Pattern | Nature

Edward Cella Art & Architecture presents Pattern | Nature, a group exhibition featuring new and recent works by Adam Berg, Kendell Carter, Wosene Worke Kosrof, Constance Mallinson, Brad Miller, Eamon O’Kane, Patti Oleon, Ruth Pastine, Mary Anna Pomonis, Alex Rasmussen, Matthias Reinmuth, Aili Schmeltz, Chris Trueman, and Bettina Weiß. 

For centuries artists have found inspiration in nature, and in doing so focused our attention on the remarkable and powerful visual characteristics of the terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric environments that both surround and nurture us. As humankind’s understanding of the rhythms, effects, and structures of these complex physical, chemical, and biotic systems have grown over the past century; artists have in turn profoundly generated form making possibilities advancing new idioms of abstraction. Pattern | Nature underscores the parallel and contrasting visual thinking within the work of these fourteen artists and considers the mutually informing relationships of pattern, abstraction and figuration in their paintings and sculptures.

Radiating light from space reveals the infinite spectrums here on earth, our sky a portal to perceive ever changing shifts in color’s temperature, hue, and value. For artists like Ruth Pastine, Matthias Reinmuth, and Chris Trueman the boundless possibility of color is a focus of their allied practices. Envisioning the canvas as an experiment, these artists seek to assess and reformat pure light and color in systematic examinations. In distinct ways, each alchemically transforms mundane canvas into dazzling and radiant lenses composed of harmonic fields or filtered layers made only of pigment applied in innovative ways.

The aquatic realm is a world filled with structures that congregate and gestate life itself. Wosene Worke Kosrof’s painting, In the Reef, evokes the boundless and majestic intermingling under the sea – a welcomed outcome of the artist’s spontaneous and open-ended painting practice. For others like Brad Miller and Alex Rasmussen, the recurring shapes of biotic organisms and waves forces inform their sculptural practices developed across their lifetime in ongoing systems advanced with both physical and technological innovations in their respective mediums of clay and aluminum.

On land, humankind has built many diverse types of structures across time and geography. For Eamon O’Kane, Patti Oleon and Aili Schmeltz these constructions, by design frame complex relationships with the natural world. For Pomonis, the temples of the ancient world are spaces where the language of light and spirituality create ever reverberate patterns found in her hard-edge paintings. Modern Architecture’s promise of harmony with Nature – and consequent shortcomings – animate the painterly investigation of O’Kane, Oleon and Schmeltz. Be it in the work of high style architects like Richard Neutra or the mid-century, vernacular architecture of the urban and suburban sprawl of the American West, these artists explore cycles of history alongside ambiguities and fictions manufactured in the iconography of these buildings in our collective unconscious.

For Adam Berg and Bettina Weiß, an interest in the inner geometry of nature reflected in processes at both the micro and macrocosmic level, organize their artmaking practices. Lured by circular shaped canvass and forms, Berg and Weiß create painting systems that are at once non-representational but also evoke cosmological maps, sacred geometries and radiating waves found in the power of the elements themselves. This invisible energy is an unexpected tap source for Kendell Carter who channels his meditative practice to galvanize his poured and cast painting and gilt assemblage sculptures as power objects concentrated on changing cultural and social conditions.

The seminal inspiration for Pattern | Nature is represented in the exhibition by a historic painting created early in art making practices of Constance Mallinson. Conceived on a vast surface laboriously built up of thousands and thousands of tiny marks of a seeming infinite array of colors placed sided by side, only the viewer’s movement and position begin to resolve and refocus the painting. For Mallinson, paintings from this series created in the early 1980s simultaneously evoke the minimalist art making approaches which first animated her artwork, but also track her efforts to create a more personal vocabulary as a female artist repositioning entirely decorative and domestic motifs from weaving and sewing. A synthesis of minimalism and maximalism, pattern and content this painting carves a way forward which supports, intertwines with, and fosters the reimagination of nature and its forms in the work of the other artists on view.

Installed at the Thomas Lavin Showroom at the Pacific Design Center Pattern | Nature is the tenth of an on-going sequence of both solo and group exhibitions curated by gallerist, Edward Cella in collaboration with the Thomas Lavin Showroom since 2019. Through regular presentation of new and notable contemporary artists; the ongoing series seeks to open a dialog between artists, designer professionals and collectors in Los Angeles and beyond.

Please watch for our forthcoming announcement for in person reception for the artists. 

Pattern | Nature

Edward Cella Gallery @ The Thomas Lavin Showroom

8687 Melrose Ave, Suite B310

West Hollywood, CA 90069

On View Monday Though Friday 9 AM to 5 PM