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Up The New Vanguard II Various Artists Artists: Sandra Chevrier | Cages and the Allure of Freedom Seth Armstrong | Lil' Baja's Last Ride Craig 'Skibs' Barker | Suzy is a Surf Rocker Brooks Salzwedel | Rut in the Soil Featured Installations: Andrew Hem Dan Witz HOT TEA Isaac Cordal Jaune Laurence Vallieres Spenser Little The New Vanguard II, a dynamic group exhibition of works by international artists working in the New Contemporary art movement. The highly anticipated follow up to 2016's successful first iteration of The New Vanguard, on view in tandem with this year's POW WOW! Antelope Valley will feature special solo projects by artists Sandra Chevrier, Seth Armstrong, Craig 'Skibs' Barker, and Brooks Salzwedel. A sequel to what was in 2016 the most extensive presentation of work from the New Contemporary movement in a Southern Californian museum venue to date, The New Vanguard II, in keeping with the first, will present a diverse and expansive group of curated new works. The group show will include new pieces by ABCNT, Adam Caldwell, Alex Garant, Alex Hall, Alexandra Manukyan, Amy Sol, Andrew Schoultz, Benjamin Garcia, Brian Mashburn, Carl Cashman, CASE, Dan Witz, Drew Merritt, EINE, Ekundayo, Ermsy, Esao Andrews, Evoca1, Fernando Chamarelli, Fidia Falaschetti, Fintan Magee, Helen Bur, Hueman, Hula, Huntz Liu, Jaune, Joel Daniel Phillips, Jolene Lai, Juan Travieso, Kaili Smith, Kathy Ager, Kikyz1313, Laura Berger, Lauren YS, Lonac, Mark Dean Veca, Mars-1, Martin Whatson, Masakatsu Sashie, Meggs, Michael Reeder, Milu Correch, The Perez Bros, PichiAvo, RISK, Robert Xavier Burden, Robert Proch, Ronzo, Saner, Scott Listfield , Sergio Garcia, Seth Armstrong, Snik, Stephanie Buer, Super A, Super Future Kid, TikToy, Tran Nguyen, Van Arno, and Yosuke Ueno. Alongside the focused solo presentations by Chevrier, Armstrong, Barker, and Salzwedel, the exhibition will include site-specific installations by Andrew Hem, Dan Witz, HOTxTEA, Isaac Cordal, Jaune, Laurence Vallieres, and Spenser Little. A movement unified as much by its diversity as its similitude, 'New Contemporary' has come to denote an important heterogeneity of styles, media, contexts, and activations over the course of its establishment since the 90s. Unified in its fledgling beginnings by a founding countercultural impulse searching for its own nomenclature, the New Contemporary movement's shifting and inclusive designations have offered alternative narratives over the years to those popularized by the dominant art establishment and its conceptual predilections. Though stylistically disparate, the work belonging to this rapidly expansive movement reveals a desire to reference the popular, social, and subcultural domains of contemporary experience, grounding, rather than rarifying, imagery in the familiar. Looking to the urban landscape and the kaleidoscopic shift of individual identities within it, these artists use the figurative and narrative to anchor their work in the accessible and aesthetically relatable. A fundamentally democratic stance governs the ambitions of this new guard, ever in search of novel ways to expand rather than to contract. Sandra Chevrier - Cages and the Allure of Freedom Chevrier creates work that explores identity as a locus of competing imperatives and complex contradictions. Drawing parallels between the assumed invulnerability of the superhero and the impossible demands placed upon the contemporary individual, Chevrier creates literal and metaphoric masks by combining comic book imagery assembled from found and imagined sources. Her dystopian spin on the iconic figure of the superhero looks to reveal the flaws in the staged extroversion of a superficial veneer. In Cages and the Allure of Freedom, her first significant solo museum presentation, Chevrier showcases large-scale sculptural works for the first time including three massive portrait based reliefs alongside three life-sized, hand-painted busts complementing some of her largest two-dimensional acrylic on canvas works. Sandra Chevrier is a Montréal-based Canadian artist. Her work has been shown in Canada as well as in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia and in collections in Europe, the United States, Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and Russia. Seth Armstrong - Lil' Baja's Last Ride Seth Armstrong creates paintings that arrest a sense of time. Some offer expansive views and others a contracted intimacy, moving freely in and out of public and private spaces to create intersecting narratives. Known for paintings that self-consciously capture the act of looking - whether as a voyeur in trespass or a participant in the landscape - Armstrong apprehends the simultaneity of the city as a place of endless, contingent narratives, jarring interruptions and suspenseful pauses. In Lil' Baja's Last Ride, the artist presents a sequential vignette of over ten new paintings in which his own car becomes an unlikely protagonist. His immersive approach to his subject matter often produces anecdotal adjuncts. Following several pilgrimages into the landscape between his home in LA and Lancaster for the exhibition, a route, incidentally, which also happens to have personal childhood significance for the artist, Armstrong's beloved beater and proverbial instrument of research, 'Lil' Baja,' caught fire and was partially incinerated in the museum's parking lot. The overarching narrative structure of the works feels ambiguously suspended somewhere between fiction, social realism, and personal history. In an ending befitting Armstrong's own penchant for cinematic turns, poetic hooks, and absurd knacks, Lil' Baja's Last Ride is an unexpected swan song in memoriam to an old friend's final expedition. Armstrong is a Los Angeles-based painter who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from California College of Arts in San Francisco. His paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. He is represented by Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, Vertical Gallery in London and Bold Hype Gallery in New York. His work has been featured in international art fairs such as SCOPE and the LA Art Show. Craig "Skibs: Barker - Suzy is a Surf Rocker Barker has been immersed in both the punk rock and surf culture of southern California since the early 1980s. His imagery, being informed by the print media and graphics of the subcultural terrain shaping the time period, reflects this upbringing. Influenced and surrounded by punk flyers, album covers, and surfing magazines, Barker began testing his artistic skills by initially making flyers and t-shirts for his punk bands and his friends. Barker’s work explores the junctions between past and present, memory and imagination, fantasy and reality, while creating a dialog between image and viewer. Barker’s most recent paintings infuse his long-standing love for painting and rendering the human female figure with his punk-fueled graphic design aesthetic. Mixing different approaches, techniques and mediums, he creates a sense of memory, personal history, and appreciation for the female form. Combining elements of pop culture and literary censorship, he creates layered scenes of voyeuristic playfulness. His artworks feel surreal and partial, yielding results of decontextualization. The way Barker frames his figurative subjects, his compositions feel like spontaneously taken polaroids. Born and raised in Huntington Beach, Barker has been exhibiting installations and his paintings in places such as Long Beach Museum of Art, Thinkspace Projects Los Angeles and was featured at MOAH in 2014. His work has been included in Newbrow and Juxtapoz magazines. Brooks Salzwedel - Rut in the Soil Obscuring the boundaries between actual and imagined landscapes, Salzwedel constructs light, delicate and translucent vistas that fluctuate between solid and ethereal states. These assembled works explore the juxtaposition of natural and simulated scenes, bringing together scant terrains and fabricated sierras with hazy atmospheres and primordial vegetation. Eroding woods and frosty, glacial peaks veil repressed settings, evoking a landscape untethered from this reality existing on the periphery of dreams. Salzwedel continues this series of ghostly, celestial worlds that are suspended indefinitely, the scenes often feel almost real but are undoubtedly conjured from vivid imagination. Salzwedel induces a sense of solitude through ephemeral, surreal fantasies of supernatural scenery using a combination of materials to create his mixed-media works. His drawings are comprised of graphite, mylar and resin, tape, colored pencil and ink. Salzwedel earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors and distinction at Pasadena Art Center College of Design in 2004. He has been featured in more than 50 blogs and publications and he has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His work has been displayed at renowned museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, MOCA, Honolulu Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. Salzwedel was born in Long Beach and works in Los Angeles, California. The New Vanguard II A movement unified as much by its diversity as its similitude, 'New Contemporary' has come to denote an important heterogeneity of styles, media, contexts, and activations over the course of its establishment since the 90s. Unified in its fledgling beginnings by a founding countercultural impulse searching for its own nomenclature, the New Contemporary movement's shifting and inclusive designations have offered alternative narratives over the years to those popularized by the dominant art establishment and its conceptual predilections. Though stylistically disparate, the work belonging to this rapidly expansive movement reveals a desire to reference the popular, social, and subcultural domains of contemporary experience, grounding, rather than rarifying, imagery in the familiar. Looking to the urban landscape and the kaleidoscopic shift of individual identities within it, these artists use the figurative and narrative to anchor their work in the accessible and aesthetically relatable. A fundamentally democratic stance governs the ambitions of this new guard, ever in search of novel ways to expand rather than to contract. A sequel to what was in 2016 the most extensive presentation of work from the New Contemporary movement in a Southern Californian museum venue to date, The New Vanguard II, in keeping with the first, presents a diverse and expansive group of curated new works. This group show includes new pieces by ABCNT, Adam Caldwell, Alex Garant, Alex Hall, Alexandra Manukyan, Amy Sol, Andrew Schoultz, Benjamin Garcia, Brian Mashburn, Carl Cashman, CASE, Dan Witz, Drew Merritt, EINE, Ekundayo, Ermsy, Esao Andrews, Evoca1, Fernando Chamarelli, Fidia Falaschetti, Fintan Magee, Helen Bur, Hueman, Hula, Huntz Liu, Jaune, Joel Daniel Phillips, Jolene Lai, Juan Travieso, Kaili Smith, Kathy Ager, Kikyz1313, Laura Berger, Lauren YS, Lonac, Mark Dean Veca, Mars-1, Martin Whatson, Masakatsu Sashie, Meggs, Michael Reeder, Milu Correch, The Perez Bros, PichiAvo, RISK, Robert Xavier Burden, Robert Proch, Ronzo, Saner, Scott Listfield , Sergio Garcia, Seth Armstrong, Skewville, Snik, Stephanie Buer, Super A, Super Future Kid, TikToy, Tran Nguyen, Van Arno and Yosuke Ueno. October 21 - December 30, 2018 Back to list

