Rob Reynolds is a Los Angeles based artist. Working in painting, sculpture, sound and video, his

projects often seek to make the unseen visible. With an ongoing focus on ecology, human caused climate change and perception, Rob’s work moves fluidly between art, science, technology and philosophy. His most recent work is currently engaged with images that speak to singularity events: things all humans share in common.

He has exhibited his artwork and public projects widely, with recent solo shows at LAXART, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Currently a Berggruen Institute Transformations of the Human fellow, Rob’s work is in numerous public and private collections, including LACMA and the RISD Museum. A graduate of Brown University and the Whitney Program, Rob is on the Faculty of Sierra Nevada University MFA program, and has taught at Brown and Harvard, lecturing at USC and UCLA.

The Word for Weather is Knowledge

The Word for Weather is Knowledge was filmed in Arctic Greenland during the summer of 2019, the warmest period in recorded history. Shot entirely in midnight sun from a small open boat in close proximity to giant icebergs, it traces the constantly changing contours of the massive Ilulissat Icefjord, while billions of gallons of melt water flow into the ocean from the Greenland ice sheet. A voiceover by a local boat driver offers a first person, Greenlandic Inuit perspective on recent ecological changes transforming the Arctic. With musical soundscape by composer Craig Wedren.

“As a self-taught outsider, I’ve been able to navigate my practice without any boundaries or borders that may have restrained ones ability to reveal the unseen. I’m interested in pushing beyond the status quo of documentation and static mode of representation. Looking deeper than the surface layer of what one perceives and revealing the obscured interweaving and controlled chaos of the cosmic universe. Here, one finds the mysteries of form, color and texture that activate visual thinking to create new meanings. By not having a readily identifiable structure, and therefore open to one’s interpretation and imagination, it lets us embark on an unexpected journey—allowing for deeper modes of seeing, feeling and transportation to another state of consciousness. By bending borders of perception and redefining visual representation, we can see beyond the naked eye.” – Daniel Fuller

Daniel Fuller was born in 1982 in Hanalei, Kauai. Fuller currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Exhibitions include:

“Daniel Fuller: NEW WORKS,” Los Angeles, CA April 6th-28th, 2019

“Daniel Fuller: BEYOND THE NAKED EYE,” RVCA San Francisco, CA May 5th-June 15, 2017

“Daniel Fuller: LIQUID HORIZON,” Venus over Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA August 11th-29th, 2015

“Daniel Fuller: MEDITATION ON BLUE,” Dirt Gallery, Wainscott, NY August 30th-September 8th, 2013

“Daniel Fuller: NIGHT FOR DAY,” Known Gallery, Los Angeles, CA May 21st-June 11th, 2011

Ai Weiwei is renowned for making strong aesthetic statements that resonate with timely phenomena across today’s geopolitical world. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values. Recent exhibitions include: Ai Weiwei: Resetting Memories at MARCO in Monterrey, Ai Weiwei: Bare Life at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum in St. Louis, Ai Weiwei at the K20/K21 in Dusseldorf, and Good Fences Make Good Neighbors with the Public Art Fund in New York City.

Ai was born in Beijing in 1957 and currently resides and works in Berlin. Ai is the recipient of the 2015 Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International and the 2012 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. Ai’s most recent film Vivos premi-ered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in the Documentary Premieres section.

Marble Toilet Paper

The whole world was in a panic at the beginning of this year. Unnoticed, daily use objects, meaningless things, suddenly became scarce in all the supermarkets. Toilet paper became symbolic of this time of panic and distrust. It lays bare how fragile our so-called civilized progress actually is. The work is part of a series of works in marble, items related to everyone yet ignored by the cultural landscape. These works include “Mask,” “Surveillance Camera,” and “Tyre.” Objects that are testaments to our time, evidence of how severe the situation is.

Strength

Similar to his other works of sunflower seeds and watermelon, Ai Weiwei crafts his ‘Roots and Branches’ work inspired by nature. Using trees as a motif of displacement, Weiwei has created a series of iron root and iron trunk sculptures that were assembled from dry fragments of various trees throughout China. These monolithic creations provide a unique balance between tradition and modernity by forcing attention on the foundational elements that sum up a whole. On one end, Weiwei draws from Chinese custom of celebrating natural elements through cycles of birth, maturity, death, and rebirth, as associated with traditional Zen gardens – places for contemplation and retreat. Although visually organic, on the other end, the roots and trunks were created by human hands, and symbolize the artifice of industrialization and modernization

“I dreamed that I stood on a picnic table at the airport in Hawaii swallowing clouds.” – Iva Gueorguieva

Iva Gueorguieva (b. 1974, Bulgaria) received an MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 2000.

Select Solo Exhibitions

Forthcoming solo exhibition at UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles (2021). Recent solo exhibitions include Frederic Snitzer, Miami, FL (2016, 2018); Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe, New York, NY (2011, 2012, 2014, 2016); ACME, Los Angeles, CA (2013, 2015); Samson Projects, Boston, MA (2014); Galerie Stefan Roepke, Cologne, Germany (2013); Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2013); Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2012); Bravin Lee Programs, New York, NY (2011); Stichting Outline, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008); and Pomona Museum of Art, Claremont, CA (2007).

