Opening January 16: The Women of Women: The Female Form, curated by Yasmine Mohseni

The Women of Women: The Female Form
curated by Yasmine Mohseni
January 16, 2010 - February 20, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday January 16, 2010 from 6-8PM

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present The Women of Women: The Female Form, a group exhibition curated by Yasmine Mohseni. The multi-media exhibition examines women artists depicting the female form. In the history of art, the male gaze has traditionally determined how the female is portrayed. Male artists have long painted the female form for a male audience, therefore assuming control of how the woman is depicted. Contemporary female artists have broken the passive mold once associated with representations of women by seizing control of the gaze. These emerging artists focus on the portrayal of the female in a multitude of incarnations.

Kimberly Brooks previews a painting from her new portrait series, depicting celebrated fashion stylists in her signature saturated Hockney-inspired style. Susan Anderson spent over two years traveling the country to photograph child beauty pageant contestants in extravagant costumes and poses. The result is the portrayal of very young girls looking back at the viewer with a bold gaze one would expect to see from a mature woman. Alika Cooper approaches portraits as though they were landscapes. Her quick and instinctive hand is visible in her work, capturing emotion and narrative with just a few sparse lines.

Photographers Danielle Mourning and Roya Falahi turn the gaze onto themselves through self-portraiture. In her new series, Falahi intertwines her Iranian heritage with her love of American punk rock by photographing herself wearing a rousari, a traditional Iranian headscarf,that she has meticulously covered in silver studs. Falahi re-appropriates symbols traditionally associated with imposed submission and rebelliousness, respectively, and imbues them with new meaning, reflecting the artist’s complex and multicultural identity. Meanwhile, Mourning’s reflexive work looks more to poetry than prose. Her ethereal photographs revisit her early childhood in the Northern California, fulfilling her objective to imagine history as it once was and question how it is fixed within the present.

Yasmine Mohseni is a Los Angeles-based arts writer and independent curator. Her articles have been published in Beautiful/Decay, BlackBook, Canvas, ForYourArt.com, Newsweek, and Whitewall. She covers contemporary art and culture for magazines, with an emphasis on contemporary Middle Eastern art. Past curatorial projects include exhibitions at the Tarryn Teresa Gallery and POVevolving in Los Angeles.

Taylor De Cordoba at Aqua Art Miami - Wynwood

AQUA ART MIAMI - WYNWOOD 2009

KIMBERLY BROOKS
KYLE FIELD
CHARLENE LIU
CHRIS NATROP
CLAIRE OSWALT
JEANA SOHN
FROHAWK TWO FEATHERS

Taylor De Cordoba - Booth # 29

December 3 - 6, 2009.
42 NE 25th St.
Miami FL 33137 (at N Miami Ave)
Aqua Art Miami

If you are planning to attend the fair, please contact the gallery for a limited supply of complimentary passes.

Image Details: Kimberly Brooks, "The Stylist Project", Grace Coddington, Study, 2009, oil on linen, 16" x 12" ; Chris Natrop, Gleaming Without Us - Moss, 2008, ultrachrome print and machined cast acrylic, 23''x31''x1 1/8''

Opening November 7: Charlene Liu, If It Were A Slow Echo

Charlene Liu: If It Were A Slow Echo
November 7 – December 19, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday November 7, 6-8PM

Taylor De Cordoba is proud to present If It Were A Slow Echo, the gallery’s second exhibition of works on paper by Charlene Liu. The exhibition will run from November 7 – December 19, 2009 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, November 7th from 6 - 8PM.

In her new works on paper, Charlene Liu continues her interest in the natural landscape, abstracting directly from overlooked and diminutive moments of growth and decay. Many of the works allude to the vanitas of Dutch and Renaissance still-life paintings. The show’s title, If It Were a Slow Echo, recalls the transitory moments of sensory experience and the repetition of motifs that slowly weaves together patterns, lines, and color to the brink of chaotic excess. Combining collaged prints and traditional painting techniques, Liu layers, stains, and composes her paintings; interminably dissolving the transition between figure and ground. It’s an unpredictable and slow reveal with the effect of a quiet, amnesiac sense of disorientation.

In this way Liu’s work rocks back and forth between stasis and activity, order and entropy, becoming and receding. Her color palette operates similarly; in several works on paper, a subdued pastel palette resembles the color of an injury – a bruise or an infection, more than the onslaught of spring. Polka dotted hole punches appear as barnacles or parasites, traversing the picture plane at an exponential rate, bubbling and swelling in tandem with twisted brambles.

Born in Taiwan in 1975, Liu earned her MFA at Columbia University in 2003. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art in Cleveland (2008), Taylor De Cordoba in Los Angeles (2007 and 2009), Virgil de Voldère in New York (2006), and Andrea Rosen Gallery, also in New York (2003). Liu is an assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, Eugene.

