ARTISTS TO SEE IN MARCH

 

RUBEN OCHOA

Though known for his large-scale site-specific installations, Ruben Ochoa also uses sculpture, photography and drawings to explore the urban environment of Southern California where he was raised and still lives. He often works with basic building materials such as dirt, wooden pallets, rebar and concrete as a nod to the boundaries and physicality of the city. Though his work is conceptual, he maintains a sense of playfulness throughout. Ochoa was born in Oceanside, CA in 1974 and lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from the Otis College of Art and Design in 1997 and did a semester at the Parsons School of Art and Design before receiving his MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 2003.

Ruben Ochoa, Clumsy, Dumb and DIrty, 2013

Ochoa's work is currently being exhibited in a group show titled Apparitions: Fronttages and Rubbings from 1860 to Now at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through May 31, 2015. 

 

 

CHARLES GAINES

Charles Gaines' solo show at the Hammer Museum traveled from the Studio Museum in Harlem and is the first museum survey of Gaines' early work. Gaines is best known for the way his photographs and drawings explore how and why rules-based procedures and systems construct order and meaning. This early work of Gaines' serves as a bridge between the first generation conceptual artists of the 1960-1970s and the conceptual artists of later generations. The show is on view now through May 24, 2015.

 

Charles Gaines, Numbers and Trees V, Landscape #8: Orange Crow, 1989

Charles Gaines was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1944 and lives in works in Los Angeles. He has had over 70 one-person shows and several hundred group exhibitions in the US and Europe. Gaines has been a faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts since 1989. He has received numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts grant and was recently named as one of the artists to participate at the Venice Biennale this summer.

 

 

OSCAR MURILLO

Somewhat of a celebrity, Oscar Murillo (born 1986 in Colombia) is a painter best known for his large-scale works. His paintings imply action, performance and chaos and some are methodically composed of stitched canvases. He often incorporates text and dust into the pieces, in order to physically connect the work to his studio environment. 

 

Oscar Murillo, Yuka Chips, 2013

 Though he is relatively new to the art world, his works have sold for very high prices at auction, making him a highly sought after artist. He currently lives and works in London. 

 
 Oscar Murillo, MoMA installation, 2015

Murillo's work is currently on view in a group show at MoMA in New York City titled The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, through April 14, 2015.

 

 

SHANA MABARI

Shana Mabari is a Los Angeles-based artist who explores the intersections of art, science and technology through sculpture. Her work investigates ways in which we perceive stimuli both sensorially and visually while she uses light, color and geometry to play with andexpand the experience of physical space. 

 
 Shana Mabari, Illumetric, 2014

Her public art project Illumetric, a triptych of massive diamond, cube, and rectangular sculptures for the City of West Hollywood's Art on the Outside program, was installed on the median of Santa Monica Boulevard at Holloway Drive in July 2014. Illumetric's internal LED illumination switches on nightly at sundown adding radiance to the streetscape.

 

 Mabari is also currently showing sculptures at Imago Galleries in Palm Desert, CA.

 

 

KENYATTA HINKLE

Kenyatta Hinkle is an interdisciplinary, Los Angeles-based visual artist, writer and performer who is interested in the complexities of history and power and how it affects our contemporary world perspective. Hinkle interrogates the power dynamics between the gaze, the subject, and the viewer and often uses the idea of the black female body as a prototype for both exotic beauty and repulsion. Her work has been shown at The Studio Museum in Harlem and she was the youngest participant in the Made in LA2012 Biennial at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. 

 
 Kenyatta Hinkle, The Water Walker, 2014

 Currently she has work on view at Jenkins Johnson Gallery in New York through April 5, 2015