2024 Exhibitions at our Los Angeles gallery

Opening reception: 7-10 p.m. Saturday, November 2, 2024

Run of show:
November 2-23, 2024

Hours: Saturdays, noon-5 p.m.

MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture, in association with Durden and Ray Gallery, proudly presents Future Perfect, an international group exhibition curated by Vuslat D. Katsanis. Reflecting on the mediating role of human experience, this exhibition asks what hope does the future hold when the outcome is already known? What course of action is available when all options yield the same results? How can we position ourselves between the not-yet and the will-have-happened if no environmentally conscious actions are taken? Taking its cue from the grammatical rule of the future perfect verb form in the English language, this exhibition considers the temporality and tensions between failed world-making and hopeful anticipation. The future perfect form declares an event that is bound to happen before it happens, in an assured juxtaposition of the not-yet and the yet-to-come.

The exhibition presents work by 11 contemporary artists representing Turkiye, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, France, and United States, each relating to environmental disasters and the worsening climate crisis where the eventual outcome is both known and mitigable. The works focus on themes in failed ideological and techno-capital world-making, entering the tense space between sci-fi apocalypse and social realism to carve out glimmers for hope. The senses of loss, failure, collapse, and urgency in need of collective care is communicated well in the formal aesthetic qualities of the works. So too are the solidarities across cultural borders expressed through diverse media from photography, to sculpture, video, installation, and painting.

IRRATIONAL Exhibits 13

IRRATIONAL 13
Exhibits Juxtaposing Terrains
A one night of performance , video, sound sculpture and photography
October 26, 7-9pm
@bendixbuilding
"Juxtaposing Terrains" serves as a platform for these artists to examine the delicate balance between historical precedents and prospective futures. Through the lens of durational performances, moving images, photographic works, and sound art they provide a nuanced discourse on the precarious nature of our present moment.
In five galleries and three floors of the Bendix Building, as well as transitional spaces these 16 artists share their works. This spatial strategy promotes a continuous dialogue between the artists and the audience, blurring the boundaries between observation and participation. Join us for this one night only exhibition!!
ARTISTS: @christy_robertsberkowitz, @clauditopia, @joana_p_cardozo_, @maria_adela_diaz, @kiyogutierrez, @ulyssesjenkinsothervisions, @marcuskuilandnazario, @ibuki_kuramochi, **#simonleung**, @cademoga, @thenhuch, @mehreganpezeshkistudio, @santipreechasaun, @the_mark_steger, @sichongxie, @raymond_tran_, @kimzzzfff
Galleries: @track16gallery, @durdenandray, @tsa_la, @montevistaprojects, @515bendix
Irrational Exhibits 13: Juxtaposing Terrains is on October 26, 2024 from 7 to 9 PM in the Bendix Building 1206 Maple St., Los Angeles 90015 at Track 16 1st Floor, Durden and Ray, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Monte Vista Projects, and 515 Gallery with a post-show reception.
Original Sound Score "meltdown" by christy roberts berkowitz @christy_robertsberkowitz Design: Aejin @aejinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Artists: Alanna Airitam, Jo Ann Block, Danny Lyon, Olivier Mosset, Frankie Orozco, Max Presneill, Ronald Price, Melanie Sapina, Marcus Sendlinger

Opening reception:

7-10 p.m. Saturday,

September 28, 2024

Run of show:

September 28 – October 19, 2024

Hours: Saturdays, noon-5 p.m.

Closes: October 19, 2024

Curated by Max Presneill

From the early ‘bikers', often soldiers returning home from World War II, with a drive for excitement and camaraderie, a sub-culture arose that has had profound influences on culture at large - from skateboarding, to fashion, to the movies. Motorcycle culture’s public persona, especially via movies like The Wild One (1953), Scorpio Rising (1964), Easy Rider (1969) and currently The Bikeriders (2024), has reflected ideas of counter-culture and notions of freedom and individuality, in ways that have impacted the broader culture and for the non-conformist elements of society.

