If These Walls Could Talk - A Conversation

PastExhibition

Feb 1

Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, Steve Lambert, Nery Gabriel Lemus, William Powhida
If These Walls Could Talk - A Conversation
Group Exhibition in Conjunction with Marine

February 19 - April 2, 2011

Charlie James Gallery and Marine are delighted to present If These Walls Could Talk – A Conversation, a group show of distinguished local and international artists exhibiting concurrently across our mutual spaces. The ten artists selected for the show comprise several artists from each gallery’s stable, plus mutually selected artists from outside of our respective galleries. Each of these ten artists will be contributing multiple works for the show, in order that their work may be exhibited in both the salon environment (Marine) and the gallery environment (CJG). The artists have been encouraged to create work that explores their thoughts about the artworld, and how they relate and work within it.

If These Walls Could Talk – A Conversation will include work from the following artists: Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, Jow, Steve Lambert, Nery Gabriel Lemus, Littlewhitehead, Christopher Michlig, Raymond Pettibon, William Powhida, Eduardo Sarabia, and Debra Scacco.

Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet Los Angeles artist Sandow Birk (b. 1962 Detroit, MI) is a graduate of the Otis/Parson’s Art Institute whose work has dealt with contemporary life in its entirety. Past themes have included inner city violence, graffiti, various political issues, war, prisons, surfing, and skateboarding. He is the recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright scholarship to Brazil. Recent projects have dealt with Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, the war in Iraq, and the Constitution of the United States. Sandow is represented by the Koplin del Rio Gallery in Los Angeles, Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, and P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York City. Elyse Pignolet (b. 1979 Oakland, CA) is an American with Filipino heritage, living and working in Los Angeles. She attended California State University, San Francisco, studying Fine Arts. She continued her studies at California State University, Long Beach, on a CSU exchange program. In 2001 she lived in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, studying arts and Spanish language. She completed her BFA degree at CSU Long Beach in 2007.

Jow (b. 1971, Vancouver, Canada) studied fine arts at Capilano College and the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver before relocating to the United States. She has shown in Vancouver, New York and Los Angeles. She presently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Steve Lambert (b. 1976, Los Angeles) Steve’s projects and art works have won awards from Prix Ars Electronica, Rhizome/The New Museum, the Creative Work Fund, Adbusters Media Foundation, the California Arts Council, and others. Lambert has appeared live on NPR, the BBC, and CNN, and been reported on in multiple outlets including Associated Press, the New York Times, the Guardian, Harper’s, The Believer, Good, Dwell, ARTnews, Punk Planet, and Newsweek. He was a Senior Fellow at the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology in New York, and is currently on the faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Nery Gabriel Lemus (b. 1977, Los Angeles) Lemus received his BFA at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California (2007) and his MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California (2009). Lemus also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (2008). Lemus’ work has been featured is several group exhibitions including, OZ: New Offerings From Angel City at Museo Regional Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, the 09 New Insight exhibition, curated by Sussanne Ghez, at Art Chicago, V Bienal Internacional de Estandartes at CECUT in Tijuana, Mexico, Common Ground at the California African American Museum, Chicano: Pronouncing Diversity at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, Mexican Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, Latino Art Museum in Pomona, The DA Center for the Arts in Pomona, the Indianapolis Art Center, Galeria Nina Moreno in Tijuana, Mexico.

Littlewhitehead is Craig Little (b. 1980, Glasgow, Scotland) and Blake Whitehead (b. 1985 Lanark, Scotland). They currently live and work in Glasgow. Recent shows include Newspeak: British Art Now at the Saatchi Gallery in London and a solo show at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art / Sunderland.

Christopher Michlig, (b. 1976, Alaska) received an MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California in 2007. In spring 2009, he had a solo exhibition – Man Man Man – at Devening Projects + Editions in Chicago and a group show – 5+1 – at 1000eventi Gallery in Milan, Italy. His solo debut at Jail Gallery was reviewed in the May 2008 issue of Artforum by Jan Tumlir. His work has been featured at the Fellows of Contemporary Art in Yellow, curated by Lia Trinka-Browner, and in the 2006 L.A. Weekly Biennial, curated by Holly Myers and Tom Christie. Michlig has recently exhibited work at dok25a in Dusseldorf, Germany, and his work is featured in the Winter 2010 issue of Proximity Magazine.

Raymond Pettibon (b. 1957, Tucson, AZ) A cult figure among underground music devotees for his early work associated with the Los Angeles punk rock scene, Pettibon has acquired an international reputation as one of the foremost contemporary American artists working with drawing, text, and artist’s books. Retrospectives of his work have been held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2002, an exhibition of his drawings, Plots Laid Thick, was organized by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain, and traveled to the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, and the Haags Gemeentemuseum in the Netherlands. Pettibonâ€™s work was also featured at Documenta XI in Kassell, Germany. Pettibon lives and works in Hermosa Beach, California.

William Powhida (b. 1976, New York) is a G-E-N-I-U-S and also a habitual critic of the art world. He studied painting at Syracuse University where he easily received a B.F.A with honors and scored an M.F.A. from the cheap-assed famed Hunter College Program. He has exhibited internationally in New York, Los Angles, Seattle, London, Madrid, Miami, Chicago, and Copenhagen. Recent shows include 41st Art on Paper Exhibition at the Weatherspoon Museum, Run Tell That: New Art from New York at Syracuse University, and Dirty Kunst at Seventeen Gallery, London. He has organized exhibitions including All Messed Up With Nowhere To Go, #class and #rank with Jennifer Dalton, and Magicality with Eric Trosko. He recently completed a publishing residency at the Lower East Side Printshop and will be the lead artist at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center for a 4-week residency on memory next summer.

Eduardo Sarabia (b. 1976, Los Angeles) Eduardo Sarabia received his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including Santa Monica Museum of Art (solo show), California, 2002; Prague Biennial I, Czech Republic, and the Studio Museum, Harlem, New York in 2003; MusÃ©e International des Arts Modestes, Paris, France, and White Box, New York in 2004; Antiguo Museo de Arte Moderno, Guadalajara, Mexico, and the 51st Venice Biennale, Venice Italy, 2005, the Whitney Biennial, New York, 2008 and Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (traveled to Mexico City, San Antonio, Phoenix, Guadalajara and New York, 2008 – 2010).

Debra Scacco (b. 1976, New York) received a BA in Studio Art from Richmond University (London, 1998). She has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, including The Royal Academy Summer Show (Royal Academy of Arts, London), Jerwood Drawing Prize (Jerwood Gallery, London followed by UK tour), and Viper Basel (Basel, Switzerland). She currently lives and works in London.