Charlene Liu: If It Were A Slow Echo

Cinch, 2009
mixed media on paper, 48''x34''

Cloud Fruit, 2009
mixed media on paper, 30''x30''

Viridian, 2009
mixed media on paper, 15''x11''

Bruise, 2009
mixed media on paper, 48''x34''

L.A. Confidential - October 2009

The Gallerist: Native Angeleno Heather Taylor is part of the reason the Culver City art scene is alive and thriving. By Victoria Namkung

As the Co-Owner and codirector of the contemporary art gallery Taylor De Cordoba - which is part of the vibrant Culver City Art District on South La Cienega - Heather Taylor wears many hats. In addition to discovering new talent and representing LA artists such as Kimberly Brooks, Jeana Sohn, Claire Oswalt, Frohawk Two Feathers and Chris Natrop, Taylor throws some of the best opening parties in town (which are always open to the public). We caught up with the gallerist to talk art, fashion and food.

Chris Natrop - Cloud Machine Exhibition - Miami

Chris Natrop to exhibit new work at Diana Lowenstein Fine Art, Miami, FL. He will be showing new acrylic sculpture and a film in their project space. Cecilia Paredes will be exhibiting in the main space.

PRESS RELEASE
Originally from Milwaukee, Chris Natrop is an installation-artist based in Los Angeles. He earned his BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. He has had solo exhibitions and been included in group exhibitions throughout the country. His work has been featured in publications such as Art in America and the New Yorker. Natrop was the 2007 recipient of the Pulse Prize from the Pulse Art Fair in New York.

While known primarily as a cut paper artist, Natrop has begun integrating a variety of other material into his work. Transparent plastics, video projection and multi-channel audio are often employed alongside works of intricate, hand-cut paper to create fully immersive environments within gallery and museum spaces. The viewer is encouraged to enter these room-sized installations to directly experience the realm the artist has set up where elements of light, shadow and form coalesce into a fully unified world. Most of the individual components are hand-cut in the artist’s studio and then custom-arranged for a particular exhibition space. For his works on paper, each piece is spontaneously created without the use of patterns or pre-drawing—this stream-of-consciousness approach is, in fact, the crux of the artist’s practice. Graphic silhouettes emerge from a meditative-channeling activated by the repetitive practice of cutting paper. Natrop works on enormous sheets of Lenox 100 drawing paper stretched out vertically on his studio wall. Wielding a standard utility knife, he spontaneously cuts away at the paper to create a hybrid of landscape imagery. Natrop’s free-form process of “knife drawing” reveals the negative space by removing the emptiness in-between forms. Often an amalgam of things previously observed, the graphic nature of the work becomes a freeze-frame of Natrop’s own direct surroundings revealing the artist’s particular sense of place. In many cases one feature will be multiplied over and over, resulting in a dense layering of a single element. A multiplicity of water droplets, crawling vines or cracks in the pavement may be rendered and reworked within each installation.

Emotional forces further contextualize the work within this structure: feelings of anticipation, apprehension, disorientation or joyfulness often encapsulate the work’s inherently myopic narrative. This fusion between internal, emotional space and the external, physical landscape continue to be the framework for much of Natrop’s practice.

Chris Natrop in INFINITY group exhibition

"Infinity", curated by Andrew Schoulz, is a group exhibition of artists whose practices or aesthetics relate to the many facets of the infinite. The Vastness of this concept will be explored through painting, drawing, photography, and 3D multi-media installation. The subject matter as well as the medium will vary greatly. Some artists work may be a more literal representation of this subject, suggestive of such things as mathematics, space, time, technology, abstraction, pattern, or repetition, while others have chosen to address the opposite or "finite", such as fragility, mortality, the temporary, and even doomsday scenarios.

The show features original work by:

Ryan Travis Christian
Richard Colman (appears courtesy of New Image Art, LA)
N. Dash
Noah Davis (appears courtesy of Roberts and Tilton, LA)
Chris Duncan (appears courtesy of Baer Ridgeway, SF)
Andres Guerrero
Joseph Hart
Andy Diaz Hope (appears courtesy of Catherine Clark, SF)
Xylor Jane (appears courtesy of CANADA, NYC)
Butt Johnson (appears courtesy of CRG gallery, NYC)
Chris Natrop (appears courtesy of Taylor de Cordoba, LA)
Aaron Noble
Hilary Pecis (appears courtesy of Triple Base Gallery, SF)
Andrew Schoultz (appears courtesy of Roberts and Tilton, LA)
Ryan Wallace (appears courtesy of Envoy Enterprises, NYC)

Opening Reception is Saturday, October 10th, from 7-10pm.

