Charles Garabedian – 7 October - 8 November, 2015

Writer Douglas Masserli recently reviewed the Garabedian show in his blog ART Là-bas. Here’s some of his insight on how Garabedian’s art situates at the intersection of history and contemporary dialogues:

Garbedian’s art is filled with contemporary “takes” on these epic-works in a way that does not truly demand a full knowledge of all Classical literature or, in the case of his The Good Thief (2015), does not require that one has recently read the literature of Christ’s death upon the cross. Indeed, Garebedian’s often sexually amorphously fleshy figures seem almost to be “accidentally” acting out their epic deeds against the background of a slightly kitsch, California landscape set in the late 1960s or early 1970s, when certain figures dressed in wildly colored, geometrically patterned wraps and outfits that seem more an home in a Malibu exercise class than upon the blue islands of the Aegean Sea. In his introduction to the show’s accompanying catalogue, Ed Shad describes the phenomenon: “[Garbedian’s characters] not only arrive as recurring motifs of literature, as many writers have observed, but they also arrive in a different way, as a part of a Mediterranean legacy of art. However Garabedian transfigures this legacy through the bizarre mirror that Los Angeles holds up to the ancient world.”

To read more about Douglas Masserli’s review on other works, visit his blog here. To read more about Ed Shad’s take on the show, order a copy of the Garabedian show catelogue online – shop.lalouver.com or at the gallery.