INCONVERSATION: Melanie Pullen + Shana Nys Dambrot - Wednesday @ 7PM

Signed copies of Melanie’s exhibition catalog "VOYEUR" will be available for purchase.

Doors open at 6PM and the talk will begin at 7PM.
There will be refreshments served complimentary of the gallery.
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
7:00 PM 9:00 PM
WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY

Please join us for a conversation between art writer Shana Nys Dambrot and photographer Melanie Pullen. The two will discuss Pullen’s work and her research of true, unsolved crimes through the Los Angeles and New York Coroner’s office archives. 

Giving herself a guideline, Pullen's subjects in her High Fashion Crime Scenes series were never post-1950 and were always unidentified “Jane Doe’s”. Due to her work and research, she is on the Los Angeles School of Forensic’s advisory board.

In her newest series, Voyeur, she expands upon this theme by commenting on the voyeuristic tendencies of the human condition.

As Dambrot writes, “Photographer Melanie Pullen uses the visual lexicon of editorial and couture photography, critiquing our society of sex, death, and spectacle. The contrast between beauty and ugliness animates the work and captures the guilty conscience of the viewer’s own imagination—a dynamic she pushes even farther in her more recent Voyeur series, in which the watchers (us), watch the watchers (in the portraits) as they watch their own unseen prey. Everyone is implicated, everyone is dressed to the nines, and no one is safe.

Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Downtown LA. Formerly the Arts Editor at the L.A. Weekly, she is the co-founder of 13ThingsLA, and a contributor to the Village Voice, Flaunt, Artillery, and other culture publications. She studied Art History at Vassar College, and is the recipient of the Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, the Mozaik Future Art Writers Prize, and the LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Critic of the Year award. Her surrealist novel Zen Psychosis (Griffith Moon) was published in 2020.

Melanie Pullen’s (b. 1975) photography has been shown in major museums and galleries internationally and is permanently in the holdings of many of the most prominent public and private collections around the world including: Colección Jump, Mexico City, Mexico; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Jacksonville, Florida; The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California; Nasher Museum of Contemporary Art, North Carolina; Howard Stein & the Forward Thinking Collection, New York, New York; Walker Art Center Museum, Minnesota; The Rand Collection, Santa Monica, California. Most recently the Getty Museum acquired several pieces from her High Fashion Crime Scenes which now reside in their permanent collection after being included in their exhibition: Icons of Style: 100 Years of Fashion Photography. 

INCONVERSATION: Andy Moses & Shana Nys Dambrot - Tomorrow @ 7PM

Refreshments will be served from 6-7PM. Talk will begin at 7PM. 


Andy Moses: Recent Paintings, is on view at the gallery through November, 11th.
Please RSVP to info@turnergallery.com

Andy Moses will have a Laguna Art Museum survey exhibition opening March 2026 and a survey exhibition opening in May of 2027 at MOAH.  MOAH recently acquired the 2010 painting Aqaba for their permanent collection.  

Mark your calendars and join us for an exciting evening of art and thought provoking conversation, as Andy Moses discusses his work and artistic journey with art critic, curator and author, Shana Nys Dambrot.



The two will discuss the artist's practice, spanning over thirty years and culminating in this excitingly ambitious new body of large-scale works.



Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Downtown LA. She is the Arts Editor for the L.A. Weekly, and a contributor to Flaunt, Artillery, and other culture publications. She studied Art History at Vassar College, curates and juries exhibitions, writes prolifically for exhibition catalogs and monographic publications, and speaks at galleries, schools, and cultural institutions nationally. She is the recipient of the 2022 Mozaik Future Art Writers Prize, the 2022 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, and the LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Critic of the Year award for 2022.


Andy Moses attended the legendary CalArts from 1979-1981, studying with John Baldessari, Michael Asher and Barbara Kruger. In 1982, Moses moved to New York where he worked as a studio assistant to Pat Steir and quickly became part of New York's nascent art scene. Moses began exhibiting with Annina Nosei Gallery, shortly after Jean-Michael Basquiat. During that time Moses also developed close ties with artists such as Jeff Koons, Marilyn Minter, Rudolf Stingel and Christopher Wool, who were also just emerging onto the scene.



After eighteen years in New York, Moses returned to Southern California in 2000, where the change in coasts led to a significant shift in his work. In New York, the artist's work had explored the macro / micro influences of nature, conveying a sense of gravitational and geologic forces. In returning to California, the scope of Moses’s work expanded, as he was once again inspired by the unique effects of light glancing off waves, and the vast sky-scapes he encountered on his daily drive down the Pacific Coast Highway. The artist began exploring materials that would capture the mercurial aspects of perception, where slight shifts in perspective would reveal dramatic shifts in impression. Accordingly, Moses’ work began to incorporate many of the qualities now associated with the Southern California Light and Space movement, where the work of art became less an “art object”, and more of a “catalyst” for one’s experience of what and how they are perceived. Suggesting panoramic space, Moses began introducing concave and shaped panels to further investigate how light and its wave-lengths would curl and flex with refractive paints. These bold new paintings quickly found their audience and brought Moses to the attention of museums and major collectors alike.

Andy Moses’ work is included in the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Buck Collection, Orange County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation. He currently lives and works in Venice, CA.