“Fall-out Shelter” Gallery 60six annex

This 60SIX group show of paintings, drawing, sculpture, photography and video, features work around the theme of art as “fall-out shelter”... A place to contain or release energy. The exhibition takes place in an actual yoga studio housed in a historic artist live/work space. Notable musicians and artists have lived and worked in 455A Valencia, such as 60SIX artist and composer, Peter Whitehead, violinist, singer, Carla Kihlstedt and performer, comedian Whoopi Goldberg.

In Leigh Barbier’s drawing, “The Watcher” a cyclops-like woman observes the room, a quiet but powerful presence. She is exposed but modest. Both victim and heroine, she has balls…for hands. Suppression of power, containment of power, forces reaching in to steal or heal are illustrated in Barbier’s surrealistic work. Sally Smith’s drawings contain cathartic alchemy. In the large drawing “Golden Shower” she concocts the charcoal by burning pages from Trump’s “Art of the Deal”and Playboy magazine, mixed with urine, and uses a template of a drain cover to create a rhythmic vibrating field.  Donna Anderson Kam’s drawings juxtapose her subjects’(young girls) delicacy and innocence with a graphic toxicity, speaking to our living with a large level of daily denial.  Oliver DiCicco’s kinetic sculptures are styled in a purist modernist form, which contrasts with  the unpredictable randomness of their sound and motion. German artist Jürgen Trautwein’s video piece called “gif me a break” gives a nod to philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s ideas, questioning (among other things) whether humans will eventually become machines. Brent Willson presents a large abstract painting, “Entropica,” reminiscent of the painter Albert Oehlen’s energetic, automatic painting style.

Other artists include Heike Liss, Isabelle Maynard, Steve Molnar, Anne and Laina Terpstra, Dave King and Peter Whitehead.

Gwen Terpetra, gallery owner