Art Platform - Los Angeles 2012

Rachel Lee Hovnanian, Motherboard 1 (detail),
Steel, cast metal, leather, in artist's frame

Visit us at Booths 706 & 719
VIP Preview: Thursday September 27, 2-5PM
Vernissage: Thursday September 27, 5-9PM
Friday-Sunday, September 28-30, 11AM-6PM

The Barker Hangar
3021 Airport Avenue
Santa Monica, California 90405
www.artplatform-losangeles.com

Leila Heller Gallery is pleased to participate in Art Platform – Los Angeles, the modern and contemporary art fair for Los Angeles, which debuts its second edition at the historic Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport from September 27 to 30. Located at booths 719 and 706 within the hangar, the gallery will feature artworks by Rachel Lee Hovnanian, Ran Hwang, Hadieh Shafie, Ayad Alkadhi and Farideh Lashai.

In her interactive installation piece, Café 2012, presented at booth 706, Rachel Lee Hovnanian presents a small neighborhood café in Texas. Or is it? There is what seems to be an authentic café aroma, but the fare is decidedly untraditional. The milk white liquid posing as coffee smells and tastes real, but is actually a chemical substance created in a lab. Also on view in the gallery’s main booth are works from Hovnanian’s Gates of Narcissus series.

Hadieh Shafie
White, Turquoise, Green, Gold, Yellow & Blue (6 Colors), 2012
Ink, acrylic and paper with printed & hand written Farsi Text Esheghe "Love"
36 in / 91.4 cm diameter

The multi-dimensional works of Hadieh Shafie resonate with the calligraphy and designs in Persian and Islamic art design and architecture. The realization of each composition is a painstaking process, resulting in art bursting with color, echoing the Sufi meditative prayer of the heart known as ‘kikhr’, which consists in repeated invocations of a single word, ‘love’. Displayed in concentric circles, Shafie’s work invites the viewer to become immersed in the color of the scrolls, capturing the spirit of the prayer.

Ran Hwang, Rest II, 2009
Buttons, beads, pins on wooden panel
108 x 60 in / 275 x 153 cm

Ran Hwang’s Rest II, 2009, depicts a Buddha covered with layers of lustrous silver buttons and beads intricately patterned to form the ornate figure. Hwang contrasts the figure’s solid form with a spattering of buttons and beads that fall from the edge of the work into the negative space that surrounds it. This notion of the artwork’s deterioration is common practice in Hwang’s repertoire as she reminds the viewer of the dichotomy of permanence and impermanence, and ultimately, the transience of life.