Winston Wächter Fine Art: Art Los Angeles Contemporary

Winston Wächter Fine Art

Art Los Angeles Contemporary January 26 – 29, 2017 Barker Hanger, Los Angeles

Winston Wächter is a fine art gallery with exhibition spaces in Seattle and New York City. Established in 1995 by Stacey Winston Levitan and Christine Wächter-Campbell, the gallery represents over thirty contemporary artists who work in a variety of media including painting, photography, sculpture, and multimedia. With over thirty years of experience, Stacey Winston-Levitan brings a depth of knowledge of the arts community, and the unique perspective of the Pacific Northwest.

For Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2017, Winston Wächter Seattle will focus on process driven artists Annie Morris, Miya Ando and Andrew Casto, all whom use color and texture with elegant and diverse results. Each has a deeply personal relationship with their medium and material, creating ethereal paintings, gravity defying sculpture and organic forms. The conversation between these artists urges us to look beyond the expected.

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jessica@winstonwachter.com

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For Morris, drawing has always been an instinctual act, something natural and also comforting. It is the place she returns to as an artist. The Wall Drawings are a way for Morris to connect even further with her expressions. As sculptures her drawings become more physically tangible and permanent. As with all of her artworks, Morris continues to use symbolic imagery to explore themes of hope and renewed life.

Morris’ sculptures are towers shaped from plaster; sand, and painted with raw pigment to resemble a three-dimensional artist’s palette. Inspired by her strength from personal struggles, Morris chooses to focus on the hopefulness and vibrancy of life. The seemingly weightless forms are a metaphor for pure joy and the ability to conquer the impossible. Each layer of her towers teeters over the other, threatening to fall, yet gently supporting each other’s balance.

Since completing her degree from École des Beaux-Arts Paris, Morris has exhibited at The Royal Academy, London; Baku MoMA, Azerbaijan and The New Art Gallery, Walsall and Tate Gallery, St Ives.

Opposite page: Night Drawing 2016 70 x 95 inches steel, UV curing ink, neodymium magnets Edition of 5 Stack 7, Ultramarine Purple 2016 77 x variable inches Pigment, metal, concrete, plaster, sand Stack 11, Studio Blue Dark 2016 126 x variable inches Pigment, metal, concrete, plaster, sand

“My current body of work involves an investigation into dialogues concerning extant negative forces in our lives, and to what degree the phenomenological ramifications of responsibilities and stress shape us physically, mentally, and emotionally. The formal language present in this analysis is based on a material study of erosion and geological processes translated into ceramic and mixed media objects. I seek a purposeful link between macrocosmic environmental change, and interruptions in our otherwise routine existence. Within this inquiry, alternative and diverse construction methods are emphasized as tools of fresh, genuine expression in the creation of dynamic assemblages of great fragility. The foundation of this exploration is a desire to uncover the sublime in these moments of incongruity; the rush of presence into experience that might otherwise remain banal and ordinary, brought on by perceived inconvenience. My work asserts that it is possible for our daily vexations to illuminate the power of the present moment – something we all too often fail to notice.

At its best, this investigation becomes collaborative in nature, and includes input from other artists to assist in problem solving, critical feedback on the relevance of one technique over another, and in the fabrication of unique construction elements. I often appropriate the discarded remnants of others’ work into my own; a type of studio “sampling” in the electronica sense. My best work becomes intertwined with the sentiments of those around me, metaphorically and literally, and links my concerns and ideas to the immediate community in tangible fashion.” - Andrew Casto

Andrew Casto was born in Delaware, Ohio in 1977. He received his B.A. from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, and his M.A. and M.F.A. degrees from The University of Iowa. Casto is currently an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Kansas State University. He was a 2011-2012 long-term artist in residence, and the 2011 MJD fellow at The Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Art in Helena, Montana. He has exhibited work internationally in Spain, Croatia, Austria, Slovenia, Belgium, China, and Japan. Casto was awarded the second place award in the 2013 VII Bienalle International de Ceramic, in El Vendrell Spain, and the 2010 FuLe Prize by the International Ceramic Magazine Editors Association in Fuping, China. He was recently selected as a recipient of a 2015 Emerging Artist award by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). When not teaching or working in the studio, he is a lover of music and college basketball.

Andrew Casto, Assemblage 83: 15x12x15�, ceramic, luster, 2015

Opposite page: detail

Andrew Casto, Assemblage 108: 14x10x9�, Ceramic, Gold Luster, 2016

Miya Ando is an American artist whose metal canvases and sculpture articulate themes of contradiction and juxtaposition of ideas. The foundation of Ando’s practice is the transformation of surfaces. A descendant of Bizen sword makers, she was raised among sword smiths and Buddhist priests in a temple in Okayama, Japan. Applying traditional techniques of her ancestry, she skillfully transforms sheets of burnished industrial steel, using heat and chemicals, into ephemeral abstractions suffused with subtle gradations of color. She says: “I have a deep appreciation for the dynamic properties of metal and its ability to reflect light. Metal simultaneously conveys strength and permanence and yet in the same instant can appear delicate, fragile, luminous, soft, ethereal. The medium becomes both a contradiction and juxtaposition for expressing notions of evanescence, including ideas such as the transitory and ephemeral nature of all things, quietude and the underlying impermanence of everything.”

Miya Ando received a bachelor degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and attended Yale University to study Buddhist iconography and imagery. Ando is the recipient of many awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2012. Her work has been exhibited extensively all over the world, including a recent show curated by Nat Trotman of the Guggenheim Museum. Miya Ando has produced numerous public commissions, most notably a thirtyfoot tall commemorative sculpture in London built from World Trade Center steel which is installed permanently at Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. Her large-scale installation piece ‘Emptiness the Sky’ (Shou Sugi Ban) is featured in the 56th Venice Biennale, in the ‘Frontiers Reimagined’ Exhibition at the Museo Di Palazzo Grimani.

Miya Ando Blue Green 2015 48 x 48 inches Dye, Pigment, Aluminum

Miya Ando Evening Bolinas 2014 48 x 48 inches Dye, Pigment, Aluminum

Miya Ando Evening San Diego 2014 48 x 48 inches Dye, Pigment, Aluminum

2016 FOG installation Annie Morris and Ethan Murrow

2015 FOG installation