Abigail Ogilvy Gallery | Los Angeles
1923 S. Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles, CA
Opening Reception: July 13, 6:00 - 8:30 PM PST
July 13 – August 24, 2024
Abigail Ogilvy Gallery Los Angeles presents Place Setting, a group exhibition featuring five artists working in painting, ceramics, and photography. Place Setting illustrates five unique perspectives on collaboration with local landscapes, cultural memories, and figures; each piece in the exhibition takes the viewer to a specific setting reminiscent of Los Angeles, its surrounding scenery, and the industries that dominate this major world stage. A double entendre, Place Setting also nods to the dinner party, an intimate form of community engagement that strengthens connections, and more recently, has provided a source of comforting interactions in our life after the pandemic.
Amanda Rowan, Ripe, 2018. Dye sublimation on aluminum, 4x5 film negative. 24 x 36 in. Ed. of 5
Thomas Pilnik and Amanda Rowan each depict the dinner party scene literally, through painting, ceramics, and photography. Rowan’s elaborate and juicy tablescapes drip color and opulence, and hints of the figure suggest a simultaneously humorous and provocative human presence. Food and table décor demand visual attention with prominent placement within the artworks, interacting with the figure on the canvas and through our engagement with the exhibition. In Rowan’s photograph Ripe, a decorated arm extends to pinch the bump of a sumo mandarin, an implied nipple. On the other hand, Pilnik’s use of citrus in his table scenes recall the memories of dinner parties thrown by his father, where tangerines were a familiar object used to prolong the conversation after a meal. Pilnik’s memories, recalled over and over, turn into objects, scenes of life, and places embedded with personal narratives.
Thomas Martinez Pilnik, Place Setting, 2024. Glazed stoneware. 30 x 30 x 30 in.
Luke Forsyth, All the World, 2023. Acrylic paint, pastel, and texture on wood panel. 19.75 x 58 in.
Luke Forsyth’s use of landscape similarly call the viewer to a specific scene. With a background in theater, Forsyth’s images of the Southern California landscape are set behind the draped curtains, paying homage to the history of art in Los Angeles as it developed alongside the film industry. Forsyth’s paintings are both stage and tableaux, using stagecraft as physical framing devices, flowers and vessels as performers, texture and color as dialogue and blocking. The works are simultaneously playful, alive, still, and focused - like crystallized set pieces from surrealist plays.
Katharine Konietzko, The Table, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24 in.
Katharine Konietzko’s paintings of familiar Los Angeles scenes take a related approach, focusing on the luminosity, reflections, and shadows of these local landscapes. Her moments are fleeting – the trees are draped in golden hour light, the sky streaks candy colors as it often does for that brief moment after the sun sets. Fig trees, palms, agave, opuntia set against fading mountains, placing the viewer in a time and place so specific and fleeting that they cannot help but feel nostalgia for a moment that has not yet ended. In her painting The Table, a placid mountaintop becomes the site of a person-less gathering. Six stone seats foreground the city below, becoming a personification of community, gathered around the central stone plinth as if in conversation.
Tara Lewis, The Desert, 2024. Oil on linen. 40 x 50 in.
Konietzko’s serene and still sites contrast the surreal, absurd and cartoon scenes that provide backdrops for Tara Lewis’s newest body of work. Incorporating Looney Tunes backgrounds, Tara explores the human condition through a unique blend of reality and animation. “The settings of each painting—the desert, the road, the tunnel, and the horizon—are purposefully chosen to evoke both a journey and a sense of desolation. The vast desert represents both the limitless potential and the isolation of human endeavors, the road represents life's unpredictable path, while the tunnel, inspired by the iconic trompe l’oeil painted tunnel from the 1949 Looney Tunes episode The Fast and the Furry-ous, mixes hope, persistence, insatiable appetite, and uncertainty.”
Place Setting brings together these five perspectives that each uniquely tie to the foundations of Los Angeles as a setting for artistic innovation. It’s inspiring scenery, renowned entertainment industry, and sprawl create both a ground for creativity and a necessity for human connection.