Free Valet and Beverages will be provided.

Clare Vivier & Dream Collective Sample Sale

Clare Vivier Sample Sale
introducing Dream Collective

Thursday October 1st, 2009, 7-9pm

2660 S La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles
(310) 559-9156

The Sample Sale will feature timeless artisan handbags and accessories of Clare Vivier and introduce Dream Collective, the newest line of high end costume jewelry by Katherine Bentley.

rsvp to info@taylordecordoba.com

L.A. FASHION BLOOM IN SEPTEMBER ISSUE OF ANGELENO

Angeleno Magazine
September 2009

Gallerist-cum-fashionista Heather Taylor hosted a multi-designer installation at her La Cienega gallery to benefit P.S. Arts - spotted were local seam-stars Gregory Parkinson, Jesse Kamm, Clare Vivier, and Wren's Melissa Coker. (Pages: 84 & 86)

Claire Oswalt: Peril In Perfection
September 12 – October 31, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday September 12, 6-8PM

The Chase, 2009

graphite, paper and wood
49''x74''

“…. yet it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.” - Dune, Frank Herbert

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Peril In Perfection, a new series of sculptural drawings by New York-based artist Claire Oswalt. The exhibition will run from September 12 – October 31, 2009 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, September 12th from 6 - 8PM. This is the artist’s second solo show with the gallery.

With her jointed figures made from wood and graphite on paper, Oswalt continues to explore the push and pull between control and freedom. In the tradition of puppets and marionettes, these pieces are designed to be controlled and moved, yet here the subjects appear abruptly frozen in the moment. The fixity of these otherwise aggressive, passionate, dynamic and often violent scenes suggests “the artist” as a master of manipulation and calculation. Although they are put into a position that lacks control, the puppets place their trust in the artist and subsequently the viewer.

While her previous body of work highlighted the vulnerability of adolescence, here Oswalt depicts scenes of aggression among primarily male adults. In one piece, two men violently wrestle each other and in another, a struggling subject is doubled over in pain. At first glance these images seem loud and explosive, yet by restricting their movement these moments become quiet places of ordered beauty.

Claire Oswalt lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She was recently included in “Under The Knife,” a group show at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA. Articles and reviews have appeared in Artweek, Angeleno Magazine and Paper among other publications.

Taylor De Cordoba is located at 2660 S La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles, CA and is open from Tuesday – Saturday, 11am-6pm. For additional press information, contact Heather Taylor at heather@taylordecordoba.com or (310) 559-9156.

L.A. FASHION BLOOM

L.A. FASHION BLOOM
Public Dates: Friday, July 10 - Saturday, August 8

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present L.A. FASHION BLOOM, a temporary fashion boutique installed in a contemporary art gallery setting. In lieu of a traditional "summer group show," gallery co-owner Heather Taylor has curated a selection of artfully installed pieces by five Los Angeles-based fashion designers:

Melissa Coker of Wren - clothing designer
Annie Costello Brown - jewelry designer
Jesse Kamm - clothing designer
Gregory Parkinson - clothing designer
Clare Vivier - handbag and accessory designer

All items will be available for purchase and a portion of proceeds will be donated to P.S. Arts, a local organization dedicated to restoring arts education in public schools. The designers will be featuring pieces from previous seasons in addition to debuting new fall items.

Some of L.A.'s most sought after design talent will transform the space from gallery into boutique. Local artist and Reorganica designer, Tony Brown, has created reclaimed wood store fixtures. Vintage lighting and accessories are courtesy Empric with floral landscaping designed by Holly Flora. L.A. FASHION BLOOM will exist for one month.

Artwalk Culver City 2009

Tomorrow, Saturday May 30, is the Culver City's annual artwalk. We'll be open from noon to 8PM. Please stop by, say hello and see Jeana Sohn's new work.

TImothy Hull in V

Linlee Allen wrote about Timothy Hull's current exhibition at the gallery for V Magazine. Click HERE see the full text.

Sasha Bezzubov + Jessica Sucher in Frieze

Christy Lange reviewed Sasha Bezzubov and Jessica Sucher's recent exhibition, The Searchers, in Frieze Magazine. Click HERE to read the full text.

Melissa Manfull in The Architect's Newspaper

Melissa Manfull's recent exhibition, Tesseracts was featured in The Architect's Newspaper. Click HERE to read the full text.