This makes for rich journeys of exploration for many contemporary artists who see the connection between riding motorcycles and the artistic struggle to capture moments of liberation in their work, as well as critique mainstream societal structures. With the simpatico idealizations of artistic practice some artists have fused the two terrains by incorporating aspects of motorcycle culture into their praxis to both extol the virtues of these elements of autonomy and escape as well as provide a critical context of culture at large. These artists have embedded themselves within this sub-culture, or investigated and used it as a significant aspect of their practice, and in so doing have exposed the underlying impetus for those who connect to it and a wider understanding of its allure.

The desire to reach completion of the self through riding a motorcycle, the attraction of rebellion, the rejection of societal coding and expectations, the lure of ’the road’ and wanderlust, the aestheticizing of experiences, the mythologizing of outsider status - all of these themes are reflected upon through this exhibition. From the use of the motorcycle as an expression of a lifestyle, to documentation of its histories, this exhibition will both celebrate and critique this subculture.

"Loss as Presence", opens July 20, 7-10 pm

Loss as Presence: Embracing Impossible Spaces,

Artists take measure of memories filling the void of humanity’s impermanence

Exhibition Dates: July 20 to August 10, 2024

Opening: 7-10 p.m. July 20, 2024

Open hours: 12-5 p.m. Saturdays July 27, Aug. 3, and Aug.10 or by appointment.

Curators: Richard Davey, Dani Dodge, David Leapman, Jenny Hager

Visual artists: Susan Arena, Edith Baumann, Sarah Casey, Christopher Collins, Dani Dodge, Jenny Hager, Kathryn Hart, Alexander Kroll, David Leapman, Natania Rosenfeld,Liza Ryan, Shaun Sisco, Christopher P Wood.

Poet: Natania Rosenfeld

When someone or something is irrevocably taken from us, the space they once occupied can feel enormous and irretrievable, the sense of loss unbearable. Our heart aches at the loss of a presence, and the resulting grief can feel too much to bear.

Loss as Presence suggests, however, that what we perceive as emptiness is actually the ineffable weight of their continued presence, since we continue to be imprinted by their existence in our lives. This show challenges the conventional perceptions of loss and invites visitors to embrace this ineffable weight and to see that the feelings which can threaten to overwhelm us are not just sadness but an outpouring of all the emotions we felt for the person or thing that is no longer here.

Anne Stevenson wrote in her poem “Haunted:”

“It is not when you walk through my sleep

That I am haunted most.

I am also alive where you were

And my own ghost.”

In moments of grief and reflection, we come face to face with the immense impact that another life has on our own.

In Loss as Presence, we bring together works from artists who explore the space of grief, measuring the abundance of love, memories, and shared experiences that fill the void. Some works meditate on the collective experience of grief, while others have been made specifically in response to the feeling of loss. They offer a space of solace and contemplation, where visitors can confront and embrace their emotions. By sharing the weight of grief collectively, we hope to ease its burden and foster empathy and understanding among all who experience it.

This is an art show that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit, that acknowledges the depth of loss, while acknowledging another way to consider it. Through our art, we aim to remind viewers that grief is not a solitary experience but an interconnected part of the human experience, a profound testament to the enduring power of love and memory, which bring presence rather than absence.