Alayna Boyd < Back The Fiddleneck in Me By Alayna Boyd Stand up tall and stay thin, or you'll be just another weed. Little do they know, I am lacking nutrients. Bend over backwards to make everyone happy, or you'll be just another weed. But they don't see that this depletes my joy. Dust off your long, thin leaves to always look your best or you'll be just another weed. I yearn for a day that my natural beauty is considered beautiful. Always make sure your flowers are blooming and vibrant or God forbid, I'm just another weed. I waste hours of my life looking my best to satisfy the unsatisfiable. Stay in your pretty little group with your pretty little friends or God forbid, I'm just another weed. Can't I pick my own friends? What if I want them to look different than me? Be popular, be an influence, make sure others want to be just like you or God forbid, I'm just another weed. I hate that I spread the seed of the societal norms because in my little sister's shiny leaves, I see a reflection of who everyone wants me to be. Just because it's winter, doesn't mean you should let yourself go I know, I know, I’ll be just another weed. Sometimes, I just need a break. Don't let anybody get too close, always wear your armor I know, I know, I’ll be just another weed. Would it really be so bad that I have one true friend that was always there for me? Do not be fooled into thinking that you would be accepted if you looked different I know, I know, I’ll be just another weed. Why can't what's on the inside be worth more than my wilting outer appearance? All of these expectations are weighing down on me. I stand with my group of beautiful flowers, and while everyone is jealous of us, I envy being weed. Previous Next