Kimberly Brooks at Tarryn Teresa Gallery

Kimberly Brooks has been included in a group exhibition at Tarryn Teresa Gallery:
All Under One Roof: A selection of LA Artists curated by Yasmine Mohseni

Artists: Amir H. Fallah, Carrie Jardine, Claressinka Anderson, Doug Busch, Gabriela Anastasio, Irving Greines, Kimberly Brooks, Kristin Jai Klosterman, Roya Falahi, Susan Anderson

Artist Reception and Two Year Anniversary Party, April 10th, 7pm-11pm
Exhibition runs through May 8th 2009
Mon- Fri: 11am-5pm, Sat: 11am-4pm

Tarryn Teresa Gallery
1820 Industrial Street #230
Los Angeles, CA 90021

Culver City Gallery Walk

This weekend is Los Angeles Art Weekend and a great event they have organized is a Culver City Gallery Walk, tomorrow evening from 6-8PM. Partipcating galleries include: Los Angeles Art Weekend. Participants include Blum & Poe, David Kordansky, Honor Fraser, Kim Light, LAXART, Susanne Vielmetter, Taylor De Cordoba and Western Project

6:30pm: Exhibition walkthrough with Dave Muller at Blum & Poe
7:30pm: Exhibition walkthrough with Walead Beshty at LAXART

Food trucks include Green Truck, Kogi BBQ and Tacos Bevida

Clare VIVIER at Taylor De Cordoba for P.S. Arts

The gallery is delighted to be hosting a fashion week event for Echo-Park based designer Clare Vivier. Ms. Vivier will be presenting her Spring/Summer '09 collection of handbags for her line VIVIER. A percentage of the proceeds from all handbag sales and art sales will be donated to P.S. Arts, a local non-profit dedicated to restoring the arts in public schools in and around Los Angeles. To get YOUR invitation for tonight's event click HERE.

Melissa Manfull in Dwell

Laure Joliet wrote an article about Melissa Manfull's current exhibition, Tesseracts, in Dwell Magazine. Read the full text by clicking HERE.

GalleryEquality LA Artwalk & Silent Auction

Taylor De Cordoba is proud to participate in GalleryEquality LA, an art walk and silent auction benefitting Marriage Equality USA, Family Equality Council and Create Equality. Artists in the silent auction include Timothy Hull and Melissa Manfull.

Sunday, February 15th

6:00pm - 9:00pm

2651 S. La Cienega

Los Angeles, CA 90034

$10 suggested donation

Art walk on La Cienega - Participating galleries include: Walter Maciel, Blum & Poe, Taylor de Cordoba, George Billis Gallery, Sardoni.Rey, Maloney Fine Art and more...

Silent auction at Smogshoppe (complimentary valet by Smogshoppe for first 200 people).

"Transformational Project" by Jen Rosenstein on exhibit.

After party with DJ Outre.

Suggested donation: $10

For more details, go to: http://createequality.wordpress.com/events/

To check out some of the auction art work, go to: http://www.artslant.com/la/events/show/41928-gallery-equality

Kimberly Brooks in artHAUS

Kimberly Brooks has paintings in a group show in Venice, CA. The exhibited, entitled artHAUS, was curated by Thomas Schirmboeck and will run through February 24.

Barrett Johnson Performs at Ryan Callis Opening

Opening January 10, Ryan Callis, Are You Ready To Testify

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present

Ryan Callis
Are You Ready To Testify
January 10 – February 14, 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday January 10, 2009 6pm-8pm



Are You Ready To Testify, 2008
Oil, Acrylic and Paper on Canvas, 24" x 20"

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Are You Ready to Testify, a new series of paintings by Southern California-based artist Ryan Callis. The exhibition will run from January 10 through February 14, 2009. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday January 10 from 6pm-8pm.

The exhibition consists of paintings that operate conversationally, as phrases and sentences in a larger dialogue. To create the paintings' architectural structures, Callis uses a system that codes phrases and words into geometric forms without visually making use of text. While the completed paintings do not directly reflect the original texts, every gesture, shape and concept organically flows from this unique coded system. A palette of vibrant (nearly acidic) blues, greens, yellows and pinks creates elegant passages of paint flows and color gradations.

The conception for this series of work was influenced largely by Nam June Paik’s Fluxus film, Zen For Film (1962-1964), the 1996 Dischord Records release of the self proclaimed “gospel yeah, yeah” sound of the Make-Up's debut album, Destination: Love, Live at Cold Rice, and David Hockney’s book That’s the Way I See Things.

This is the artist's second solo show at Taylor De Cordoba. His work has been featured in Artweek and the OC Weekly. Ryan Callis was recently included in Christopher Knight’s article for the Los Angeles Times, “45 Under 45.” He received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2007.

Taylor De Cordoba is located at 2660 S La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles, CA and is open Tuesday thru Saturday, 11am-6pm. For additional information, contact Heather Taylor at heather@taylordecordoba.com or (310) 559-9156.