#VSF Los Angeles

[longlistshort]

Currently at VSF LA are Sarah Ippolito’s new colorful sculptures inspired by aquatic creatures for her exhibition Liquid Realm.

From the gallery-

The ocean is what makes the earth habitable, without the ocean life is not possible, “in a way we’re all sea creatures” – Sylvia Earle

Los Angeles-based Ippolito’s exuberantly biomorphic sculptures are inspired by time spent underwater, immersed in contemplation of the umwelt of aquatic creatures and the central role of the oceans in the health and wellbeing of people and our planet. Divided between the &Milk project space and the VSF courtyard, Ippolito’s exhibition considers the differing sensory environments and inhabitants of the sunlit shallows and the expansive open ocean. While the ocean covers more than 70% of the planet’s surface and contains roughly 97% of Earth’s biosphere, life underwater and the nature of the ocean often feels alien. Ippolito’s works bring some of this vibrancy and abundance onto dry land.

Color and texture are central to Ippolito’s work – her sculptures are recognizable not only for their uncanny and whimsical shapes, but for her use of bright color, evocative texture, and shifts in scale. For Ippolito, color expresses exuberance, optimism, and vitality. Intricate and tactile textured surfaces are dynamic and invite curiosity and engagement. Scale is used as a way to disrupt expected hierarchies, the viewer may feel they have been shrunk or the forms they look at magnified; each scale relationship impacts the experience of her body in space and in relationship to others. Scale is also a key in our relationship to the ocean – In its vastness, the ocean feels as unknowable as outer space and yet, somehow, it is also as familiar as our own backyards. The lively nature of Ippolito’s work is underscored by the use of active verbs in the titles for all of her new works: Filtering, Undulating, and Fanning their names describe the range of movement implied by their forms.

In the courtyard, Ippolito presents her first cast bronze sculpture. Standing at just about the same height as the artist, the form blends shapes and textures from a Salp spiral (phylum Chordata) and the tentacles of Portuguese man o’ war (phylum Cnidaria.) Both “creatures” are colonies of individual organisms. The bold cobalt-blue figure stands erect, its tentacles meandering and sensing its surroundings. Nearby an installation of hand-formed ceramic shapes represents a bloom of Phytoplankton – tiny single celled organisms that drift in the upper layer of the ocean using photosynthesis to transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. The word “plankton” comes from the Greek word for “drifter” or “wanderer.” It’s estimated that roughly 50% of the oxygen on Earth is produced by oceanic phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are the primary producers of the ocean – offering food for a range of organisms from small filter feeders like salps to massive whale sharks. Phytoplankton also play a crucial role in regulating the atmosphere in the biological carbon pump – absorbing carbon dioxide at the surface and as they die they sink to the bottom (marine snow) and sequester carbon in the deep ocean. The forms in this piece are inspired by the most abundant types of phytoplankton – the diatoms, dinoflagellates, green algae, cyanobacteria, and coccolithophores.

In &Milk a group of table-top scaled works and a large figural work inspired by a range of creatures from the phylum Cnidaria (sea anemones, jellyfish, coral, sea fans) and phylum Annelida (feather duster and tube worms) are on view. These are some of the earliest life forms to evolve on the planet after phytoplankton transformed the atmosphere of the Earth to one hospitable for animal life – appearing between about 635 million and 515 million years ago, they have survived 5 mass extinctions. Abounding with color, these animals are sometimes naturally pigmented or get their distinctive coloration from symbiotic algae that live in their tissues. They possess a unique form of intelligence; operating without a brain and sometimes with rudimentary eyes. With their flexible tentacles that are sensitive to the slightest touch and vibrations they reach into the open water to filter feed plankton or capture small prey.

By reimagining marine organisms and their adaptations, Ippolito invites viewers to explore the hidden wonders of our oceans and consider the interconnectedness of all life. Her creative practice, rooted in direct observation and scientific exploration, embodies the potential of art to spark environmental reflection. In a world where the health of our oceans is increasingly vital, Ippolito’s work reminds us of our deep connection to the vast liquid realm that defines our planet.

This exhibition closes 10/19/24.

[nhlovesadri3]

Adriana Lima backstage at the vsfs 2007, wearing her show opening Blade Runner segment look, Kodak Theatre, Los Angeles, 15/11/07.

