Los Angeles Art Show, 2015 Edition

https://www.laartshow.com/
Jan 15-18, 2015
108 galleries, 23 participating museums/arts organizations
2015 Edition, 20th anniversary
Asian art was prevailing and it was quite good
Best Booth: Tachibana gallery, Osaka, Japan
When in an art fair, the tendency for a gallery is to show as many artists as possible, Japanese gallery Tachibana displayed an extraordinay solo show of Japanese Sculptor, Toshimitsu ITO. He sculpts wood, a specific used wood, the kind he finds in abandoned places. Even more, the plane below is made from a beam found in a house demolition that has undergone the Hiroshima bomb.
Another plane and village below and detail (below)
Mural Sculpture and detail (below)
Best Engaged Artist:
Sedrick Huckaby at Thomas French Fine Art
Despite his young age -he was born in 1975- the African American artist from Fort Worth, Texas, Sedrick Huckaby, shows a strong and impressive body of work. He is so skilled that he can choose whatever technique he wants to serve the cause of disadvantaged people. The “Quilt Series” is made with oil on canvas to enhance the idea of time and memories with the thickness of the paint. He uses sketch technique with graphite and pastel to draw to better show the feeling of the people he interviews.
Unfortunately the Internet is way too weak and the pictures don’t show the power of the work we feel for real!



Best painter:
Japanese Hiromi HASEGAWA at Watanabe Fine Art


Best Portrait:
Andrew Myers at Lawrence Cantor fine art, Venice, CA, USA
German Artist, Andrew Myers, who lives and works in Laguna Beach, CA, drew an amazing series of life-size charcoal and ink portraits. This is smart, new and full of humor.
Andrew wanted to depict how it feels to be judged, criticized, and measured by others, with one’s strengths and shortcomings graded along the same cold, impersonal criteria of a school assignment. Before embarking on each drawing, Andrew interviews the subjects to get an honest, personal assessment of what they believe to be their strengths and shortcomings.

Best Story:
Judith Hugues Day owner at Judith Hugues Day Gallery
Western influence dates to the time of French colonization. A classmate of Matisse, Victor Tardieu, in 1925, helped establish the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi, and Western artistic techniques and media were first introduced to Vietnamese art students. Today, Vietnamese painters acknowledge the classic academic training the Ecole and subsequent art schools provided.
Hold on and read:
We have to recall that the Art Market is worldwide only since a decade. The art didn’t circulate as it does now. The Internet -as a prior place to show art- wasn’t existing and Art fairs existed only in Europe plus one in NY city to show Occidental artists. It was not that obvious to create and develop a new market like genius Judith Hughes Day did with Vietnamese art!
One day she’s been invited to discover Vietnamese art and since then she never stopped representing the artists. And now we find a vibrant artistic community that has developed, largely in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Hue, which celebrates the diversity and creativity of these painters’ works. Vietnamese artists, long recognized at home and in France, increasingly are gaining international recognition.
Thank you Mrs Hugues!

Best Similar Techniques
by Gisela Colon and Peter Alexander (see below)
They are both at the same gallery, Ace Gallery, and present a similar technique.


Best Interesting Techniques:
The glass of the frame itself presents wounds and holes

The object is projecting out of the two dimensional plane to create a three dimensional.

Wrinkles are rehabilitated with Han, Young-Wook! the more he got the happier he is.
Young-Wook draws pictures on aluminum foil. At first, he imprints an image on the foil with a ballpoint pen, and then he colors it with brownish oil paints. He finishes the picture trimming the image with a fine needle. In addition, he accurately calculates the reflective effect of the illuminated texture

Most horrible portrait:
Extremely skilled painter but horrible result.

Best Moving Abstract (typically Californian):
Ron Piller at Artspace Warehouse
it’s Mixed media and Resin on board, simple but so good
Best Meditation time
with Chinese Artist, Zhao Lu at CM2 Space

In conclusion the Art Fair was way much better than previous years! It is a very good news because the lack of quality didn’t show LA as the good art scene we do love. BCH