Luke Forsyth is a painter and illustrator living and working in Los Angeles, California. Known for a playful approach, Forsyth enjoys working in an array of colors and mediums. He draws inspiration from the everyday, with subjects ranging from domestic interiors and expansive sweeping landscapes. Forsyth earned his BFA from Humboldt State University in 2005. His work is included in notable public and private collections including The Cedars-Sinai Collection and the Fidelity Investment Art Collection.
Katharine Konietzko is both a writer and artist. As a painter, she is inspired by luminosity, reflections, and shadows in the landscape. She is also drawn to faces and has been commissioned for numerous portraits. After studying at Yale and completing a painting residency in Rome, she moved to Los Angeles, where she currently resides in the hills of Echo Park.
Her work is in permanent collections across the country, including in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Napa, Phoenix. and Portland. Her paintings were recently showcased in St. Helena Living, a Napa Valley publication, and can be seen in an upcoming episode of Frasier on Paramount+.
Tara Lewis’s work has been featured in various solo and group exhibitions in New York City, as well as at ArtCrush at the Aspen Art Museum in CO and the Watermill Center, NY. Tara’s work has been presented at Room 57 Gallery, New York, NY; Ki Smith Gallery, New York, NY; All Street Gallery, New York, NY; and Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, NY. Her paintings are held in major collections including The Phelan Art Collection, Brooke Shields, The Seavest Collection, Ashley Longshore, and the Bunker Artspace. Tara was recently selected for a painting residency at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO. She has been featured in publications such as Artnet News, Cultured, Whitewall, Fine Art Connoisseur and Whitehot Magazine. Tara received a B.A. in Studio Art at the University of New Hampshire and an M.A.T. at SMFA at Tufts University. Her studio practice is based in New York City and New England.
Thomas Martinez Pilnik (b. 1993) was raised in London by Brazilian parents. Pilnik then moved to the US and obtained his BA in Studio Art and Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia, M.Ed in Postsecondary Education from the University of Southern California, and MFA from the University of Connecticut. He is now based in Los Angeles. Pilnik has exhibited internationally in spaces including Moosey and Arusha Gallery in London, SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York, Zaratan Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, and Hashimoto Contemporary in Los Angeles, and has created installations and works in collaboration with organizations such as the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health and Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy. He has been an artist-in-residence at Zaratan, McKenzie Gibson Studios in Rhode Island, Stove Works in Tennessee, Art House San Clemente, and has an upcoming session at The Wassaic Project in Upstate New York.
Originally from the Bay Area, Amanda Rowan began her journey in rock concert photography before graduating Cum Laude from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Now based in Los Angeles, Rowan serves as a Full-Time Faculty at the Photo Arts Conservatory at the New York Film Academy, enriching both MFA and BFA programs. Rowan’s work has been profiled in international publications, such as Hunger Magazine, Lenscratch, Creative Boom, Float Mag, Eye of Photography, and on Artnet. Rowan’s commercial clients also include Disney Jr., Grubhub, New York Times, HBO, Hilton Entertainment, Sotheby’s and Brawn. Rowan’s background in performance, including roles in film, TV, and Broadway productions, infuses her photographic work with a heightened sense of theatricality and storytelling. Her experiences capturing the essence of musicians and celebrities in New York City have honed her ability to evoke emotion and narrative depth, resulting in visually captivating compositions that blur the lines between reality and fantasy, inviting viewers into immersive worlds of surrealism and introspection.
Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with locations in Boston and Los Angeles. We exhibit contemporary art with a heavy emphasis on concept-driven artwork by emerging to mid-career artists located across the country and internationally. The gallery primarily focuses on paintings but also exhibits a range of other media including photography, sculpture, mixed media, digital prints, drawings, and much more. Owner Abigail Ogilvy Ryan founded the Boston gallery in 2015, and in Fall 2023 the gallery program expanded to a second location in Los Angeles. The gallery is committed to exhibiting the strongest work from both local and international artists.
Abigail Ogilvy Gallery's new Los Angeles gallery will provide a platform for new perspectives and education through independent curation and artist partnerships. The collaborative approach upends the traditional gallery model and aims to enhance the careers of artists, curators, collectors, and other art world professionals, both emerging and established. The gallery program primarily features guest curators in order to share diverse perspectives and voices with the Los Angeles area and the greater art market.
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