SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S BOTANICAL LIFE INSPIRES NEW ART EXHIBITS AT LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
(Los Angeles, California – August 10, 2012) Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), in partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, announces two exhibitions at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), featuring works by Southern California artists exploring the vast subject of nature. Observing Naturepresents Fatemeh Burnes’ mixed-media paintings and Lawrence T. Yun’s watercolors of still life floral arrangements. Through their individual artistic practices, the artists investigate and observe natural and synthetic phenomena. Le Petit Jardin is a group exhibition featuring artworks by painters and photographers inspired by Southern California’s diverse botanical life. Both located in Terminal 1, Observing Nature is on view for the general public in Baggage Claim through January 2013, and Le Petit Jardin is on view for ticketed passengers at Gate 1 through October 2012.
In Observing Nature, Scott Canty, Curator and Director of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, pairs artworks by Burnes and Yun that study, interpret, and highlight different aspects of the natural world. Burnes’ artworks are created using various materials and processes, from painting to carving directly on the surface.
“The science of art making fascinates me,” states Burnes. “I make art not just to produce objects, but to explore phenomena, whenever they occur in the world or in my dreams.”
Yun’s latest watercolor series, titled Hybrid Romance, focuses on the presence of manipulation and manufacturing within plant nursery culture as evidence of artificial and natural hybridizations between man and earth. In contemporary times, watercolor flower painting as a choice of fine art subject matter is often stigmatized, and might even seem cliché. Yun, aware of art historical precedents, departs from the tradition with a modern interpretation.
Guest curator Ginger Van Hook brings together 37 artworks by 27 artists in Le Petit Jardin. From a painting of an impossibly lush lawn, to photographs of a single flower, the featured artists show how nature plays a pivotal role in the landscape of the Los Angeles basin. Within the vast urban topography of Los Angeles, the artists trained their cameras and canvases on specialty themed gardens, vivid desert wildflowers, community gardens bursting with bounty, and delicate representations of the region’s multiple microclimates.
About Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
LAX is the sixth busiest airport in the world and third in the United States, offering more than 600 daily flights to 91 domestic cities and more than 1,000 weekly nonstop flights to 56 cities in 32 countries on nearly 75 air carriers. It ranks 13th in the world in air cargo tonnage processed. In 2011, LAX served more than 61 million passengers, processed over 1.8 million tons of air cargo valued at nearly $80 billion, and handled 603,912 aircraft operations (landings and takeoffs). LAX is part of a system of three Southern California airports – along with LA/Ontario International and Van Nuys general aviation – that are owned and operated by Los Angeles World Airports, a proprietary department of the City of Los Angeles that receives no funding from the City’s general fund.
