September 3 through October 29, 2022
Extended through October 29, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 3, 6-9 pm
The war is over, the artists have regrouped and rebuilt, and can now finally take stock of what was lost. It turns out, a lot.
Following iterations like Aftermath, Unification, and War, Bermudez Projects’ long-running biennial, SPACELAND, returns with its sixth chapter, SPACELAND VI: Requiem. The exhibit follows War, in which a rising tide of able young creators battled the artistic hierarchy of Los Angeles. But, as anyone who lived through the Trump and Pandemic eras will tell you, fighting the good fight when the world is crumbling isn’t easy, and like everyone else, we’ve been sustaining casualties all around us.
Requiem unites many of the artistic stalwarts from SPACELANDs past, including Amanda Beckmann, Enrique Castrejon, Emmanuel Crespo, Leticia Maldonado, Cody Norris, Josh Patterson, Jesse K. Phillips, John S. Rabe, and Erynn Richardson. But, it also welcomes a new cadre of creatives, like Francesca Bifulco, Kess Kin, Robert Martin, and Francisco Palomares. And you’ll find all their work dealing with the varied layers of life beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, ecological concerns, personal tragedies and triumphs.
Requiem is equal parts art exhibit and a mass of remembrance with paintings, sculpture, neon, collage, and installation offering us a deeper insight to the artists’ personal lives.
Highlights include:
Francesca Bifulco’s Nero Apperente (2020), a monumental mixed media installation of burned wood and acrylic with dry leaves overhanging.
“With this series I turn my energy inward to explore the effects of personal loss, like my father’s sudden passing. As I am experiencing what it means to rise from the ashes, this series has become about pain, loss, and the preservation of love and memory. It is about all the little steps in the bigger thing through which we must progress; which is as personal as it is collective.” – Francesca Bifulco
Enrique Castrejon’s Memorial Wreath to Unidentified Migrants Who Crossed the Border (2020), a life-size funeral wreath comprised of paper, ink, graphite, steel pins, and foam core.
“This wreath was created to remember those [who] passed away on their journey to seek a better life. It interweaves data within the floral arrangement that allows viewers to read information about the unidentified deceased – who died alone – noting their location and cause of death. It’s a piece that also reflects my own experience crossing the border with my mother at age 6, 44 years ago and reaction to US immigration policies that have created family separations and dangerous journeys. It could’ve been us. Although crossing the border was different back then, we were fortunate to make it through together, unharmed. I cannot help but remember the five anonymous men also on this journey along with el coyote, guiding us through a path somewhere from [Tijuana] along the Mexican and California border. I remember being carried by these men and told not to fall asleep; crossing the river on shoulders; and hiding in bushes from helicopters; running to a getaway car, to a halfway home, [and then] finally the next morning into the trunk of car with 3 men underneath us, until we made it past checkpoints.” – Enrique Castrejon.
Leticia Maldonado’s Pyromantic Communication, a striking neon work representing creative expression actualizing in the form of a fiery rose.
“Pyromantic Communication is my visual representation of the creative line of fire from the muse to the artist. I wanted to depict it like a lightning strike of inspiration across the accelerant of imagination. There is an image in the flames, but it’s not obvious and certainly open to interpretation, in the way that pyromancy uses fire for divination.” – Leticia Maldonado.
And, John S. Rabe’s Nostalgia, a multimedia installation representing the sitting room of an everyday witness to our time. Rabe’s manipulated photos speak to the loss of family, friends, and places … and to the simple loneliness of existence. Each photo – from portraits of family dogs that passed during the pandemic, to views of one of LA’s historic cemeteries, to a new photo of Sylvia, a Lincoln Heights resident who has clearly lived – lives in a vintage picture frame Rabe sourced from across Southern California.
“As Paul Auster once wrote, ‘Reach a certain moment in your life, and you discover that your days are spent as much with the dead as they are with the living.’ And I’d add that I’m okay with that. What we choose to frame and put on our walls is a testament to what we wish to remember, an evocation of the world we want to live in. In a sense, it’s time travel: for a moment or two, as you sit and gaze at your favorite photos, you call back yesterday and return to the time when, you imagine, life was a little bit better. Or, perhaps you’re conjuring the subjects forward, so they can be with you in your present life. Either way they are part of you, and deserve a spot on your wall of nostalgia.” – John S. Rabe
Since it began as a celebration of Los Angeles in 2012, Bermudez Project’s SPACELAND Biennial has become a highly-anticipated feature of the gallery’s artistic programming. Presenting artworks made specifically to represent the biennial’s theme of that year, SPACELAND highlights the artists’ technical, philosophical, and artistic processes, as well as the ever-changing faces of Los Angeles.
As Julian Bermudez writes, “This is the sixth chapter in the tenth year of our presenting this ever-continuing multi-exhibit storyline examining, celebrating, and critiquing the complex nuances of Los Angeles, the art world, and the artists working hard to make an impact. This story is nowhere near finished yet. There are many more chapters that will be explored.”