Select Group Exhibitions

Notable group exhibitions include: Constellations, David Lewis Gallery, NY, NY (2020); Emergency on Plant Earth, UTA Artist Space, LA, LA (2020); The Light Touch, Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA (2019); Shaping Color, LA Louver, Los Angeles, CA (2018); Two-person exhibition with Dona Nelson, Sophia Contemporary, London (2018).Variations: Conversations in and around Abstract Painting, curated by Franklin Sirmans, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2014); Making Sense: Rochelle Feinstein, Iva Gueorguieva, Dona Nelson, Deborah Grant, curated by Margaret Miller, USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL (2014); Graphicstudio: Uncommon Practice at USF, curated by Jade Dellinger, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL (2014); It’s New/It’s Now: Recent Gifts of Prints and Drawings, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN (2013); Desire, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA (2010); Five from L.A., Galerie Lelong, New York, NY (2010)

Cuban American contemporary painter and sculptor, Manny Castro, explores social invisibility, race, gender and sexuality. Castro’s work portrays fully rendered figures and their environment which are then obscurely ghosted, concealed with heavy impasto, never to be seen again. Upon discovering that the figures of the paintings have been completely masked by the artist’s brush, the work inspires an observer to contemplate its meaning beyond its painted surface. Castro’s work is physically and conceptually layered to provoke an open-ended narrative. Castro provides an investigation into how a people can be physically present yet remain unseen and how invisibility is common occurrence towards marginalized communities.

EDUCATION

Parsons The New School for Design, New York

New York Studio School, New York

Castro has exhibited work at The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; The Wolfsonian Museum, Miami; and the Miami Art Museum, Miami. He has also exhibited in unique venues such as the display windows of Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store in Manhattan, Barney’s New York on Madison Avenue, Fred Segal, Los Angeles and in a group show curated by Patrick McMullan in Andy Warhol’s “The Factory” studio on 47th street, before the building was demolished. His work is included in several private collections.

Glenn Kaino was born in 1972 in Los Angeles. Kaino’s works, often functioning as poetic contradictions, aim to reconcile conflicting ideologies, opposing systems, and strict dichotomies in material and experiential ways. Conceiving his practice as conceptual kitbashing, akin to a model maker’s way of appropriating readymade kits to assemble unique models, Kaino reconfigures the conditions of distinct cultural spheres into ecologies of making in which seemingly disparate materials and ideas are brought into contact. His studio practice includes sculpture, painting, filmmaking, performance, installation, and large-scale public work. He also operates outside the traditional purview of contemporary art, instigating collaborations with other modes of culture—ranging from tech to music to political organizing.

Major solo exhibitions of Kaino’s work have been presented at the Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Andy Warhol Museum; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, among others. Kaino’s work has been featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and Prospect.3, New Orleans. Kaino’s work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Kaino is also an Emmy and Webby Award-winning producer and documentarian, whose films have been featured at the Tribeca Film Festival and SXSW.

One Crisis At A Time is a body of work inspired by the history of protest as an expression of public concern, and the myriad of marches and assemblies that have shaped the world by realizing the feelings of multiple communities through action. The work themselves are made from fragments of language taken from the history of protest slogans that have been carved into wood, reminiscent of sign-posts, and then burned. These components are then re-assembled into various works that each become a form of intersectional poetry created from one and two word lines that each invoke the memory of its originating phrase, but joining together to create a new, collective meaning. Burning becomes a generative, unifying

The Bay Area based artist Nathan Wong is known for his colorful paintings incorporating geometric patterns and imagery inspired by the scalability of paper folds. Drawing inspiration from color combinations found in fashion and nature and merging them with hard-edged linear shapes, the artist encourages the viewer to playfully challenge their perceptions of depth and balance.

“This body of work is an homage to childhood. Creating and building have always been an integral part of entertainment and escape for me. Experiencing the Covid Pandemic has allowed me to reflect on the simpler times of my adolescence, where I would spend hours taking apart found objects, putting them back together, and creating something entirely new. This learned sense of creation transitioned to paper and all of its possibilities through a simple fold. Through play and exploration, this passion would later guide me to creating alternate worlds with the same childlike enthusiasm and focus. However, as is the case for most children of color, I distinctly recall the moment, I experienced racism and the consequential loss of innocence. As an Asian American child growing up in rural Northern California, racial diversity was non-existent. I have distinct memories of being mocked by neighborhood kids, forcing my siblings and I to lean into each other for friendship and support. Without the influence of social media, I was encouraged to explore through imagination. The vast countryside was my playground, mother nature was my teacher, and in turn I created my own world, free of judgement. This played a large role in my development as an artist.