Spotlight24

SAVE THE DATE!! August 24, 7-10 pm
After over 100 applications from local, regional and international artists, the Durden and Ray committee had to make some very difficult choices. We want to thank everyone that applied to Spotlight 2024 for their continued support.
Durden and Ray is thrilled to announce this year's recipients for our open call Spotlight 2024 / Two solo exhibitions. We would like to congratulate and welcome Céline Brunko and Dylan Richards as they prepare for their upcoming exhibitions.
Please read their artists’ statements, look at their websites and follow them on social media to see their work evolve.
Céline Brunko: **www.celinebrunko.ch**
Instagram- celinebrunko
Dylan Ricards: **www.dylanricards.com**
Instagram- dylsmack
CÉLINE BRUNKO- BETON
The architect Rudolf Schindler called Los Angeles a paradise on earth, and he considered it the ideal environment for the next stage of truly modern architecture. With the new possibilities and approaches in modern architecture, came the ever-increasing demand for standardization and optimized use of materials, including concrete. Today we are aware that concrete is one of the most CO2 emitting materials used in the construction industry. In the Los Angeles suburb of Irwindale lies the largest aggregate mining area in the state, if not the nation. The area is “so full of holes that more of the land in the city is a pit than not”.
In the work Beton - Céline Brunko observes the material that we live on while thinking of a possible future scenario in a non-human world, where materials are the main protagonists. And prefabricated industry goods as a memory of the raise of the apocalyptic myths of radical breakthrough and the emergence of the “new man“ stands.
DYLAN RICARDS- REMIX
REMIX is a rumination on the beauty of a mass of knotty poppy colored plastic washed up on shore in the morning tide, moving in and out with the waves as a loop, as a breath. From a distance an object like this can be a metaphor for mass ecological devastation and symbolic of everything wrong with us as a species. But if you can get past these moral binaries and let yourself peer into the in between space to its murkiness and complexity, you may witness a vibrant ecosystem, churning and ever transforming. REMIX is a story of deep time, an index of culture, a mirror to ourselves. Material contains multitudes, and like us, it hums along, cycling through time in a constant shifty state of ﬂux.
Feedback, a phenomenon where an output signal returns to its source at a higher frequency, resonates deeply with my exploration of music, sound, and sculpture. I ﬁnd comfort in the fuzzy oscillations that occur when a guitar lingers too close to an ampliﬁer. The swirl of sound conjured by a delay pedal routed into itself becomes a portal to some kind of low rent uniﬁed state of the universe. I try to make feedback as a kind of ritual practice in my studio. Out in the world I am always listening for it.
The Port of Los Angeles is an ampliﬁer of materiality. It functions as a receiver, absorbing data in the form of goods and commodities from distant origins, materials that have been extracted, plundered, cultivated, only to amplify their frequencies through redistribution across the United States and beyond. This material lives one life and often returns to the port in a transformed state, returning to where it once came, where it will be transformed again. This loop is never ending, rhythmic. It’s as natural as birds making their seasonal migrations.

“Bed”- A metaphor for life in all of its fullness
Opening reception:
7-10 p.m. Saturday,
June 8, 2024

Run of show:
June 8 – July 6, 2024

Hours: Saturdays, noon-5 p.m.

Closes: July 6, 2024

Durden and Ray 1206 Maple Avenue #832, Los Angeles, CA. 90015

Media Contact:
Stephanie Sherwood
DandRart@gmail.com

Curated by David Leapman, Richard Davey, and Jenny Hager
Artists: Jorin Bossen, Steph Goodger, Jenny Hager, Susie Hamilton, David Leapman, Lee Maelzer, Andy Parsons, Sarah Sparkes, and Lorraine Wake

Durden and Ray presents Bed, pairing Southern California artists with artists from the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in an exploration of an ordinary piece of furniture where extraordinary life events unfold. Whether it’s a slightly scraped hollow in the ground or an elaborate four poster, a bed is the one piece of furniture that humans throughout history have possessed. We are almost certain to have been born in a bed and many of us will die in one, and in between, a bed is a place for life. It is a place to sleep and dream, a place to read and daydream. It is a place to make love, or to hide under the covers - our safe space, where the monsters of childhood imaging cannot find us. But it can also be a sick bed, hospital bed, or our deathbed. This exhibition doesn’t see a bed as a piece of furniture, but as a metaphor for life in all its fullness.

Susie Hamilton’s C-19 series of hospital doctors began when she was contacted by consulting hepatologist and art collector Peter Collins, who sent her photos from his Bristol hospital. She created these powerful images centered around the vulnerability of bed-bound patients and the alien quality of the PPE clad doctors, documenting a bewildering global event with a fluidity and ambiguity. Likewise, Sarah Sparkes’ collages were created during Covid lockdown while teaching an online life drawing class. While the models were posing in their bedrooms on their beds, the students and Sarah drew them from their own domestic spaces, creating a voyeuristic intimacy. Sarah’s work while leading this class combined materials at hand such as spontaneously torn pages from Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe, and pieces of her own childhood wallpaper, remnants used repeatedly in her work for many years.

