"Sex in Deep Space: The Art of Dianna Cohen, Jason Eoff, Barrie Goshko, David Allan Peters, Michael Salerno"
2003-08-08 until 2003-08-30
City Gallery
West Hollywood, CA, USA United States of America

Even with the over-saturation of sexual imagery in commercial culture, in the hands of artists it can serve as an entry point to tremendous depths of feeling and perception. That feeling of being utterly transported by a work of art unites the pieces of five disparate artists in a special exhibition, Sex in Deep Space, at City Gallery in West Hollywood. Mounted by Marc Arranaga and Chip Tom, two of L.A.s most innovative independent curators, Sex in Deep Space features the art of Dianna Cohen, Jason Eoff, Barrie Goshko, David Allan Peters, and Michael Salerno.

Dianna Cohens medium, the plastic shopping bag, may seem to be the farthest thing from a sensual magic carpet. In her hands, they become playfully asymmetrical and joyously multicolored constructions, offering tactile temptation as they lay flat against or spill off the wall in voluptuous folds. Still embodying the abstract principles that drive a consumer economy, Cohens ostensibly trashy materials take on undreamed-of seductive qualities.

Jason Eoff plays with resins to create pieces with glossy, candy-like surfaces replete with stars and asteroids. His paintings, with their lickable glazes, simultaneously connote the interrelated, transporting pleasures of the palate and the pudenda.

Combining traditional media with digital technology, Barrie Goshko manipulates small pieces of the natural world to expose the intricacies and oddities of the everyday. Ordinary flowers resemble alien fauna; and for all of her scientific examination, Goshkos lush imagery, often with bright blood-red backgrounds, evokes the surge and pulse of sex and reproduction in nature.

The paintings of David Allen Peters represent excavations into a brilliantly sensual geology. He applies layer upon layer of paint, finishing off with a slick, high-gloss black surface. He then chisels into the black surface to expose riotous colors, suggesting our fascination with diving into space and the need to discover and connect with new forms of life.

Michael Salernos simple lines strive for an authentic experience free from any concern other than self-exploration. Automatic and repetitive linear gestures build overall compositions of atmospheric color fields, each generating a building tension for the eye, leading the viewer to distant landscapes, situations and locales of the imagination.

Art historian Marc Arranaga became the curator of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Centers Advocate Gallery in 1999. Under his leadership, the Gallery has undertaken collaborative work with community organizations to explore a wide array of histories, cultures, and worldviews. In 2002, he created an academic lecture series aimed at providing first-hand opportunities to engage with emerging scholarship in the fields of art history and cultural studies. An independent curator, he now serves as the Gallerys Curator in Residence.

Chip Tom is an independent curator with 20 years experience in the contemporary art field. He has curated exhibitions at the Centre Dart Contemporain in Geneva, Switzerland, as well as at numerous museums and galleries in the United States.

IMAGE
Jason Eoff
The Kraken of the Seas (detail)
Oil on resin on panel
2002
20 x 96 inches

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in California