Preparing for Beyond Eden...

There are fireworks and then there's Yellow Cake Uranium!

Mark Todd's Powerfury Fireworks Stand from his Force Field exhibition (now on display at La Luz de Jesus) has been a huge hit with Independence Weekend crowds. His high concept idea to blend two great juvenile obsessions (comics and fireworks) has rendered a very mature art piece –an installation that is already being hailed as one of the landmarks of the year. All of the collage pieces and most of the paintings have already sold, so Mark has decided to allow collectors to buy individual pieces from the fireworks stand. The fireworks themselves are now available for purchase in five sizes at incremental price points between $100 - $200, which is a real steal. Todd has also been adding to the stand with each visit to the gallery, making the installation a continuing work in progress adding a deeper degree of vitality to an already ostentatious centerpiece. Far from an art snob, Mark Todd is a prolific zine publisher, will be exhibiting at both Comicon and A.P.E. and teaches at Art Center College of Design. He's also amassed an impressive fan following if the attendees to his opening reception are any indication of his collectors: Ashton Kutcher & Demi Moore, Jeanne Tripplehorn & Leland Orser, director Patty Jenkins, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, and several rock 'n rollers, museum curators and journalists.

Mark Todd will also have a new piece in the Lucid Dreams exhibit which opens tomorrow night at the Noel-Baza Fine Art Gallery in San Diego (July 8 through August 9) featuring 45 internationally renowned artists. Lucid Dreams is the 26th artist survey and fine art exhibit curated by San Diego based designer Mark Murphy of Murphy Design, following up last year’s Narrative Museum exhibition, “Survey Select,” which featured 32 live events over eight weeks.

Wayne Martin Belger previously exhibited at Billy Shire Fine Arts in 2006. Wayne's preferred medium is the construction of specialty pin-hole cameras which often feature a biological or organic element. Among that collection was a camera fashioned from steel from the World Trade Center (Post 9/11), a camera featuring a mini-dialysis pump containing HIV+ blood, and a formaldehyde-preserved infant heart. Patrons of Belger's functional fine art pieces also receive a series of themed photographs shot with their cameras. While I've spoken with Wayne several times over the years, I had never actually met him until last week when he visited the gallery and discussed some of the projects he's been conceptualizing. He brought two new cameras, one of which will be in the La Luz de Jesus 25 show this fall. With the other, Belger will photograph X-rays from inside a giant particle accelerator. The Divine Proportion camera is a lead glass encased pinhole camera, specifically designed to capture on film the scatter from the impact of a high intensity X-ray beam on sculptures representing creation and destruction. The sculptures will be selected based on iconic figures of creation and destruction (such as Robert Oppenheimer and Shiva) formed of materials from the region in which the particle accelerator is located. One of the organic elements attached to this particular camera is a vial of yellow cake uranium (pictured with Wayne, above right). He's recently received an invitation to enter the hot zone (Congo, Liberia) to document the AIDS epidemic in Africa with his HIV Cam. We'll be working hard this summer to get a grant for this important endeavor.

Have I mentioned that Wayne is one of my new favorite people on the planet?

La Luz tops L.A. Times & Huffington Post Art Picks; lands on NPR!

Tonight we'll unveil the Mark Todd's Force Field exhibition which (in timely July 4th fashion) features the Powerfury Fireworks Stand installation. We've archived fifty photos of the construction of this incredibly important work, accessible at the bottom of the preview page. The Los Angeles Times selected this show as their Top Pick. Several of Mark's pieces have already sold, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is a complete sell out. In addition to his signature comic book deconstruction paintings and collages, he'll be offering custom, non-explosive fireworks in four sizes for as little as $100 each. We'll be holding a BBQ in the back lot for this show, which will also serve as the public party for the Soap Plant 40th Anniversary! Hard as it is to believe that the shop that spawned Wacko and La Luz de Jesus Gallery has been around for 40 years now, it's been a pleasure and a privilege to reflect and contribute to the counter culture as we head towards our fifth decade. NPR just profiled us:


Also on exhibit this evening and for the rest of the month will be new work from Simon Sotelo, Andy Steele, Hui Tan and Van Saro -who earned the distinction of landing a highlight on the Huffington Post as all four were recommended by Artweek.
The breakout stars of this year's Everything But the Kitschen Sync group show cover a lot of ground between Van Saro's graffiti verite, Hui Tan's Chinese nostalgia, Simon Sotelo's Dia de Los Muertos portraits and Andy Steele's deformed children's book illustrations. Come on down and have a hotdog on us!