Andy Parsons created his drawings on site while he was Artist-in-Residence at Sligo University Hospital. The watercolors and drawings, in their present configuration, situate the viewer in the bed with a selection of people and equipment in orbit, a familiar and unsettling scenario to those finding themselves in a hospital bed. David Leapman and Jenny Hager, both known for their bold palettes and idiosyncratic abstractions, embrace bed within this tradition. Leapman’s bed becomes creature-ish, apt to scamper off animatedly, recalling strange and fantastical past events and future escapades. Hager investigates an equally animated liminal space that embodies the spectral, with the bed becoming the bound landscape.

Lee Maelzer and Lorraine Wake utilize limited palettes and heavy impasto to different ends. Wake revels in the ephemera of impasto paint, lushly breaking down the bed/ground boundary, creating an environment where intimacy, dreams, and memories take place, leaving the body to rest and the breath to quieten. Maelzer, a long-term painter of interiors, ruins, and abandoned places created this series from recent advertisements on Facebook Marketplace of rooms to be let in London, and through this use of impasto imbues the beds with weight in an otherwise spare and lonely environment.

Steph Goodger and Jorin Bossen explore moments of a final resting place. Goodger’s paintings of Lusitania’s staterooms and the perspective employed present a quiet remove haunted by our knowledge of the Lusitania and its passengers. A reader of Walter Benjamin, Goodger reflected on Benjamin’s “The pomp and the splendor which commodity producing society surrounds itself are not immune to dangers”. Bossen pays homage to his hometown Hollywood Western film history and Renaissance religious death of Christ paintings. By cropping the heads of the cowboys, Bossen emphasizes the inertness of the fallen figure and multiple possible narratives in such an immediate passing.

Please join us for "Alternate Monuments / Monumentos Alternativos"
Opening Reception Saturday April 27, 7-10 pm

Curated by Carolyn Mason and OJO MX ARTE

Artists: Carlos Álvarez-Montero, Ismael de Anda III, Lana Duong, Alfredo Esparza Cárdenas, MAPA Visual Lab (Mara García + Juan Pablo), Martha Naranjo Sandoval, Alicia Piller, and Stephanie Sherwood

In an era when monuments are being reevaluated and dismantled as cultural mores evolve, it’s an interesting time to look to artists for alternatives in our human quest to concretize our values and perhaps quell the inevitable impermanence around us. The artists in the exhibition are seeking out – even scavenging for – new grounds to explore meaning and fragility in the objects around them, all with a spirit of play.

Thank you to the Mexican Consulate of Los Angeles for their support.
Thank you to 400 Conejos & Creyente Mezcal for providing complimentary Mexican mezcal for the opening!

Please join us for "Internal Affairs"
Opening Reception Saturday April 6, 7-10 pm

Curated by Brian Thomas Jones

Internal Affairs is group exhibition of Durden and Ray members.
Come see what our members have been doing with their own practices.

Sunset in a shoebox is our collaboration with artists from Helsinki( Finland) , exploring bohemian philosophy by Galleria Raanka and Durden and Ray. Co-Curated by Stephanie Sherwood and Galleria Rankka

Artists: Mikko Paakkola, Marika Kaarna, Petri Hytönen, Aarno Rankka, Jyrki Riekki and Pekka & Teija Isorättyä (Helsinki) Justino Loza Gomez, Debby and Larry Kline, Stephanie Sherwood (Los Angeles)

Sunset in a shoebox features paintings, sculptures, installation and robotic art that track the lost wisdom of bohemians. It's a wild quest for perceiving the beauty of how one can ramble free on the Earth — free from institutions, restrictions, deadly taboos even though surrounded by the grayness of everyday life. This exhibition is a collaborative exhibition by a group of artists who are based in Helsinki (Finland), alongside artists from Los Angeles.

“Bohemians sought to live a life of creative freedom outside of materialism, violence, and other aspects of society they felt were corrupt.” This balancing on the fringes of one's own sanity and entering new worlds whilst keeping one's feet on Earth is apparent in the series of landscapes by Mikko Paakkola, which were painted at shoebox scale. Repeating a single act such as a small-scale landscape painting can allow you to recognize small moments of change and nuance in a way you may not if each action was wildly different from the previous.