Elyse PignoletHystericalPrimarily working in ceramics, artist Elyse Pignolet has been inspired by and dealt with various themes including political and social issues, the dialectic between feminism and misogyny, and cultural stereotypes. Often projects reflect the urban environment from where she lives and works. < Back Elyse Pignolet, No Gods, No Masters, Installation (wall) Elyse Pignolet, No Gods, No Masters, Mural Elyse Pignolet, No Gods, No Masters, Installation (wall) 1/2 Elyse Pignolet Hysterical Primarily working in ceramics, artist Elyse Pignolet has been inspired by and dealt with various themes including political and social issues, the dialectic between feminism and misogyny, and cultural stereotypes. Often projects reflect the urban environment from where she lives and works. Pignolet relates the traditions and permanence of ceramics to the turbulent and dynamic nature of the contemporary world. Her works span from individual sculptures to more intricate installations and public murals. While rooted in traditional aesthetics, Pignolet’s ceramic works subvert the typical expectations of the medium. Blue and white pottery typically associated with the events and narratives of a bygone era tell the stories of a more current time. The decorative floral and vine motifs that are accustomed to adorning these vessels mingle with text and images that are politically confrontational and unapologetic. Pignolet fuses ornamentation with declaration, calling attention to the many social issues that society faces today. Previous Next

