Radiant Space – one of my favorite spaces in the Hollywood area – and its curators Mia Orozco and Golie Yazdy, are constantly trying new things and spreading their wings to curate shows at auxiliary sites. You may remember Laurie Shapiro’s installation at the Paramount Academy of Music, which I wrote about earlier this year. Now comes a double dose of art for you all.
A four-person group show at Radiant Space opens February 23rd, from 7:00-10:00 PM, and runs through March 30th, 2019, featuring paintings by Makan Negahban and Alic Daniel, mixed media pieces by Megan Jorgenson, and assemblage by Ilaria de Plano. Four artists explore varying themes – both abstract and realistic – while building related worlds with texture, color, shape, form, and recycled materials.
Concurrently with Double Date, Ilaria de Plano and Alic Daniel are exhibiting complementary work in our new brother location, the Arcspace.
Arcspace is a mid-modern prefab home designed to be a solution to the housing crisis in California. It has become a habitat that breeds innovation and creative solutions.
For the next month, I will be featuring a different artist every week from the show. First up is Alic Daniel, who is scribbling his way across the world.
How did this show come together for you? Had you already known Ilaria?
I did not know Illaria, previous to this show. Mia’s boyfriend connected me with Mia and she had the idea for the show.
While some people may look at your work and just see a few simple scribbles, that’s sort of like looking at a Rothko painting and just seeing some colors, without understanding the landscapes that he was painting and how he was breaking down the traditions of the artists that came before him. What does the ‘scribble’ mean to you, and how is it either a homage to other artists that you admire or a way of expanding their palate?
That’s a super good point. My “scribbles” are a play on expression and composition. The lines happen freely, but when they happen, the subconscious directs them in an organized manner. These works explore ideas of play like Cy Twombly while taking compositional notes from Rauschenberg. I think that being a student of art since I was a child has implanted rules of composition and form in my brain.
You have a tendency to frame your marks within very confined borders. Is that a way of you trying to control chaos? Are you, in fact, a control freak and not just a scribbler? Or a balance of both? Is that what your work is trying to communicate?
I think the idea behind the framing of the compositions is to have a centralized figure that is living within the borders of the canvas. I would say I am a control freak that lets some of the control slide when natural occurrence creates harmony.
I see some references to Keith Haring and Frank Stella in your work. Are you a student of their ways, or who do you admire?
I was a Keith Haring fanatic until I saw a Frank Stella Retrospective at the Whitney. I loved Keith Haring’s confidence and mark making, but once I saw a Frank Stella sculpture in person, it changed my whole ideology of what mark making and composition could do.
Do you study dance and movement, because there seems to be a great deal of the flow of modern dance in your work?
I don’t study dance, but I was a musician for most of my life, and the way an improvised blues jam happens really influenced my thinking on decision making. Blues jams have things called a blue note, where the musician takes a note out of key to express a new thought or emotion. This idea of blue notes very much impact my idea of rules and how they can be broken. Very much like dance, there has to be rules set in place to create the centralized theme, then the rules have to be slightly broken to create innovation. My lines happen fast, and by doing that, I hope to capture a moment of harmony, which does sound a bit like dance.
What living artist would you most like to collaborate with?
Laura Owens. Her use of scale and composition is wild. I’d love to work with her.
Beyond your Double Date with Ilaria, what else are you working on?
Right now I’m preparing for the Adopt the Arts Auction that is benefiting music programs in Los Angeles Public Schools!
