September 6 through September 27, 2014
3 Year Anniversary Group Show
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 13, 7-10PM
Back in 2012, “SPACELAND,” Bermudez Projects’ first group show to be presented in its Downtown Los Angeles aerie, celebrated the vibrant, beautiful LA of today. Now, two-years later, “SPACELAND II” looks to the city’s dystopian future, when the dire predictions come true.
“SPACELAND II” features over 25 artworks from 12 artists working in various media, such as paintings, prints, photography, mixed-media, illustration, sculpture, and video. Artists include Amanda Beckmann, Kevin Cheng, Emmanuel Crespo, Gordon Henderson, Dave O. Johnson, Andrew Lyon, Cody Norris, Atsumi Okano, John S. Rabe, Erynn Richardson, Kellan Shanahan, and Johnny Taylor.
Although each artist interpreted the exhibit’s theme in his or her own way, the overwhelming consensus was to produce works of art with a darker color palette and void of any sense of optimism.
Immediately upon entering the gallery, you find yourself faced with the horrific beauty of a burning forest – courtesy of Cody Norris – and deer heads, along with cast deer antlers strewn across the floor, created by Erynn Richardson. Norris’s large-scale painting presents fallen trees and a dark, almost-blood-red-filled sky with smoke and ash. The painting’s surface itself has been literally charred via blowtorch, adding a sense of realism.
Richardson’s deer antlers, cast from paraffin and soy wax, speak to the end of nature, while the illustrated deer heads reference mankind’s continued desire to boast of its perceived conquering of all things natural.
Urban Futurescapes by Johnny Taylor and Andrew Lyon present the post-apocalyptic viewpoint of the city. Taylor’s painting of oil and wax on wood resembles a Blade Runner-like landscape: hard, gritty, and scarred by acid rain, air pollution and overpopulation. Andrew Lyon’s “Citadel” series presents a pair of archival photographic postcards – which come either as a warning or as a memento – depicting a black and white image of downtown enveloped within a gold leaf barrier.
John S. Rabe’s installation, “The King of the World,” takes its name from the early Steely Dan song of the same name, about a ham radio operator calling into the void after the nuclear apocalypse: “Any man left on the Rio Grande/Is the king of the world/As far as I know.”
The centerpiece of this installation is Rabe’s 8 x 11 foot photographic multimedia mural of Surfridge, the abandoned suburban neighborhood bordering LAX. Pockmarked streets wind through home lots, their houses razed, with the occasional palm tree standing sentinel over the desolation. Embedded in the mural – which is possibly one of the largest blowup images ever made of an iPhone photo – are two of Rabe’s signature psychedelic realism prints of LA scenes that foreshadow the city’s post-Apocalyptic future. The installation includes two videos, one of a burned Vogel Flats home, and another melding Rabe’s footage of gritty LA with historic nuclear tests.
To the side of the mural Rabe includes the survivalist’s main tool: a hyper-real image of an AK-47 in a weathered gun cabinet.
The demise of civilization as we know it has also been interpreted by Emmanuel Crepo’s poetic and fitting painting, “Horizon.” Presenting a businessman with his back facing us, a large goldfish lies in the foreground gasping for life, unable to survive.
Dave O. Johnson’s neon and cast cement sculptures – perhaps the only seemingly optimistic artworks throughout the show – offer a glimpse of life after the Apocalypse as futuristic “saplings” sprout from the rubble, glowing as to indicate their existence and evolution.
“SPACELAND II” isn’t just about LA’s dark, alternate future. It’s about presenting this city’s vast and faceted personality, which for many Angeleno’s is what makes this city so amazing. Despite its obstacles, including freeway traffic, continued congestion, and harsh landscape – now exacerbated by the current drought – Los Angeles is place millions call home. It is a city that is not just about Hollywood and film or beaches and sunshine. Los Angeles has always had a dark side. And, sometimes she just needs to be let out to be seen.
SPACELAND | SPACELAND II | SPACELAND III | SPACELAND IV | SPACELAND V | SPACELAND Biennial