< Back Brad Miller Brad Miller’s work draws inspiration from the fractal patterns of the physical world, which have been transformed into symbolic motifs across cultures for thousands of years. Miller’s practice explores archetypal patterns such as spirals, close-packing forms, and dendritic systems. The spontaneous fractal patterns that form in the physical world have always captured artist Brad Miller’s attention. Over time, he noticed that for thousands of years, several of these patterns have been internalized and transformed by people worldwide into content-laden symbols. One ever-present example is the variations of stylized spirals. They are seen on many objects throughout history: a Mimbres pot, Celtic tombstones, Van Gogh’s Starry Night and 5,000-year-old Chinese pots from Majiayao. With today’s technologies pushing the limits of seeing into and out to the edges of the universe, these familiar patterns constantly reappear. In his artistic practice, Miller explores several of these archetypal patterns, including spirals, close-packing patterns, and dendritic systems. Using diverse materials and processes including silver-gelatin photograms, pyrographic drawing, and ceramics, Miller infuses his work with these timeless and familiar patterns, as they dance between order and chaos. Previous Next

< Back Debra Scacco Misplaced Rain Artist and curator, Debra Scacco, questions how value is prioritized. Common threads of mapping and storytelling are present throughout her artistic practice. Working closely with cartographers, historians, activists, and scientists, Scacco studies the lines that direct everyday life, including boundaries drawn by policy, infrastructure, and societal perception. Debra Scacco’s research-based practice spans the creation of studio works, installations, public art, curating, teaching, writing, community engagement and oral history. She is dedicated to lateralizing knowledge to challenge hierarchies and historic structures of power. Rooted in her own experiences of immigration, Scacco re-envisions the visible and invisible lines that seek to establish boundaries of access and understanding. Previous Next

back to list Jaune Jaune is one part satirist and another part artist, utilizing tiny uniformed garbage men and construction workers to advocate for more social awareness. Hailing from Belgium, Jaune paints and constructs little worlds of chaos and disruption, via layered stencils, for his army of workers in little yellow reflective vests to run amok. He creates beauty out of the mundane and wields creativity as a powerful tool for making the best out of the worst.

< Back Stevie Love Featured Structure Artist Challenging herself to explore and adopt new art forms, contemporary artist Stevie Love has expanded her creative practice by taking on the role of adobe builder. In 2001, after attending a four-day workshop at Southwest Solar Adobe School in Bosque, New Mexico, Love and her husband Dr. Bruce Love decided to build their very own adobe house in Juniper Hills, California overlooking the Mojave Desert. Architecturally, the concept of an adobe house is an ancient building technique common amongst historic civilizations in the Americas and the Middle East. The term “adobe” is Spanish for mudbrick or Arabic for brick. Honoring the traditional techniques of adobe building, Love and a small crew hand-sculpted each brick and structural element of her adobe home. Throughout the seven years Love constructed her adobe home, she photo-documented the turbulent yet immersive experience constructing the home, as photographs displayed in this exhibition. From laying the foundation to picking tiles, the Loves put in a great amount of research and effort in building an authentic yet personalized adobe house. When building the foundation, walls and overall base structure of their adobe dream home, Love committed to only using materials within walking distance from the building site. Love also made sure to align the structural orientations of the house with the Earth and sky axis, taking the seasons into account just as the first adobe builders once did. Furthermore, throughout the Love house, one finds design components from a diverse and international pool of influences. For instance, the threshold to enter the structure is fashioned with ancient wooden doors from India. As visitors cross the entryway, they are met with an alcove (a small nook or cut-out in the wall), the Loves decorated with saints and angels to protect all who enter the home. In the master and guest bath one finds Japanese and coin tiles, fossils, and Chinese half-boulder sinks. In the Loves adobe residence, the list of obscure decor goes on — every cranny, cabinet, and doorway in-between tells a unique story. Outside of hand-building her own adobe home, Stevie Love is well known for her self-declared addiction to acrylic paint and its ability to create autonomous forms. She is widely recognized for her paint-sculpture hybrids, inspired by intense energy, nature, visual culture, and open experimentation. Love earned her Bachelor of Fine Art degree from California State University, San Bernardino and her Master of Fine Art degree from Claremont Graduate University. Her work has been featured in private and public spaces across the United States, Asia, and Europe and can be found in the permanent collections of the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA, and the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA. Previous Next

