Steve Seleska, New Work - Solo Exhibit

About

Steve Seleska, New Work

- Solo Exhibit

L.A. ARTIST STEVE SELESKA UNCOVERS HIDDEN DIMENSIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN MERCURIAL WORKS AT TAJ ART

Opening Reception August 11, 6-9pm

NELA Art Second Saturdays Reception September 8, 6-9pm

On view through September 30, 2018

Taj Art is located at:

1492 Colorado Blvd. 

Los Angeles, CA 90041 

Open by appointment

https://www.tajartinc.com/

http://www.steveseleska.com/

IG: @steveseleskaart

https://www.facebook.com/events/238920300269344/

With special guest artist Jeff Iorillo, one night only presenting his sculptural work in the courtyard August 11, 6-9pm

Live music by Grammy musician Randy Ray Mitchell and Tisa Adamson

Gallery Director & Founder: Trace Johansson

Curated by: Kristine Schomaker

Taj Art is pleased to present an exhibit with L.A. artist Steve Seleska. The artist’s mixed-media paintings unveil humankind’s complicated relationship to nature envisioned through intense material exploration. Seen from a micro-cosmic perspective, Seleska’s works draw on natural phenomena seen at magnified scales near and distant. 

The alien worlds that Seleska’s paintings inhabit reveal numerously diverse surface qualities, masses, hues, and painterly applications. The artist emphasizes distinctions between poured latex, resin, and acrylic and seen together, form new relationships and connections. Glommed on to otherwise-enchanted scenes of cosmic and alchemic interaction are virus-like forms pouring onto the panel. Reminiscent of tar balls, oil slicks, or viruses, the blackened splotches counter romantic notions of the landscape and invite sober attention to the effects of humankind’s continued impact on Earth. Seleska reflects, “The micro-environments can frequently be seen depicting a darkened, indefinable “virus” assaulting sea and terrain. They become true juxtapositions of the like and the dark, passion and apathy, and the majestic versus wretchedness.”

Steve Seleska has been included in numerous exhibits in and around L.A. including Fresh, curated by Mat Gleason, Liberty and Justice for Some at Walter Maciel Gallery, and Mas Attack at Torrance Art Museum. 

www.steveseleska.com

IG: @steveseleskaart

Taj Art is located at:

1492 Colorado Blvd. 

Los Angeles, CA 90041 

Open by appointment

On Jeff Iorillo

I’m a Los Angeles-based painter, sculptor and filmmaker working in acrylic, enamel and mixed media on canvas, masonite, and metal, as well as clay, plaster, sheet steel, and video.

I am essentially a process artist, inspired by the investigation of materials and methods. I’m looking to create images and objects with a presence that feels substantial, inhabited. I’m less interested in communicating my own story than I am in providing a moment of contemplation or fascination that invites the viewer to create their own, to simply experience stillness or velocity or whatever the piece embodies for them.

California's sense of limitless possibilities and its role as the place where new ideas come to life have informed my approach to making artwork. A lifelong Californian, I was a child when Southern California art came into its own with the "Light and Space," "Finish Fetish" and other movements fueled by new materials and technologies born in SoCal's aerospace, surfboard, and automotive industries. I like to think I'm working in the SoCal tradition of experimentation and development of new and original approaches to making art. 

I'm intrigued by organic materials and using destructive processes to create work. For example, I burn bamboo from my garden to create a dense, crunchy black ash that I use as a sculptural material and texture, with melted beeswax my adhesive. I created one body of work, my "Sun Paintings", by setting vats of watered acrylic paint and crushed marble in my backyard during heat waves to dry to a thick crust. With acrylic and canvas I am an “action painter” shoving and scraping color across a flat surface with boards rather than dabbing with a brush on an easel.

In 2017 I showed a video with a suite of paintings inspired by it at ART1307 Cultural Institution in Naples, Italy. In 2015 I took my Sun Paintings to Japan for international shows in Kyoto, Ashiya, and at the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art. Since earning a BA in English at Stanford University, I’ve studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and Otis College and Art Center in Los Angeles. My work is acquired by individuals and corporate collections from L.A. to Hong Kong to Mexico City, and is commissioned for commercial installations worldwide. I have been represented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art Rental & Sales Gallery, and my work is regularly selected by Hollywood set designers for television and cinema.

I’m a Member of the Los Angeles Art Association, where I moderate a monthly artists’ critique group, and of the Arroyo Arts Collective. CV and complete list of installations, commissions, and film & television by request.