Los Angeles Harbor College Fine Arts Gallery is pleased to present Evenso, current works by Katy Crowe and Coleen Sterritt. The exhibition will open with an Artists’ Reception Saturday, March 14, from 4 – 7PM.
Installation View.
Coleen Sterritt, Narrow Tall Stacked & Tippy, found furniture parts, vacuum filters, compressed loofahs, foam rubber, string, adhesive, 2018.
Introducing painter Katy Crowe and sculptor Coleen Sterritt, these words came to mind: In an excerpt from Ben Lerner’s intro to poet Michael Palmer on making art in dark times:
“…something like Wallace Stevens’ “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” (“It must be abstract.” “It must change.”) – pushing himself to work against his unmatched fluency, trying to hit an off note given his perfect pitch. For it can be wrong to get song right if, like Palmer, you are suspicious of any glib resolution or false consolation, if you are committed to exploring the contradictions of art making in dark times, if your paradoxical task is to represent what escapes representation.”
In her excellent 2011 artUS review of Katy Crowe’s exhibition rebidishu two, Esther Ribot writes on the artist: Katy Crowe’s long professional career is marked by a strong emphasis on process, resulting in intricate, studied abstractions. Each drawing or painting responds to prior work, just as each brushstroke is the logical answer to the one before. Crowe lets the painting carry her wherever it needs to go, but she always holds the reins, ensuring that no movement will be lost or hidden. Her light, transparent brushstrokes enable the viewer to make out every step of the process, even though it’s a bit like working your way backwards through a labyrinth. Reminiscent of Theodor Adorno’s notion of the “false immediacy of enjoyment”, the unconscious gesture is granted respite from the processes of secondary revision that otherwise cannot but dominate a seasoned practice of abstraction.
Crowe’s work is included in many public and private collections, including McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX, Deutsche Bank, NYC, Capital Group LA, CA, Broad Collection, Sun America, Los Angeles, and Kajima Associates, Tokyo, Japan, among others.
Katy Crowe, Temps Perdu, oil on canvas, 2020.
For close to 40 years Los Angeles artist Coleen Sterritt has fabricated hybrid sculpture evoking the interplay between nature, culture, and lived experience. Her source materials are pulled from everyday objects and elements. Plaster, tar, pinecones, fishing line, found furniture, and studio refuse are just some of the components she uses to construct and express her richly evocative formal language. Questioning the diverse possibilities of sculpture in both scale and form, her eccentric, abstract structures present strong polarities possessing a resonance at once familiar and obscure. She was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.
Installation View.
Sterritt's sculpture and drawings have been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe including Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); Long Beach Museum of Art; Lancaster Museum of Art and History; Oakland Museum of California; PØST; Riverside Art Museum; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY.
Evenso runs through June 30. Gallery hours are Monday – Thursday 11AM – 4PM, and by appointment. For additional information please call Ron Linden, 310-600-4873.