2018 < View Public Art Projects Guy Dill Roundabout 2018 Permanent Art Project

Up Empty Vessel Excerpts Amir Zaki Amir Zaki is a photographer interested in the rhetoric of authenticity. Although Zaki’s use of hybridized photography tows the line between reality and the abstract, his documentary style ensures the viewer’s trust in the piece remains intact. His subject matter revolves around the architectural and organic California landscape, mainly the idea that California is symbolic of a metaphorical collage of styles and ideas. Empty Vessels explores the vacant landscapes of California skateparks and juxtaposes these images with still lifes of broken, ceramic containers. Using a DSLR and a motorized GigaPan tripod, each photo taken is a composite of a dozen or several dozen photos that he combines. The result is a hyper-realistic rendering of the space which seeks to explore the stillness and isolation of these places, inviting the viewer to contemplate their existence within these spaces. The visual comparison seeks to highlight the malleability of these structures with the undulating rigidity of the barren, concrete landscapes. What was once seen as static, cold and banal transforms into a magnificent display of movement and meditative contemplation. Amir Zaki received his Master of Fine Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999. Zaki has been featured in over 30 solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries including the Mak Center Schindler House, the Doyle Arts Pavilion, the Dalian Modern Museum in China, ACME Gallery, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, James Harris Gallery, Edward Cella Art & Architecture, and Roberts Projects. He has been included in over 50 group exhibitions in significant venues including The California Biennial: 2006 at the Orange County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Andreas Grimm Gallery in Munich, Germany, Harris Lieberman Gallery in New York, Flag Art Foundation in New York, Western Bridge in Seattle, Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, the California Museum of Photography, Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Nevada Museum of Art. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Riverside. January 23 – May 9, 2021 Back to list

Aerial View of Lancaster Airport Aerial View of the Lancaster Airport Lancaster Airport (aerial) Lancaster Airport (aerial) 1/1 Aerial View of the Lancaster Airport, c. 1942 Photographic Print 2012.999.53 MOAH Permanent Collection Gift of Edwards Air Force Base (AFFTC-HO) Scan the QR Code for more information Aerial View of Lancaster Airport

An assorted community quilt project portraying visual representations of home, highlighting the humanist aspect of her work. Up We Are Home Shelley Heffler An assorted community quilt project portraying visual representations of home, highlighting the humanist aspect of her work. Cut, slash, crunch, and weave. These words encapsulate the fluidity of motion that defines the work of Los Angeles-based artist Shelley Heffler. Growing up in the Bronx, Heffler’s experiences navigating the subways of New York City root her artistic practice. The traces of transit maps are visible in the lines and forms in the composition of her work. Heffler’s recent work, We Are Home (2020), is an assorted community quilt project portraying visual representations of home, highlighting the humanist aspect of her work. Heffler, in her work, often uses glimpses and collages of various colors and textures to create an urban aesthetic. Heffler’s work combines waste and other byproducts of consumerism meshed with paint to create a trance-like cartographic composition, manifesting into the landscape of an altered world. With We Are Home , Heffler utilizes her artistic process in quilt-making, soliciting local residents to submit a 12” x 12” quilt block using objects and inspiration from their home. These assorted squares are then curated into the community quilt. This end product addresses the feeling of isolation during the quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing the thoughts of what home means to oneself. June 5 – September 5, 2021 Back to list

Destiny Solis < Back Stuck By Destiny Solis I am stuck in this grove nowhere to go Surrounded by the ones who I adore But I still feel cold like so Life doesn’t tailor I sit here feeling this aglow But for some reason that doesn’t satisfy my fervor I am still stuck in this slum of sorrow Smile and stare at my sage beauty But if only they know how it felt Being stuck in a loop of continuity Wondering why no one has come to help I miss the laughs and smiles Now all I hear are the roars For now, I will wait awhile Pinsha my dashing liberator I finally feel the sun within Previous Next