The Art of Collecting Part I

FEBRUARY 13th - MAY 26th, 2020

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to present “The Art of Collecting” a selection of highly desirable individual artworks assembled from private collections and artist studios over the past 12 months. The artists are all from different generations and are wholly unalike, in approach, media and materials, and yet share a commitment to formal beauty based on exquisite execution and making as well as a strong conceptual foundation.

The exhibition features work mostly of artists who have shown or been associated with Shoshana Wayne Gallery over 35 years, as well as new artists the gallery is proud to present for the first time. The artists include Stephen Antonakos, Nicole Eisenman, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Michael Joo, Nina Katchadourian, Tadaaki Kuwayama, Rachel Lachowicz, Orly Maiberg, Mariko Mori, Rakuko Naito, Kiki Smith, and Yu Jinyoung.

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This is the third exhibition at the gallery’s temporary space on West Jefferson Boulevard in anticipation of the opening of a refurbished 7,000 square foot dedicated gallery a few doors down the street in late spring. “In anticipation of our move to the new space we wanted to highlight the depth and quality of artists with whom the gallery has worked over the past 35 years here in Los Angeles as well as point towards some of the new and exciting directions in our program for the future,” says gallery owner Shoshana Blank.

The artists and works span the past 50 years of art making with the earliest work from 1968 by Tadaaki Kuwayama, who along with his partner Rakuko Naito both began their careers as Minimal and Conceptual painters in the 1950s in New York and refined their techniques and skills over the following decades. Kuwayama’s TK8339-3/4-'68 (Mustard Yellow) retains the vibrancy and freshness of when it was painted in 1968, with the newly introduced material of acrylic paint, given to Kuwayama by painter Sam Francis to, he recalls, “try out and see how it looks”.

The exhibition includes the works of another senior, important New York City artist from the later 20th century, Stephen Antonakos. For this exhibition one of his signature works on paper from 1970s, Untitled Cut JU#5, echoes his seminal neon canvasses of the same period that employ offset strips of light against an abstract painted backdrop.

Gallery artists Rachel Lachowicz and Sabrina Gschwandtner complement the exhibition along with significant works by Michael Joo, Orly Maiberg, and Yu Jinyoung. Maiberg is a gifted Israeli artist showing in Los Angeles for the first time. “‘The Art of Collecting’ is about slowing the viewing of art down, taking time to really contemplate individual works in a gallery. But it is also about discovery, which has been a part of the DNA of the gallery since the beginning,” Mrs. Blank says.