Melanie Pullen + Shana Nys Dambrot - INCONVERSATION - June 19 @ 7PM

Please join us Wednesday, June 19, 2024 at 7PM for a conversation between art writer Shana Nys Dambrot and photographer Melanie Pullen.  Doors open at 6PM and the talk will begin at 7PM.  There will be refreshments served complimentary of the gallery and signed copies of Melanie’s exhibition catalog VOYEUR will be available for purchase.  

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.

Her work has been featured in a number of publications including: The New York Times T Magazine; Los Angeles Times; Vogue; Esquire Magazine; ELLE; London’s Independent; Spin Magazine; W Magazine; Flaunt Magazine; 1814 Magazine; Rolling Stone Magazine and Vanity Fair. Pullen has published three photography books. Melanie was awarded the D&D Yellow Pencil Award. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Pullen has published numerous books of her photography with notable fine-art publishers such as: Nazraeli Press and most recently in 2020 with Kodansha Press, in Japan.

Íslenskir Fossar exhibition walkthrough with Jay Mark Johnson - This Saturday During Spring Open at Bergamot Station

Join us this Saturday, May 13th from 2:30-4pm for an artist-led walk-through with Jay Mark Johnson. Jay will be leading a tour of his recent exhibition ÍSLENSKIR FOSSAR. Ten spectacular large-format images of waterfalls and geysers are selected from the most recent photographic artworks in the artist’s two-decades-long production of paradigm-shifting timeline imagery. A cocktail reception will begin at 2:30pm, and the walk-through will commence from 3-4pm.

JAY MARK JOHNSON ÍSLENSKIR FOSSAR
Artist Led Exhibition Walkthrough
Saturday, May 13, 2023
Cocktail Reception Starts at 2:30PM
Artist Led Talk and Exhibition Walkthrough Starts at 3PM

Additionally, Bergamot Station Arts Center is hosting its annual Spring Open on Saturday, May 13th. Over 20+ galleries and cultural venues will be hosting special artist talks, walk-thrus, and openings, beginning at 10AM and lasting ALL DAY. Be sure to stick around for the comedy shows, food trucks, and a special live performance by the Santa Monica Youth Orchestra. 

Opening Tonight, Saturday, April 8, 5-8pm - Jay Mark Johnson: Íslenskir Fossar

Jay Mark Johnson
Íslenskir Fossar

April 8 - May 27, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 8, 5-8PM

“Utilizing sophisticated exposure techniques…Johnson has been touring the world’s nature reserves to produce these critical images and many others like them. The images prove just how serious he is.” - Ingeborg Ruthe, Berliner Zeitung

SELJALANDFOSS #3 (Rangàrthing Ekstra, Iceland), 2021, Archival pigment on paper mounted on aluminum with UV laminate, 43” x 120” frameless Edition of 3; 25” x 64” frameless Editions of 9

Santa Monica, CA - The William Turner Gallery is pleased to present the fourth solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based, multi-disciplinary artist Jay Mark Johnson. Ten spectacular large format images of waterfalls and geysers are selected from the most recent photographic artworks in the artist’s two-decades-long production of paradigm-shifting timeline imagery.

The artworks presented in ÍSLENSKIR FOSSAR were produced in Iceland in October of 2021 towards the end of global travel restrictions. Traversing the stark volcanic landscape, Johnson focused on the atmospheric turbulence of rushing waters and freezing air emanating from the region’s waterfalls and geysers, capturing the dramatic interplay of the spectacular geological events within the seasonal low-raking “golden hour” light. In the Icelandic language, the word “foss” means waterfall—with  roots in the Nordic word for “force”. In his exploration of the possibilities for timeline photography, Johnson has repeatedly turned his attentions to marveling at the forces of nature, specifically the reciprocal physical interactions of light, water and atmosphere found in coastal waves and inland waterfalls.

FAXAFOSS #2 (Faxi, Iceland), 2021, Archival pigment on paper mounted on aluminum with UV laminate, 60” x 60” framed Edition of 3, 30” x 30” framed Edition of 9

Johnson has always been fascinated at how the transmorphisms of his slit scan photographs—because they are both recognizable and strange—challenge the viewer’s expectations, forcing recognition of both the truthfulness and validity of alternative perspectives. Over the years he has worked to exploit both the refraction and diffraction of light waves as they encounter objects out in the environment and within the camera itself. Working close to the billowing plumes of waterfalls he plays with the naturally occurring displays of banded light waves visible in rainbow-like color patterns. He “paints” with the incoming color spectrum emanating from the outer reaches of the waterfalls, from the water as it crashes against rocks, and from the space between the falls and the shear rock face behind. Recorded within his inventive temporal delineations, the resulting artworks are as startling and unimaginable as they are eye-popping and poetic.

Each image in the exhibition bears distinct site specific features. For SELJALANDSFOSS #3, Johnson carried his camera equipment into a giant cavern behind a monolithic, 200 foot high cascade. Turning to look back outward, he captured an ephemeral curtain—a delicate and translucent waterwall—through which one magically views a wide horizontal stretch of the distant azure sky. In SKÓGAFOSS, a rainbow materializes through the viscous spray at the heel of the cataract while the volcanic substrate immediately behind the falls is refracted into muted color striations. In GEYSER #1, an abrupt eruption of a massive thermogenic jet sprays its sulphured-green waters skyward and then, vanishing quickly, dissipates into the low-hanging overcast fog. Two of the images in the show were produced at Stewart Falls in Sundance, Utah while another was recorded on the Big Island in Hawaii.

FAXAFOSS #3 (Faxi, Iceland), 2021, Archival pigment on paper mounted on aluminum with UV laminate, 40” x 106” frameless Edition of 3; 31” x 81” framed Edition of 9

Held by prestigious private institutions and public collections throughout the U.S. and Europe, Johnson’s work has been exhibited and collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Art Institute of Chicago, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Langen Foundation and Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe.                

Johnson was born in 1955 in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Since 1996 Johnson has resided intermittently in Paris, Antwerp, Rome and rural Italy.  He maintains studios in both the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles and Uptown New Orleans where he draws, paints, sculpts and writes.

#jaymarkjohnson

Julian Lennon: Atmospheria Catalog Now Available Digitally & in Print

William Turner Gallery is please to present the catalog for Julian Lennon’s exhibition Atmospheria. The catalog is available to view using the button below and a print version (36 pages fully illustrated) is available by contacting the gallery.

Lennon’s photographs serve as allegorical vehicles in this time of heightened awareness for our planet’s peril.In surveilling these ever-changing skies, Atmospheria celebrates the beauty of these vaporous vistas to inspire us to better revere and protect them.

The collection is suffused with a sense of wonder and awe at the majesty of natural phenomena. Each image simultaneously evokes feelings of sweeping grandeur and indefinable yearning. Luminary, shape-shifting clouds, distinguished by the combings and crests of light and shadow, speak with gravitas and elegance.

A portion of the proceeds from Atmospheria will benefit The White Feather Foundation (TWFF), Lennon’s nonprofit organization. Since its inception in 2007, TWFF has championed conservation projects worldwide.The foundation raises funds for Indigenous, environmental, education, health and clean water projects around the world. TWFF has saved native lands from being taken from Indigenous groups; brought clean water to developing communities; provided girls with educational scholarships; helped furnish and build schools in underprivileged areas; brought mobile ambulances to remote villages; assisted with disaster relief and brought meaningful social justice films to light.