Traveling from Helsinki, Finland, are seven artists from the rich community that has congregated around Galleria Rankka, an artist-run space with nearly 10 years of exhibits in the city. The magical realism of Marika Kaarna’s large paintings consist mainly of incidental encounters of mundane life. They imply a search through the altar of art, in the auroras borealis of visions and in deep dreams without negating everyday life. An installation of paintings by Petri Hytönen balance between the living, the dead, and madness. Hytönen’s ecstatic search spawns a Bohemian alter-ego who creates his path on the road yet stays on the surface without sinking completely into oblivion. The work of Aarno Rankka grapples with themes of labor: its intensity, the time it costs, necessary tools, commerce and faith. Laborious in their appearance, detailed figures hint at the amount of time and concentration necessary to create such objects; time which slips quickly through our fingers. Beasts and minions feast in the paintings and drawings of Jyrki Riekki. At most it can be reminiscent of baroque painting, but cut and shaken up for our own brutal, frightening age. Bohemian robot, portrait of the poet Charles Bukowski is an interactive robot sculpture by artist duo Pekka & Teija Isorättyä. The robot’s destructive features present the sublime imperfection of humanity.

Included in Sunset in a shoebox are four artists from Los Angeles, Justino Loza Gomez, Debby and Larry Kline and Stephanie Sherwood. Debby and Larry Kline, known as the Juggling Klines, create works which are political in nature and critical of larger systemic issues in America. Exemplifying a bohemian attitude, Consecrations of Gratitude by Justino Loza Gomez is a body of works created at bus stops around Los Angeles—star signs honoring friends made out of chewed bubble gum. Continuing the thread of works created in public without permission are works from Stephanie Sherwood’s Confine In Situ series which render loose, expressionistic paintings in sunset tones onto discarded furniture on streets and sidewalks.

Sunset in a shoebox honors the tradition of a bohemian lifestyle, which takes bravery and a commitment to following a creative path regardless of permission.

ADJACENCIES is a survey of the artists who work out of studios in the Bendix building.

Curated by Steven Wolkoff

Artists: Mark Acetelli, Jennifer Berkowitz, Gary Brewer, Cole Case, Jonah Elijah, Megan Geckler, Andrea Joki, Katy Krantz, Sophie Lee, Cybele Lyle, Aline Mare, Hagop Najarian, Nellie King Solomon, Robert Standish, Surge Witrön, Andre Yi

This exhibition examines the neighborhood of artists who share the Bendix building with Durden and Ray’s gallery. This show examines - and aims to foster - the community of artists within the Bendix building, and explores the wide variety of approaches to art making that occurs within the Bendix’s art studios.

Beyond Horizons

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 13th, 2024, 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Show Runs January 13th through February 4th, 2024

Curator: Jet Pascua

Artists:

Marsil Andjelov Al-Mahamid
Jojo Austria
Arezoo Bharthania
Tanya Busse
Joe Davidson
Dani Dodge
Eva Faché
Stein Henningsen
Ged Merino
Ina Otzko
Jet Pascua
Stephanie Sherwood

In "Beyond Horizons," we invite you to embark on a multifaceted exploration of landscape, transcending traditional perceptions to delve into the intricate interplay between geography, climate change, and political dynamics.

The exhibition unfolds against the backdrop of the collaboration and exchange between Los Angeles based artist collective, Durden & Ray and Small Projects, an artist-run initiative based in Tromsø in the Arctic Circle, a region emblematic of both natural beauty and geopolitical complexities.

Here, landscapes cease to be mere vistas; they become integral players in a narrative that unfolds at the intersection of climate change, border conflicts, and political polarities.

This exhibition challenges us to broaden our understanding of landscape beyond the picturesque, encouraging a nuanced appreciation of its role as a dynamic force that connects us all. "Beyond Horizons" beckons us to engage with landscapes not as passive observers but as active participants in the unfolding drama of our shared planet, urging us to contemplate the intricate relationships between location, climate change, border conflict, and political polarities that shape the landscapes we inhabit and, in turn, are shaped by.