[kissinlima]

Adriana Lima for Vera Wang, 1998

[juies]

[victoriasmodels]

Gisele Bündchen, Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2006

[worthit965]

Dear NEVER EVER underestimate a girl who know how to wear undies

[vivent-les-topmodels]

nhlovesadri3

Adriana Lima on the vsfs 2007 afterparty pink carpet, Los Angeles, 16/11/07.

Adriana Lima

[mu-th-ur]

Slim Margins — Glen Wilson's solo presentation at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles which run until December 19 @dubarts @vsf #glenwilson #varioussmallfires #losangeles #losangelesexhibitions #photography #installation #art #contemporaryart #ofluxo #ofluxoselects #ofluxoplatform @ofluxoplatform (em LosAngeles,CA) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJTNSUAFFa0/?igshid=fjd6jtw7g1gr

[sexypinkon]

~Sexypink~ Che Lovelace’s latest work.

Che Lovelace is exhibiting now at the VSF Gallery, Los Angeles. 

[thenextartmovement]

Gallery focus: VSF Seoul

In April 2019, VSF opened a second location in the Hannam-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea with L.A. staples, Billy Al Bengston and Ed Ruscha. To welcome their international guests to Seoul, they crafted an incredible VIP program featuring a little glimpse into what’s chic in Seoul from curator lead tours of museums (LEEUM, Samsung Museum of Art, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea and Amore Pacific Corporation’s Museum, and more), traditional Korean markets to tasty restaurants.  

A bunch of American tourists in Seoul. :D

Quick stop at Gwangjang Market for snacks

View of the brand new VSF Seoul from across the street

Owner, Esther Kim Varet and Sara Hantman – Senior Director flew in from Los Angeles

Joseph Varet, Wendy Al, Billy Al Bengston and Esther Varet

Sr. Curator, Jan-Uk Lee, nice to see you in 3 cities in 1 week!

Love their coats!  Great turn out at the opening of VSF in Seoul.

Ed Ruscha, Wen Out for Cigret N Never Came Back, 2017, 2 x 19.75 in

Various Small Fires (VSF) is a gallery owned and operated by Esther Kim Varet with locations in Los Angeles, California and Seoul, South Korea. It is in its sixth year of programming.

In 2014, Johnston MarkLee Architects designed the current VSF building with nearly 5,000 sq-ft (465 sq-m) of exhibition space, including a unique sound corridor for year-round audio art programming. VSF is also one of the few commercial venues to have a dedicated outdoor gallery for large-scale sculpture and installation.

What I love about VSF is their commitment to social responsibility and sustainability. Over 75% of their artists are women. The gallery uses 100% solar energy to operate its exhibition spaces and goes to great lengths to reduce our carbon footprint and eliminate plastic by-products.

[longlistshort]

VSF gallery is currently showing The Harrisons’ Survival Piece #1: Air, Earth, Water, Interface: Annual Hog Pasture Mix, 1970-1971, part of The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art & Science Collide.

On Thursday, 10/17, a local pig will enter the grow box to turn over the pasture in an iteration of the 2012 performance that took place at The Geffen Contemporary at MoCA.

From the gallery-

The first in their visionary series of Survival Pieces, “Hog Pasture,” as it is known by Harrison’s fans, emerged from a direct dialog with the most visionary and boundary pushing artists of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The impact of the Earth Day movement and the nascent cultural awareness that human beings were rapidly depleting the planet’s natural resources ignited a deep and sincere conversation within the art world about the stakes of art-making in the post-war, post-1968 world.

While later survival pieces highlighted a culminating harvest feast, Survival Piece #1 is focused on growth. The rectangular form of the raised planter bed and the grid of grow lights above echo sculptural innovations by artists like Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Richard Morris;  however, Newton Harrison had by this time decided that a sculpture or a painting was not enough. His artwork needed to not only have a moral purpose, it needed to strive to restore the earth and protect the abundant future of humans on our planet.

In 1971, shortly after their first foray into ecological art, Making Earth (which VSF exhibited earlier this year at Frieze LA and is now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) Newton and Helen heard from David Antin that Virginia Gunter at the MFA Boston was curating a show titled Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Elements of Art and wanted to include their work alongside contemporaries including Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Hans Haacke, and others. Exploring ideas of growth and change, Gunter’s vision for the exhibition was meant to challenge conservative, formalist, Greenbergian ideas about art as well as expectations of the museum as an institution that primarily collected unchanging pictures and objects that somehow articulated the best ideas and techniques of the time in which they were made.

