Image via Complex Original
Cultural plasticity, material abundance, illusionistic facades, a vibrant architectural history, and of course, sunsets are just a few qualities Los Angeles offers to artists. It’s no wonder so many of them anchor their practice within the topographies of the city. We’ve put together a list of 10 ascending Los Angeles-based artists who possess palpable momentum in their careers. Each is devising a unique body of work that feels fresh and challenging. These folks are truly on the up and up, and here’s a quick look at their work.
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Christy Matson
Christy Matson’s studio is equipped with one of the only hand-operated Jacquard looms—a tool that synthesizes the precision of technology and distinct quality of handwork—in Southern California. Each of her pieces begin as agile drawings and are materialized through the Jacquard process into a colorful weaving that, at once, evokes idealized geometry and the enchantment of ancient textiles. Matson’s work has recently been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Arts Houston, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Asheville Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design. Her work is also in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s Renwick Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Ore.
Brian Bress
The work of Brian Bress includes collages, photography, painting, stage and costume design, and even harks to contemporary puppetry. His use of mounted and framed videos is championed for defining new forms of photographic display. Each work is thrilling for its peculiar, cartoonish characters and their humorous tasks of drawing themselves or bobbing in an endless blue ocean. As you glimpse into the hallucinatory worlds he creates, what’s certain is that this artist is having a seriously good time making his work. He has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, and has had recent exhibitions at LACMA in L.A. and the Museo D’art Contemporanea Roma in Rome.
Ricky Swallow
Ricky Swallow uses everyday materials like cardboard, foam, and rope to craft small sculptures that read like constrained poems with distinct punctuation. Each piece is deceiving; the supple folds and creases are not the paper you imagine. Swallow’s forms are either cast bronze and painted or painted black to conceal the sculptures solidity. He was recently featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and is currently part of the Hammer Museum’s "Made in L.A." exhibition.
Julia Haft-Candell
Julia Haft-Candell creates intricate composites of found and made objects. Her training in ceramics informs her work everywhere you see the undulating and detailed surfaces created by her hands. Each piece displays a spectrum of technique; fine hatch marks are carved to accentuate the surface of organic forms that often rest on scraps of wood or fabric. She is presently at the Lincoln Visiting Artist in Ceramics at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University. Her work has recently been exhibited at ACME in Los Angeles and Inman Gallery in Houston.
Charlie White
Charlie White creates photographs, animations, and films that linger in the exaggerated realm of consumerism, fabricated identities, and teenage lifestyle. His staged images play on art historical canons of portraiture and still life, though they exist in a gridded ambiguous non-space. His visual vocabulary that plays on pop culture can be read as pointed satire, with an underlying sincere admiration. White has had solo exhibitions at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York, LAXART in Los Angeles and LOOCK in Berlin. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Fine Arts.
April Street
April Street creates sultry wall pieces that tease the boundaries between textile, sculpture, and painting. Utilizing malleable hosiery, she enacts a performable method of applying her jewel-toned palette. The swaths of fabric are stretched, twisted, and pinned to create rich layers that hint towards the cosmos and celestial dreaming. Her technique produces a deeply illusionistic surface that demands a viewer’s peak attentiveness. Street’s work is currently on view at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago.
Patricia Fernández
Patricia Fernández creates writings, sculptures, and artist books that reflect her research of family traditions, the history of her native Spain, and personal memory. Her works carry a sense of lyrical ephemerality and allusive logic. She often creates hand carved wooden vessels that display her grandfather’s trademark X patterning. Fernández recently had a solo show at LAXART in Los Angeles featuring works that emerged from a walking tour exploring the Spanish-French Pyrenees. She has also been exhibited at L.A.’s Commonwealth & Council and in the 2012 "Made in L.A." biennial at the Hammer Museum.
Samara Golden
Samara Golden creates consuming installations that manifest her various psychic states. She fabricates her vertiginous worlds with salvaged thrift shop items, reflective foam insulation, and objects from her life—truly any object she comes into contact with is fair game. The installations meld a quality of lavishness with a fun house aesthetic; a haunting soundtrack accompanies the spaces to fully penetrate the viewer’s perception. Golden has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe, and has an upcoming solo exhibition at Canada Gallery in New York.
Matthew Brandt
Matthew Brandt creates photographic works that are anchored in materiality and arcane techniques of image production. In his series, "Dust," he has reproduced historic images of demolished buildings. The re-actualized ghostly depictions are made with samplings of dust from the sites that once served their foundation for the buildings. Brandt has also explored images of landscapes, re-creating iconic vistas in barbecue sauce and synthetically colored cake icings. Brandt recently had a solo exhibition at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York. His work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Michael Decker
Michael Decker creates methodical conglomerations of vintage packaging that highlight the laughable imagery and language deployed in capitalism. Each large-scale collage of found material is both alluring for its dappling layout of hyper color and edgy graphics and repulsive when one takes into consideration the scale of manufacturing and commerce associated with the displayed products. Decker’s work feels incredibly pertinent in our time of globalism and rampant consumer desires. He has had recent solo shows at L.A.’s Ambach & Rice and Steve Turner Contemporary.