TONIGHT THE JILL JOY GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT ORGANIC INTEGRATION: ALINE MARE AND MICHAEL GIANCRISTIANO- 6-9Pm
CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITION IN LOS ANGELES. ON VIEW THROUGH DEC 3
curator’s statement
Aline Mare and Michael Giancristiano both deal in the currency of nature and through the application of their shared awareness of an inter-connected reality, their work transcends the very world that inspires it.
Included in this exhibition are works from Michael’s series, “Arctic Metamorphosis”. Their vast, white empty spaces recall an icy desolation and are punctuated with wound-like divots and abrasions. As the light plays across these three dimensional objects throughout the day, one gets the sense of a changing landscape. Despite this seeming inhospitable ground the surfaces sprout new growth in the form of plants that need little in the way of nourishment to thrive.
Beaten and scarred industrial plywood is rendered natural and elemental once more from his very human effort to shape reality. Michael states that he is addressing the evolution of the natural world, the new growth that happens even as the destruction of global warming takes place. “The ice is melting at an alarming rate and we have reached the tipping point from which there is no return. I don’t feel that there is anything we can do to stop the cycle of change that has been set into motion and I don’t view this as the end of the world but as a metamorphosis. These regions are waiting to evolve.” MG
While Michael speaks to the destruction/evolution of the natural world, there is in the experience of viewing his work, a metaphor of spiritual and emotional rebirth. His sculptural reliefs convey an inherent message of re-formation and new growth; as such they become a metaphor for the inner and outer life. As Michael bangs and shapes these prefab industrial materials in his effort to express something evolutionary out of the tragedy of global warming, the process recalls what we as individuals have the choice to do when we undergo loss and change: to remake ourselves into something new and perhaps better, closer to the truth of ourselves.
Aline Mare’s work incorporates the minutiae of existence - seed pods, stems, and leaves (all captured in extreme detail) on a backdrop of the expanse of the atmosphere - weather images from NASA and hand painted backgrounds. In rendering this level of divine precision against transcendent, color and texture filled backdrops she gives us a vision of an infinite and complex beauty against which the details of the natural world play out.
Aline’s work is informed by a technical journey that in the end provides a luminous visceral and emotional experience. “Using the illumination of the scanning machine as an original light source, I use digital scanning as a contemporary interpretation of the 19th-century photographic process of cliché verre, literally a Greek phrase meaning, “glass picture”. The distinct layering of image and sensory background amplifies the direct beauty of the natural object as it interfaces with technology in a kind of modern hybridization of an historic photographic process with hand drawn painting.” – AM
Aline embarked on the creation of some the works included in this show in an effort to find grounding and connectedness in her new city, Los Angeles. While her work speaks to community and rootedness with its reference to the abundant plant life of a costal desert, when viewing Aline’s work, I am overcome by the sense of the beauty and mystery of life and a universe that is governed by a detailed, logical and yet random process. This sense is furthered by her most recent inclusion of crystals in her “Cryst-aline Series” (2016) which she states “examines crystal growth as a metaphor for transformation.” AM
Aline’s work highlights organic elements in a nascent universe almost as though we are contemporaneously experiencing the big bang and the finished resultant life that was created right down to the very last detail and in so doing it defies time. The depth of blue in “Cloud Seeds” makes one think of a wormhole, or a blank space in the time-space continuum full of infinite possibility; as though creation is spinning out of this place of the unknown.
–- Jill Joy, Curator & Gallery Director, Jill Joy Gallery
Born in Los Angeles California, Michael Giancristiano is an accomplished artist with over 25 years of exhibition history. He is best known for his sculpted and deconstructed wall reliefs that explore nature through the medium of plywood. He has exhibited internationally as well as nationally, has won numerous awards and can be found in many private and corporate collections. In addition, he has served on the Advisory Board of the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art. Currently Michael sits on the Board of Directors of the Inglewood based, "Van Hook Foundation".
Aline Mare began her career in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, coming out of a background of theatre, performance and installation art. She was an early member of Collaborative Projects, a collective formed in downtown New York City and performed in a multi-media partnership, Erotic Psyche, a film and music extravaganza exploring the body and the senses, which toured extensively in Manhattan and Europe throughout the 80s. She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1990 and has received several grants and residencies. New mixed–media works have been exhibited at Turtle Bay Museum, Santa Monica Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, Printed Matter and James Fuentes Gallery in New York and an upcoming solo show at MOAH in 2017.