Interested in building on his use of artificial lights, Newton decided that he should actually grow something. He commissioned one of his painting students to look through seed catalogs to find a mixture that was “totally singular,” eventually landing on R.H. Shumway Seedsman’s Annual Hog Pasture Mix. In Boston, a large raised planter bed was built in a basement gallery of the museum, agricultural grow lights were installed in a parallel grid from the ceiling, a potent mix of manure, compost, worm castings, and other rich grow media were added to the planter bed, the seed mix was added, and a small pasture grew there with alarming speed. While Gunter wouldn’t allow a hog to come and graze the original hog pasture, subsequent exhibitions of the work, including Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 curated by Miwon Kwon and Phillip Kaiser at MoCA in 2012, have brought the work to its natural conclusion and invited a pig in to enjoy the rich, velvety mix of legumes and grasses. Similarly, VSF has invited a hog to harvest the indoor meadow during the exhibition’s closing ceremony on October 17, 2024. The remaining pasture, earthworms, and soil mix will be gifted to visitors. We hope that you will join us while our porcine guest enjoys the first survival piece feast envisioned by Helen and Newton Harrison.

[nhlovesadri3]

Adriana Lima on the red carpet of vsfs 2007 afterparty, Grand Ballroom, Kodak Theatre, Los Angeles, 15/11/07.

[taylorswiftstyle]

Favourite Outfits of All Time: Events

May 3, 2010 - Ralph Lauren @ 2010 Met Gala

September 13, 2010 - Miu Miu @ Easy A Los Angeles premiere

September 27, 2010 - Roberto Cavalli @ Roberto Cavalli SS2011 Fashion Show

December 10, 2011 - Reem Acra @ 27th Annual Symphony Ball

October 22, 2012 - Vintage @ Target RED release party

March 2, 2014 - Julien Macdonald @ Vanity Fair Oscar party

August 11, 2014 - Monique Lhuillier @ The Giver New York City premiere

December 2, 2014 - Zuhair Murad @ Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show after party

January 11, 2015 - Jenny Packham @ Golden Globes after party

February 28, 2016 - Alexandre Vauthier @ Vanity Fair Oscar party

In looking back over my Top 10 event choices, I’m actually extremely impressed with myself at the diversity of brands I’ve included here and that there isn’t one single repeat (with the exception of an event repeat, if you want to count that). 

I also unintentionally have put together an even split between neutrals and colour. Obviously, my love affair for green is in full force here as I couldn’t not include her adorable Miu Miu number here as well as my love for blondes in yellow being seen in that elegant golden Jenny Packham full-length gown. 

Her VSFS after-party look in couture Zuhair Murad and her flawless Alexandre Vauthier appearance at last year’s VF Oscar party should surprise no one as both of these looks were also received by TSS-ers with widespread acclaim. But, some may be most surprised by my inclusion of such an inconspicuous and plain vintage LBD. But the styling is what has always cemented that look in my Top 10. The inspiring decision to pair the vintage frock with an ultra-modern PVC pair of studded Louboutins was the perfect contrast, in my eyes. 

What do you think? Are any of your favourites here? 

[juies]

[tynatunis]

love @talkart 💭🐊🎨❤️🎈🎉💕 New @talkart!!! Russell & Robert meet leading artist #MathBass @MathPearlBass from their studio in Los Angeles, California. Bass is an artist known for fusing performance with paintings and sculptures using formal elements like solid colors, geometric imagery, raw materials, and visual symbols. Bass has exhibited internationally and is represented by #TanyaLeyton, Berlin, #VariousSmallFires, Seoul and #Vielmetter, Los Angeles. Math Bass (b. 1981, New York, NY, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans across painting, performance, sculpture, and video. Throughout the work of Math Bass, recognizable forms appear and yet turn abstract, becoming shapes rather than signifiers, like shadows manipulated by the sun. Repetition is used as a tool to foreground these forms as part of a visual lexicon Bass has been developing over the last several years in the Newz! series — where forms and symbols exist in a multitude of perspectives and (re)interpretation — suggesting the possibility of mutable meaning. Though graphic in the flatness of the forms, there is a crispness and lightness to Bass’s geometric abstraction–thin layers of opaque paint are delicately applied to the raw canvas. In their artistic practice, the artist explores breaking down the common boundaries found within the medium(s) and modes of presentation in order to actively engage the viewer in both surreal and everyday ways. Follow @MathPearlBass on Instagram and @TanyaLeighton, @VSF and @Vielmetter. For all #TalkArt requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com https://www.instagram.com/p/CSZw1wDjYiz/?utm_medium=tumblr

[victoriasmodels]

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2006