In their first exhibition in Los Angeles, artists S.J. Lee and Erik Sanner present cutting edge new media works.  Both artists have won awards, recently been featured in museums and are recognized in the Northwest and East Coast, respectively.

S.J. Lee presents two bodies of real-time, high definition video portraits and an interactive, conceptual work activated by text, email, or call. In 30 min slices of a life, Still Lives captures the elegiac rhythm of aging. Inspired by Goya's Black Paintings, these real-time presentations render the quiet struggle and endurance with pathos and honesty. Penelope, Cassandra, and Phaedra are a triptych of cultural stewardship, as expressed through the complex natures of human women in Greek myths. Contact investigates relationships, priority, and networking with a sculptural form composed of 26 pencil leads which burn away when someone reaches out to it. Through various forms of communication, the work attempts to maintain connections and ultimately asks for two things that are human in nature: Pay attention to me; Please don't forget about me.

Erik Sanner presents Pixelations - a new series of his "moving paintings" (dynamic installations  integrating traditional and contemporary media). Video montages are constantly recomposed by original software, and the resulting imagery is projected onto oil paintings.  Sanner writes "We are currently witnessing the death-throes of the age of the pixel...What began as a celebration and perhaps examination of the way we see paintings today gradually transformed into a eulogy for a temporal hiccup in display technology."

Both artists are instigating compelling and dynamic conversations around traditional media and new media arts.

Bios:  
Shortly after completing her Master of Fine Arts, SJ Lee was recognized by the Seattle Weekly as the “2006 Emerging Artist of the Year” for the “intelligence, emotion and sensuality” of her video art. Following her first solo exhibition at Lawrimore Project in 2007, Lee was named “An Artist to Watch” by Jori Finkel in Artnews. Her work has been exhibited nationally, at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, and Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, and internationally in Italy (Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, Salerno; and Artefiere Bologna, Bologna), and at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea. She was the winner of the 2010 Stranger Visual Art Genius Award. in 2011, as one of the recipients for the Northwest Contemporary Art Award, her work was recently exhibited at the Portland Art Museum. She will have a solo exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in 2012. Lee is represented by Lawrimore Project, Seattle; Myers Contemporary, Baltimore; and Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, Salerno. She lives and works in Seattle.

Erik Sanner is a visual artist living and working in New York City. Sanner’s work has recently been shown at The Danforth Museum (Massachusetts) and the Brooklyn Arts Council Gallery (New York). Sanner was awarded Manhattan Community Arts Fund grants in 2007 and 2009. Upcoming exhibits include projects at LICHT FELD 11 (Basel, 9/11), the Courtauld Institute of Art (London, 1/12), and the Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill (NY, 4/12). In New York he is represented by Emmanuel Fremin Gallery.  Sanner's overarching goal in all of his art is to expand our experience of painting by utilizing technology.

The young artist Charles Gitnick will also have art on display.