Comic Book Deconstruction: Why July is Going to Rule!

I just received this image of Mark Todd's Powerfury Fireworks Stand, which will anchor his upcoming Force Field exhibition, which opens on July 1st, 2011. Mark has delivered an incredible variety of his signature comic book deconstructions for this prestige installation that will occupy the entire space that currently showcases Glenn Barr's Faces show. When last we showcased Mark (at BSFA), he caught the attention of USA Today. A mere two weeks after this show opens, Mark will head down to San Diego Comicon International, where he'll be further promoting this installation. Click the image at left to access a preview gallery.

There's a maturity in the childlike simplicity of this project, which has been underway for quite some time. The explosive presentation of the sequential action that Todd's art celebrates is less juxtaposed than forced upon the public in a clever and relevant construction that configures the 4th of July holiday opening directly into the oeuvre of the show. I rarely venture into art critique with this column, but I find this particular object to be absolutely brilliant. It's a work of powerful significance that posits a logical progression from Duchamp's Urinal to Warhol's Brillo boxes to Hirst's Pharmacy and finally to Mark Todd's Fireworks Stand. This may be one of the most important pieces to come from our Los Angeles Post-Pop culture, in that it undeniably references the nostalgic appeal of the movement that started as Lowbrow, graduated to Pop-Surrealism, and has recently found acceptance under the greater umbrella of California Modern/Figurative. It also closes the circle from comic books to graffiti to pop-art and back again. I think that 2011 is going to stand as a pivotal year for modern art, specifically with respect to the city of Los Angeles. It will be impossible to have any such discussion without referencing the "new school" that started 25 years ago at La Luz de Jesus and how this single gallery has pushed the envelope in ways that few others could and no others did.

There's a full page advertising Mark Todd's upcoming show in the previous and latest issue of Hi-Fructose Magazine, in WHOA's Summer Art Special, and in the upcoming issue of Pop Surrealism Magazine. Also in the pages of the latter is a two page profile of the recent Pop-Sequentialism Exhibition of modern comic book art. With Green Lantern sure to top the box office this weekend, and Captain America: The First Avenger following soon after on July 22 (during Comicon) it seems that the culture at large is once again dancing to a beat that started here.

Also showing in July, we've already got previews posted for Van Saro, Andy Steele and Hui Tan (check back for a Simon Sotelo preview).

La Luz de Jesus on YouTube!

We've launched the La Luz de Jesus YouTube site!

Our first video is an interview and show statement from artist Danni Shinya Luo regarding her upcoming show, "Spiritual Deficiencies." The show runs February 5 - 28, 2010 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, with an opening reception on Friday, February 5th, from 8-11 PM. Hers is one of four featured exhibitions that also include Kim Scott, Miran Kim and Transmission Atelier. Those shows are titled, "Peepholes and Magic Boxes," "Uncomplicated Treats," and "If the Shadows Could March," respectively.

We're continuing our website redesign over the next few weeks as we combine galleries, so check in here for updates. You can subscribe via RSS with Google Friend Connect by clicking the appropriate icon at top right.

In case you missed it, the Mark Todd "Juggernaut" show at Billy Shire Fine Arts got covered by USA Today. The resultant feedback has been amazing for both his and Owen Smith's "Long Gone." Mark's deconstruction of the comic book medium has never been more timely. In many ways, it's the perfect precedent to Dave McKean's New Works Inspired by Early Cinema, which opens on February 13th, as the final exhibition at BSFA. We're flying Dave to Los Angeles from England to sign books at Soap Plant / Wacko / La Luz de Jesus on Friday, February 12th and he'll attend his opening reception the following evening. A preview is in the works for Nitrate and Kinogeists. You'll know about it here first...