FROM COMIC BOOKS TO FRUIT CANNING: ARTISTS DRAW UPON DIVERSE INFLUENCES IN NEW EXHIBITIONS AT LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
(Los Angeles, California – May 12, 2015) Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), in partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, announces two new group art exhibitions at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) titled On the Cusp and Art About the Environment. On the Cusp, guest curated by John David O’Brien, features over 180 artworks that use contemporary painting and drawing practices to reinterpret influences ranging from popular design to comic book culture to illustration. The exhibition is on view for ticketed passengers in the Departures Level Connector between Terminal 7 and 8, through July 2015. Art About the Environment, an exhibition guest curated by Jay Belloli, features artworks that reveal insights and concerns about our natural environment, and is on view for the public in Terminal 3, Arrivals Level, through August 2015.
On the Cusp features ten Los Angeles-based artists working with a mixture of painting, drawing, and digital media, while exploring areas of hybridization within the genres of figuration and abstraction. These areas of hybridization include artworks that fall on the cusp between the “high” art of modernism and “low” culture of cartoons or other mass-media sources, or modeled after folk or traditional culture such as tarot playing cards. The exhibition includes works that are humorous, mysterious, and sly, taking advantage of the overlap and even contradictions among these stylistic approaches. From D. Dominick Lombardi’s thick black line drawings of post-apocalyptic tattoo heads to Dan Goodsell’s hand-painted comic-strip depictions of the lighthearted antics of Mr. Toast and his cast of friends, as guest curator John David O’Brien suggests, “This exhibition reminds us to be open-ended about how art is created.” Artists represented include Edith Beaucage, Dan Goodsell, Mark Steven Greenfield, Moira Hahn, D. Dominick Lombardi, Lars Nielsen, Aaron Noble, Arthur Taussig, Mark Dean Veca, and Esther Pearl Watson.
Art About the Environment features installation, mixed-media paintings, drawings, photography, collage, and hand-cut paper sculptures that convey a combination of optimism and melancholy over our relationship with nature. Early and influential pioneers in the field of environmental art, the work of Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison is featured along with eight Southern California artists who are also concerned with environmental issues in their work. The Harrison’s ecological proposal examines the rise in water levels in the San Francisco Bay over the span of a century through text, drawing, and photography. From a different historical perspective, the art collective Fallen Fruit created a site-specific installation that traces the loss of fruit orchards and the canning industry through vividly hued narrative photographs. Artists represented in this exhibition are Kim Abeles, John Bache, Laurie Brown, Merion Estes, Fallen Fruit, the Harrisons, Sant Khalsa, Tao Urban, and Pat Warner.
About Los Angeles World Airports Art Program
Initiated in 1990, the purpose of the LAWA Art Program is to provide opportunities for educational, entertaining, and enriching cultural experiences for the traveling public at LAX and LA/Ontario International Airports and the LAX FlyAway® bus terminal. The program showcases local and regional artists through temporary exhibitions and permanent public art installations, which enhance and humanize the overall travel experience for millions every year. For additional information, please visitwww.lawa.org.
About Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
LAX is the fifth busiest airport in the world and second in the United States. LAX served nearly 70.7 million passengers in 2014. LAX offers 692 daily nonstop flights to 85 cities in the U.S. and 928 weekly nonstop flights to 67 cities in 34 countries on 59 commercial air carriers. LAX ranks 14th in the world and fifth in the U.S. in air cargo tonnage processed, with over two million tons of air cargo valued at over $91.6 billion. An economic study in 2011 reported that operations at LAX generated 294,400 jobs in Los Angeles County with labor income of $13.6 billion and economic output of more than $39.7 billion. This activity added $2.5 billion to local and state revenues. 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.
As a covered entity under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the City of Los Angeles does not discriminate on the basis of disability and, upon request, will provide reasonable accommodation to ensure equal access to its programs, services, and activities. Alternative formats in large print, braille, audio, and other forms (if possible) will be provided upon request.
