Skies of Fruitful Nights
Visions of new and impossible futures are the threads from which dreams are made. In the group exhibition Skies of Fruitful Nights, dreamy figurative artworks create doorways to worlds giving the viewers’ imaginations vast fields in which to run. Hair becomes a portal to a street corner; swimmers bathe in the sunshine atop tasty cupcakes; lanky bronze hands hold lost souls; all these images and more delight the eyes and captivate the hearts of the viewers who are whisked away by these wondrous works.
Elise Remender captures the romantic glamour of a bygone era in her contemporary figurative paintings. Fantasy, mid-century fashion, and the glamour of travel and coastal living inform soft brush strokes reminiscent of vintage advertisements and dusted sunlight. Remender grew up in Phoenix, Arizona: “Everyone had a pool and I was drawn to the interplay between the reflected light and turquoise color of the water.” The dreamlike quality of shimmering turquoise pools inspired Elise to imagine a fantasy of timeless beauty and the liberation of endless summer light.
Ruxandra Cristina Bocin-Dumitriu was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1979 and was always fascinated by two, otherwise distinct, areas: art and technology. Studying both meant the artist got in very close contact with both hard programming (C++, Java, artificial intelligence) and pure graphic art studies. The unusual combination led to an ease of expression through technology as well as a special take on visual metaphors. Dumitriu's elected themes investigate perception mechanisms, digital dimensions and technologies, media and broadcasting issues, surveillance society, and societal paradigm shifts generated by new technologies.
Eddy Lee’s figurative surrealist portrait paintings on exposed wood depict emotive sirens who evoke a sense of mystery and seductiveness. The artist’s work is inspired by the works of Audrey Kawasaki, lifestyle illustrators of the 60’s such as Robert McGinnis and Bob Peak, and anime. Lee’s colorful, intriguing women are painted with acrylic and gouache on hand-built cradled wood panels. Originally from Seattle, Washington, Eddy Lee relocated to Los Angeles in late 2012 to pursue a full-time career as a fine artist.
Originally a ceramicist, Jennyfer Stratman replaced fired clay with larger-scale bronze, steel, and mixed media sculptures yet retained a delicacy, intimacy, and intricacy imbued from the ceramic process. There is a metaphorical interplay between the natural imagery Stratman uses and its multiple meanings. Particularly, the artist imagines trees and branches as a figurative link between the natural environment and our physical presence. The implied internal landscape of the body can also be reflected in how our surroundings from birth affect our sense of identity. Today she is a full-time established artist and splits her time between her studios in Phoenix and Melbourne.
Born in Chile in 1980, Sebastian Riffo Montenegro is a visual artist that also currently works as an Art Director in Marketing and Advertising. Maintaining a lucrative career with each trajectory he takes, Montenegro maintains a solid production of artworks that criticize consumer society and socially constructed beliefs. By passing images of artificial products through acrylic paint to create a representation of an object, they lose their programmed expiration and become timeless reflections of consumption. . Through pictorial allegories, the paintings provoke the need to discern new meaning and awaken the tacit human condition of free will.
Since the opening of Artplex Gallery in 2018, the gallery continues to be one of the world's leading art galleries specializing in high-quality, original contemporary art representing a broad spectrum of major international artists. Right at home in West Hollywood and within immediate proximity to its sister gallery Artspace Warehouse, Artplex Gallery is an expansive modern space that specializes in international urban, pop, graffiti, figurative, and abstract art catering to the visual impact.
