ed. note: I was much smitten by a visit to gallerist Edward Cella’s paired exhibition for two fine artists, Chris Trueman, a longtime practitioner based in northern California, and Jennifer Bannert, a younger, Germany-based artist whom Cella had in residence at his bright new digs on La Brea Avenue along a commercial business section of Inglewood. Both shows reflect — literally — a world in which new media gives new definition to a canvas’s flat surface (Trueman) and a world in which nature is no longer a passive object but has been activated in ways that counter our very survival. All of this turmoil rendered with disturbing beauty. A visit is recommended.
CHRIS TRUEMAN: Certain Intangibility
Chris Trueman’s distinct approach to abstract painting dematerialize upon closer viewing with flat surfaces that suggest the reverse illumination of electronic screens. This mercurial combination speaks to the artist’s agenda to remake abstraction reevaluating its historical focus on the physical presence of the materials on painting’s surface against the realities of our daily engagement with digital tools and devices which have fundamentally altered our relationships with images, visual perception, and the role of the artist in production of objects and culture.
JENNIFER BANNERT: Elements
Introducing the work of German artist Jennifer Bannert in an exhibition entitled Elements. Installed in the raw studio space at the Himalaya Club she has occupied in a three-month residency in Los Angeles, the exhibition offers an introduction to her artistic practice that spans mediums and materials and centers around the relationships of humanity and nature. Within the context of the immense shift from nature being a stable backdrop for human history to one where nature intervenes in human history itself; Bannert’s work incorporates technological materials like aluminum and digital photographic processes along with paintings made traditionally and drawn from German and English landscapes from the Romantic period. Hewing towards alternative representations of nature, in Bannert’s words, “My work confronts the notion of the sublime in art. As a contemporary artist, how can I depict nature when it threatens humankind with a new overwhelming force?”
Chris Trueman, SNDN, 2023
Acrylic and acrylic spray paint on yupo mounted to sintra with custom artist’s frame
52 1/2 x 60 in
133.3 x 152.4 cm
Jennifer Bannert, Flood, 2023
Oil on aluminum with aluminum straine
63 x 47 1/4 in
160 x 120 cm
Chris Trueman and Jennifer Bannert | Edward Cella Art & Architecture @ Himalaya Club | on now