 90012).

On view will be three cases (36 bottles of Verdicchio) of new paintings and a masterwork from Dingle’s “Studies for the Last Supper at Fatty’s” – an ongoing series widely exhibited since 2006. The installation reflects Dingle’s recent experiences running a full-fledged dining establishment and features her frocked naughty girls now suddenly consumed by the urgency, drama and brutal stress of Fine Dining.

Dingle has been exploring the subversive edges of female childhood and myths of nationhood and history in lush paintings and startling sculptures for over three decades. Also on view will be a greatly enhanced selection of truly outstanding artisan wines for Mister Ling’s Market. The artist took a hiatus from exhibiting art beginning in 2000 to open a vegetarian restaurant with Chef Aude Charles in Los Angeles called Fatty’s, which they decided to close this September. This is her first solo show in Los Angeles since 2007.

Dingle’s work has been exhibited extensively. She has had many solo exhibitions and wasselected for the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Dingle’s works are included in the collections of MOCA Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego, The San Francisco Museum of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Peter Norton Family Foundation, among others.

KIM DINGLE – AVAILABLE WORK

PRESS RELEASE

CLICK HERE TO READ L.A. TIMES REVIEW OF THE SHOW

Coagula Curatorial Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of our new Chinatown Space at 974 Chung King Road — a few steps down the road from our original location. We are open now with TRANSFER an exhibition of new paintings by MARK DUTCHER.

Dutcher is a longtime L.A.-based artist whose imperfect paintings reflect a worldview and studio practice which privilege the flawed compositions of organic process. “Process Art” deals with solving a set proscription of gestures and composition; Dutcher’s process revels in intuition and an anti-perfection aesthetic. His works leave him in a much different pictorial place then when he begins. As he told the LA TIMES in an interview in November, “I’m very interested in work where I can see the narrative of the artist in the studio… you feel like you’re with the artist as the work is being made. You can see the progression from painting to painting, outside the context of the art world and sales. There’s this intimacy between the artist, the work and the viewer. I think that’s why I like to leave clues in the work, like fingerprints and flaws, so the viewer can feel the making of the work too.”

TRANSFER features eleven new works, never before exhibited. TRANSFER runs thru Saturday, October 19, 2013.

Coagula Curatorial is open Wednesday thru Saturday, Noon – 5 PM and by appointment.

Coagula Curatorial is located at 974 Chung King Road in Downtown L.A.’s historic Chinatown. Chung King Road is in its fifteenth year of hosting contemporary art gallery exhibitions – making it the longest running gallery neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles.

CLICK HERE FOR AVAILABLE WORK

SUMMER GROUP SHOW

OPENING RECEPTION:

AUGUST 10

7PM – 11PM

FEATURED ARTISTS:

ABEL ALEJANDRE

SHANNON DURBIN

RICHARD EDSON

ERIC MINH-SWENSON

WILLIAM SOLOMON

DAVID TRULLI

CHRISTINE WEIR

TIM YOUD

SHOW RUNS THROUGH AUGUST 31

MATTHEW WEINBERG: PAINTED CASH

OPENING RECEPTION:

AUGUST 10

7PM – 11PM

Drawing on money is an act of social protest. My name is Matthew Weinberg and I have been drawing all my life. Growing up, I drew on almost all things before they got thrown away. It was disposable art.

The journey to drawing on currency seemed only logical. I am now going to give my art some value. I found myself doodling on $1’s and $5’s. Is it legal, is it vandalism, is it unpatriotic and after all that has been done to it, does it still have value? Whatever.

Paper currency represents our ability to hold value and consume. There is no more perfect prefabricated canvas to print on.

SHOW RUNS THRU AUGUST 31