Not Non-Objective

July 30, 2022 - September 24, 2022
12:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Wednesday – Saturday
FOCA Exhibition Space, Chinatown
970 N Broadway, Suite 208 Los Angeles, CA 90012
Fellows of Contemporary Art (FOCA) is a non-profit, independent, and membership-based organization that supports contemporary art in California.Curators Lab Exhibitions support emerging and mid-career artists by awarding grants to emerging curators who develop and present exhibitions in support of a curatorial thesis. In keeping with FOCA’s historical goal to provide documentation of each exhibition, curators produce a catalog of their choice and clarify their process of conceptualizing and organizing each exhibition. Exhibition installations and events are also documented through photographs, videos, and currently Zoom recordings posted on FOCA’s website.


Fellows of Contemporary Art gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Not Non-Objective, which includes the work of seven artists from Southern California.

The title, a double negative, is also a double entendre; although most of the work in the exhibition appears to be “pure” abstraction, without pictorial or other references, all of the works in the show are in fact referencing the landscape and the planet itself.

So the artists in the exhibition are not making artwork that is “non-objective” (a familiar synonym for pure abstraction) in the sense of hierarchies of abstraction. There also is a tangible objective- to call attention to the landscape, and by extension, the climate crisis. As one of the artists in the show commented, “if you are referencing the landscape as an artist today, it seems unthinkable not to reference the environment and climate change”.

Having established this, it is important to note that the work of the artists in the show all exudes a powerful formal presence that can be linked to the traditions of abstract painting. One can note connections to past movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting and Process Art. The difference between the work of these artists and historical abstract movements is both the impure nature of the artworks, and the artists’ desires to reference imagery and topics from the real world

Curated by

David DiMicheleis a Los Angeles based artist, writer and curator. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Rotterdam, Netherlands. He is a recipient of the COLA (City of Los Angeles) individual Artist Fellowship, and the Kaus Australis Artist Residency, Rotterdam. His work is in many public collections including the Hudson Bay Company Collection, New York, the Capital Group, Los Angeles, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna CA, Disney Corporation, Burbank, CA and California State University Long Beach, CA. DiMichele currently resides in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, just north of Los Angeles, where he finds inspiration on the hiking trails of Angeles National Forest.

Media Contacts

Tressa MillerChair, FOCA Curators Lab
Michele JaffeCo-Chair, FOCA Curators Lab
 

Public Events

Not-Non Objective: Opening Reception

July 30, 2022
4:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Details >

Not-Non Objective: Conversation With Artists and Closing Reception

September 24, 2022
5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Details >

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