“My work is a simple expression of emotion through craft and an obsession with color, shape, and harmony. The journey of creating each work is represented by the overlapping and integrated shapes giving rise to organic and architectural forms, that tie in the canvas and foreground. A precise map of integrated shapes that move the eye to find meaning and balance.As you read this, wildfires are threatening the very backyard I played in. The new normal of environmental devastation, paralleled racial and social upheaval, global pandemic, and lack of leadership in the White House, leaves me weary of the future we are extending to the next generation. This is a critical moment for our planet and humanity. A new narrative of consciousness must be created reflecting the enthusiasm and innocence we all once possessed as children.” – Nathan Wong

Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, Toni Scott makes art installations and individual artworks that explore her African-American, Native American, and European heritage. Her installation “Bloodlines” was the inaugural exhibition of Discovery at the California African-American Museum in 2012, funded by a special grant from the Annenberg Foundation. Other iterations of “Bloodlines” included “Bloodlines: The Work of Toni Scott” featured in a solo exhibit at South Carolina School of the Arts, Vandiver Gallery, Anderson University, and “Bloodlines” for La Sombra El Espiritu II: Women’s Healing Rituals in the Diaspora,” University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, both in 2013. In 2017, “Bloodlines Africa,” was invited as an installation at Cornerstone Winter School in South Africa, and in 2018 “Aswarm with the Spirits of All Ages Here: Inconceivable Spaces of Slavery and Freedom” exhibited at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History.

“Critical to my work is the advancement of understanding between races and to promote a deeper historical consciousness that transcends through narratives, both tragic and of resilience, redemption, and hope. The subject of race has played a significant role in informing my art and shaping my identity. I have a multi-ethnic ancestry of African, European, and Native American (I am a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and a descendant of emancipated African-Americans who were slaves on three plantations in the South). In 2002, I began a body of work entitled “Bloodlines,” to address American history, in particular, the long-forgotten victims of oppression and the cultural richness of African and Native American people. The inspiration for “Bloodlines” was a book with 450 years of genealogical findings by my Uncle Richard Procello, and later by my cousin Robert Johnston. Included were stories and photographs gathered from family members throughout the country. Using various materials, found objects, and a combination of both personal and historical narratives, my work

“I created Wall of Courage because I had to. I had put myself in front of stories of extreme violence, torture, rape and death. These paintings became an outlet for me to deal with what I had heard and what I had seen. These children had lost their parents and I was convinced that if I could paint them all, we could show the world they existed and somehow their lives could be changed. I have gotten to know these children and I want others to know them too; for their faces to be seen and for their stories to be heard.

The universe presents us with many options everyday. We can choose to grab them or let them slip on by. I was presented with an option that I felt I had no choice but to grab ahold of, and I held it so tightly that it became a part of me. I am merely the instrument through which Wall of Courage was conceived. The Wall has inspired many initiatives that are changing the lives of these children and their extended communities. The project is much bigger than “I” and it is not limited to these 81 children on the Wall. It is a planet Earth project. I wish the Wall hadn’t been a necessary creation. I wish that the problem it addresses never existed. Through bearing witnessing to the stories on the Wall, the viewer will be presented with yet another option to consider.

I have made a life commitment to look after these children with my Congolese brother, Kizungu Luanda Hubert. Through touring Wall of Courage we have found support to look after 140+ orphans and educate over 700 of the most vulnerable children living in the DRC.

Many projects have grown since 2013 after the inception of the idea to paint all 81 of the children living under our care. To date, The Tchukudu Kids Home (Goma), Tchukudu Women’s Training Center (Goma), The Jonathan Holiday School (Goma), Permaculture project (Idjwi Island), 2 health care centers (Goma & Idjwi), Routes Academy School (Idjwi), Indigenous (Pygmy) village equality community project (Idjwi), Bees and Trees (Idjwi),

Todd DiCiurcio is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His works address the exo-distortions inherent in the patterns of displacement and excess strewn across American Society. Finding truth in portraiture, he utilizes technology both spiritual and psychoanalytical to create images that become words, stories, bands, armies of personal mythology & often within and responding to the corporeal context of the staged “live” performance.

Parker Calvert is a New York City based artist who works primarily in photography, film, and installation art. His work aims to give the viewer extraordinary perspectives, and to create dialogue around the needs of tomorrow. He is an avid environmentalist and believes in the power of art to effect progress in the World.

Cerco is a film made during the total lockdown of New York City in Spring of 2020. It is a response to the stillness, emptiness, introspection, and exploration of emotions felt during this unbelievable time. The film focuses on the actor, Myles Brawer, intently searching throughout a vacant city.

Clayton Calvert is a painter, sculptor, mixed media, and installation artist. He is also an independent curator. He is particularly interested in the fleeting nature of experience and how to translate that into something more permanent. Calvert’s main concern is enabling the viewer to connect with the subject matter in a meaningful way. His artistic process distills the essential elements of experiences into a distinct visual language.

NYC By Air was conceived in homage to New York City. The Calvert brothers aimed to document and preserve a specific moment in the history of New York City, which by its very nature is ever-changing. When they began this project, there was an unprecedented construction boom and so filming the vanishing vistas became a point of obsession. They would rise weekly before sunrise, to capture the brilliant colors, the shifting landscape, and the surreal stillness of the city at sleep.