G. Ray Kerciu, "Never"

April 13 - May 25, 2013 at CSU Fullerton, Begovich Gallery, Orange County

by Jeannie R. Lee

It is not often that a retrospective can span six decades of a living artist’s oeuvre, and even less often that it can comprise something more than a simple visual timeline. But a happy collaboration between artist G. Ray Kerciu and co-curators Mike McGee and Concepción Rodríguez has produced a tight, informative, and well-organized exhibition. Careful culling is always a must, but even more so for an artist like Kerciu who has not only produced prodigious quantities of art, but in a diverse range of mediums from wood sculpture to stained glass to intaglio prints. Kerciu’s life as an artist - chronicled here from 1957 to 2012 - is not only a fascinating reflection of aesthetic choices that coincide with art history and political upheaval, but also portrays a lifetime of grappling with line, color, and meaning.

Claire Baker, "Wick"

March 16 - April 27, 2013 at Edward Cella Art + Architecture, Miracle Mile

by Andy Brumer

What you see is what you get as far as the quality of five extraordinary abstract paintings by L.A.-based artist Claire Baker is concerned. The materials and elaborate process of the works’ creation remain hidden from view, making the results at first appear matter of fact. Indeed, one might initially identify these large and colorful works as oil or acrylic paintings, when in fact Baker used ink applied onto stretched polyester surfaces with a large custom made palette knife in creating them. The effect, however, is anything but industrial, slick or reflective. It turns out that polyester absorbs ink far more uniformly than canvas does paint. This produces paintings of great warmth and depth that also possess a quality of vibrant “otherness” that attracts and holds viewers’ rapt attention.

Patty Wickman, "Outside the Garden"

February 24 - April 28, 2013 at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Park, East Hollywood

by Betty Ann Brown

We humans are meaning-making animals; our minds are constantly enacting symbolic transformation of our experiential data. Such transformation is particularly important for those data that elude rational or scientific containment: the insights, epiphanies, and transcendent experiences of connection that we call spiritual.

Olga Koumoundouros, "Tail End," 2013, garden hose, garden hose holder, 13 x 19 x 17".

"Possessed by Glint and Dreams," a requiem for home foreclosures, comes across as a highly integrated installation for good reason — Olga Koumoundorous put in some audacious practice by both moving into and extensively painting an abandoned house in her neighborhood. Its gold-painted roof, reconfigured for its current home, hangs upside down across the first two spaces of the gallery, becoming the greater entry point into a replicated experience of her former squat. The more you become cognizant of her recent and finite inhabitation, in fact, the more resonant the work becomes. "Sun" is an all-gold painted satellite dish with fluorescent tube radiants, melding 50s-era design with pre-tanning booth technology. "Tall End" is an even more golden, wall-mounted garden hose, which partially uncoils from its holder onto the floor; the previously invisible is now a charged relic. And a spray-painted rainbow — think DIY sensibility, not unicorn — is a surprisingly effective visual through line, one which snakes across and onto photo frames as well as a blue couch, which is propped up by a would-be discarded marble countertop slab (and subsequently and charmingly dubbed "Leprechaun Trap"). Just as "Sun" is one 'satellite' to the greater swirling vortex of this domestic reclamation, so are there other satellites, the most magnetic of which is "House as Dictator," a found La-Z-Boy-style recliner that's been retrofitted with a motor causing it to recline and retract continuously, like a ideal sentry on constant alert to warn of any impending inspectors from the bank.

Our current Previews feature our editors' and contributing writers' evaluations of exhibition that open or continue into the current month, so as to provide you with the opportunity to view those that are of interest to you.

To look up past articles you can go to our archive of Articles forward from April, 2010; or the ArtScene Articles Archive prior to April, 2010 will be called up from a database separate from those starting April, 2010, so you will experience differences in appearance and navigation.

Here are our Previews and Recommendations for March, 2013:

Llyn Foulkes, "Who's on Third"

February 2 - May 19 at the Hammer Museum, West Los Angeles

by Bill Lasarow

How a master of ambivalence can emerge as such a passionate voice, how a mix of humor and cynicism arrives at such clarity, how bitterness transforms into affection are mysteries that explain why the art world long underestimated Llyn Foulkes then finally embraced him. If a single artist's career trajectory was altered by Pacific Standard Time it was Foulkes'. Long respected, Foulkes was historically relatively marginalized because most everything fit, just not correctly. Most glaringly, the elements of Pop Art arrived late in his work, and once Warhol and company convinced us that celebrity culture could be celebrated (particularly if it offered witty references and critiques of the art world), he seemed to have it all wrong. In his adopted hometown, the young Bohemian never really took to his Light and Space contemporaries (despite brief early participation in the Ferus Gallery circle). Instead, he hewed closer to the Beat disarray of George Herms and Wallace Berman than the sleek purity of Doug Wheeler or Craig Kaufman. Essentially, the surf, car and aerospace culture most of the others reveled in made Foulkes want to puke.

Shane Guffogg, "Ginevra de' Benci #50"

March 2 - April 1, 2013 at Leslie Sacks Fine Art, West Los Angeles

by Andy Brumer

“Make it new,” the poet Ezra Pound implored poets and writers in the early 1900’s in what would become a defining anthem, theme, goal and practice of modernism throughout all of the arts. L.A. painter Shane Guffogg bases the work in this exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci’s "Ginevra de’Benci," and in doing so renders the old quite new, answering the poet’s call with remarkable inventiveness and a plethora of well-seasoned skills.

Ron Rizk, "Monolith"

March 2 - April 13, 2013 at Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica

by Kathy Zimmerer

Ron Rizk's exquisitely rendered and irreverent still-life paintings continue to bemuse and amaze. Adding a contemporary twist to American trompe l'oeil painting in the best tradition of William Harnett and John Frederick Peto, Rizk's delicate images of antique toys, duck decoys, fishing lures, chess pieces and telephones have a wry sensibility and an ironic edge. Like his predecessors, he recreates objects that are familiar yet worn, like the old red telephone or the vintage carved animal, with the intent of jarring our comfort zone when we realize the illusion.

Stephen Beal, "White 2"

March 15 - April 13, 2013 at George Lawson Gallery, Culver City

by Mario Cutajar

In 1971 John Baldessari filmed "Six Colorful Inside Jobs," which consists of an overhead shot of a journeyman house painter painting the walls of a closet-size room in primary and secondary colors over the course of six days, one color over the other. In the same time span that Biblical authority claims it took God to create the world, Baldessari's house painter alter ego first buried the default white of the bare walls, and then applied succeeding layers of fresh paint, simultaneously adding and erasing in a potentially endless progression. Baldessari thus conflated art and work while at the same time, and without relinquishing painting's visual nature, he articulated the ritualized theatricality of its production. No longer did art's value rest on aesthetic outcome or originality, but process.

Stanley Casselman, "IR-30-1"

March 2 - April 13, 2013 at Scott White Contemporary Art, La Jolla

by Elenore Welles

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku writes about how our passive observations of the mysteries of nature lead scientists to manipulate and choreograph matters of life and intelligence. Hence, scientific revolutions continue to change our perceptions of the universe. It remains a role of the artist, however, to shape how we understand these newly revealed phenomena.