Artists:
Serge Armando, Kristina E. King, Lino Martinez, Erica Steiner

Curated by:
Edgar Varela

Artist Contact:
Edgar Varela Fine Arts
542 S. Alameda Street, LA CA 90013
213.494.7608
email: Edgar@EdgarVarelaFineArts.com
EdgarVarelaFineArts.com

Dates:
April 15 – May  15, 2009
Opening reception May 2, 2009, 7pm-9pm     In conjunction with the May Art Walk Night.                          
Pedestrian Viewing 24/7, Gallery Hours to be posted.  Gallery open by appointment.  

Location:
Phantom Galleries LA Long Beach on the Promenade. 170 North Promenade, Long Beach, 90802

About the Artists: 

Serge Armando
Born in Nice during a period of Existentialist post-war France, Serge Armando, from his earliest days, was steeped in a backdrop of the blue skies of la Côte d’Azur.  From proximity, his way was ushered into first hand experience with Flux and Les Nouveaux Realists. 

In 1989, Armando accepted a position at Laguna Art Museum as Exhibition Designer. His first assignment, "Turning the Tide," an exhibition of early Los Angeles Modernists, introduced him to the spiritually-charged abstract works of Peter Krasnow and the hard-edged geometric works of John McLaughlin.

Artist and scholar Michael McManus said this of Armando, "Frontal, blunt, and totemic, [Armando’s] works confront viewers as primal plus-minus icons, but are also perceptually elusive in how they activate the viewer’s peripheral vision. Their workman-like massing of precise, flat, polychromatic acrylic, creates an arresting abstract yet pictorial arena. Like many pure abstract artists of the late twentieth century, Armando regards the non-objective as a visual language–still in its infancy–whose potential equals that of representation." In this way, Armando’s works are invitations for viewers to impose upon them their own visual idiolects, complete with their own experiential lexicons which have arisen from the viewers’ own distinct inventories of “heres” and “nows”.

Armando’s latest works are, as always, iconic and kinetic.  The works document his lifelong immersion in competitive systems of organization.  Each work of the series propagates squarely steadfast abstract geometric immediacy.

Over his thirty-year residence in Laguna Beach, Armando has played a decisive role in the careers of significant area artists and gallery owners.  His works have exhibited in key local galleries and Museums, and have sold to some of Southern California’s most distinguished collectors of contemporary art. His recent, 2005, first place showing at Laguna Art Museum’s twenty-third annual art auction is testimony to his continued impact and import on the local art scene.

Paraphrased from an interview/article by Mike Stice, Laguna Beach, 2005

Kristina E. King
Kristinaeking.com

A version of “Pillow Room”  will be installed.

Lino Martinez Santiago
Lino Martinez Santiago was born on July 25, 1961 in Mexico City Mexico. In 1982, he attended ESDAP (Superior School of Drawing Artistic Historical) in Mexico City. Under Professor Mario Orozco Rivera he accomplished paintings and murals. He participated in the murals at the Ferrar Publication Building and the foyer of the Cultural Center Delegation Coyohacan and received a Certificate of Completion. Lino Martinez Santiago arrived in the United States from Mexico City in 1989 and began working with master printer and impression limited atelier. He currently works as a master printer in silkscreen and lithography. His own work is abstract contemporary and surrealistic in nature. Lino has been shown in various galleries throughout California and Mexico with over 15 shows in the past 3 years.

Erica Steiner
Erica Steiner is a professional artist living and working in the Bay Area. Having grown up on rural California farmland and lived much of her adult life in San Francisco, her work reflects both a passion for urban culture and aesthetics and an enduring love affair with the organic forms that compose the natural world. She is a graduate of Mills College in Oakland and New College of California, and has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions around California and beyond.

Artist's Statement
My newest paintings, Reverie: Meditations on an Ornamental World, find conceptual grounding in the idea that the basic human drive to decorate and adorn the material world is a fundamentally sacred or devotional one. Whether this impulse is made manifest in the form of an everyday act like putting on jewelry, or in an overt act of ritual, such as the adornment of a religious icon with flower garlands, we as humans are ubiquitously driven to decorate our world, to sanctify it, and to beautify it with ornament.

Continually deferring and referring back to the language of nature, I use painting as a vehicle to explore my affinity for ornamentation, using natural elements such as trees, flowers, cells, and alien or marine-like forms. Highly detailed in oil and gold leaf, these elements function as visual building blocks of elaborate, dreamy, yet earth-bound realities, foreign yet viscerally familiar places where the consciousness can dwell and find new perspective.

Stylistically, my paintings are influenced by Chinese and Japanese landscape painting, contemporary graphics, textile design and art nouveau. The work also recalls a wide range of contemporary, folk and religious art, including traditional Indian and aboriginal painting, Tibetan Buddhist textiles, and medieval Catholic illuminations.

Special Thank you to Hillcrest Development Partners, Pacifica HOA, Wokcano Restaurants, Charles Dunn Company

Partners:

The Long Beach Redevelopment Agency is proud to partner with Phantom Galleries LA, not only to revive empty storefronts along our major corridors, but also to showcase the arts and build a sense of community and culture in our Downtown," said Craig Beck, Executive Director of the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency. LongBeachRDA.org