LeBasse Projects Group Show Previews the Year's Exhibitions

Written by Norman Whiteside Saturday, 07 January 2012 21:56

Culver City, California.- LeBasse Projects is pleased to present "Preview 2012", on view at the gallery from January 7th through February 4th 2012. This group show will highlight some of the artists that will exhibit in 2012. Participating artists include Herakut , Mike Stilkey , Joshua Petker , Seonna Hong , Jim Houser , Tobias Keene , Katrin Fridriks , Nate Frizzell , Yoskay Yamamoto , Andrew Hem , Matt Haber and Melissa Haslam . Herakut is a symbiosis of the aliases Hera and Akut, two graffiti artists from Frankfurt and Erfurt, Germany. Their collaboration started when they first met in 2004. Both were invited to paint at the Urban Art Festival Sevilla in Spain and before that time had only seen each other’s work in graffiti magazines. To everyone and themselves it was clear that despite the fact they both focused on character painting their styles had nothing in common whatsoever. And that has not changed a bit.

The differences in Hera’s and Akut’s ways of approaching art and the painting itself are vast. Akut started doing graffiti at the age of fourteen with no artistic background. The photorealism he spray paints today is self-taught and needs a bundle of preparations consisting of a concept that has been mapped out on the computer, high resolution photo-material and a predefined assortment of aerosol paints. If this is all set, Akut patiently assembles his characters dot by dot with one eye on the concept, the other on the wall, while blending out everything else. Hera in contrast thinks that preparing a piece is to handcuff yourself. It ties your perception to the sketch and allows no space for the influence of the surrounding atmosphere or any immediate response to the wall as a very individual medium to paint on. Different from Akut who had experienced graffiti closely connected to the hip-hop culture, Hera just felt the urge to work big-dimensioned when she originally started to paint on walls in 2001. Therefore none of the unwritten rules and restrictions of the established graffiti scene had an impact on her work although another mental boundary did: As reaction to years of strict education of artistic techniques which Hera had received as a child, she today demands as much freedom as possible for intuition and spontaneity in a painting.

Los Angeles native Mike Stilkey has always been attracted to painting and drawing not only on vintage paper, record covers and book pages, but on the books themselves. Using a mix of ink, colored pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey depicts a melancholic and at times a whimsical cast of characters inhabiting ambiguous spaces and narratives of fantasy and fairy tales. A lingering sense of loss and longing hints at emotional depth and draws the viewer into their introspective thrall with a mixture of capricious poetry, wit, and mystery. His work is reminiscent of Weimar-era German expressionism and his style has been described by some as capturing features of artists ranging from Edward Gorey to Egon Schiele . An active graffiti writer from an early age, Petker painted as a street artist through college. While pursuing a degree in History, his interest in the arts and Art History expanded beyond graffiti. After studying abroad in Florence, Italy during college, he became engrossed in figurative and abstract painting and committed himself to making art his career. He has exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and the U.K. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. An active graffiti writer from an early age, Joshua Petker painted as a street artist through college. While pursuing a degree in History, his interest in the arts and Art History expanded beyond graffiti. After studying abroad in Florence, Italy during college, he became engrossed in figurative and abstract painting and committed himself to making art his career. He has exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and the U.K. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Seonna Hong’s remarkable talent and adept in cultivating growth in her work has allowed her to excel in both the fine art and animation communities. Her ability to communicate touching narratives while exquisitely rendering forms in differing mediums (gouache, acrylic, and oil) has made her one of the most sought after young artists in the country. Hong’s paintings continuously reflect her exploration of personal evolvement and how environment such as family, friends, and society can shape one’s existence. Seonna Hong (born 1973) graduated from California State University. She has held exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. In 2004 she as nominated for an Annie Award and won an Emmy Award for her background animation on “My Life as a Teenage Robot,” the acclaimed Nickelodeon show. Additionally, Hong has been featured in the New York Times The New York Sun, Gallery Guide (cover), Giant Robot (cover), Art + Auction, Portland Mercury (cover), Res Magazine, Art Prostitute, as well as the books The Truth Show, Beatsville, and Sci-Fi Western. Her first book Animus, based on the 2004 exhibition, was released this past fall.

Jim Houser was born in 1973 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city where he currently resides. He is a self-taught artist and an honorary member of the Philly-based artist collective Space1026. Houser’s installations create a mapping system, cataloguing his psychological states over the course of a particular period of time. His work explores the cadence of speech, science and science fiction, sickness and disease, plants and animals, time travel, ghosts, the art of children, secrets, radio, codes and code breaking, words that sound beautiful and mean something terrible, and words that sound horrible but mean something wonderful. Houser’s collages, paintings and installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and Brazil. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Recently, Houser released a vinyl record of instrumental music composed to accompany his installations, the songs are currently available on iTunes. Tobias Keene is a third generation British painter who currently lives and works in Los Angeles. His majestic and captivating art continues to explore through the immediacy of color, texture and form, a quality of lost innocence. His work exemplifies the resplendence of children, animals and static objects. “My work is the subconscious portrayal of childhood memories that are running

into an unknown ambiguous future”. He has had several one man exhibits in Los Angeles and New York, with Earl McGrath Gallery as well as group shows including “Fresh” at MOCA Los Angeles and “Dirty Little Secret” Indica on 11th Gallery New York. He is in several prominent private and public collections and currently hangs in the permanent collection of The Trout Museum of Art, alongside his Father and Grandfather.


Katrin Fridriks, born 9 August 1974 in Reykjavík (Iceland), is a conceptual painter. Having spent many years in several countries, on different continents gave her a  certain open-mindedness and cultural wealth which can be felt on the canvas: a  clever mix of the wilderness of her native Iceland, abstract expressionism, minimalism – spearhead of the Bauhaus -, a combination of calligraphic work, tribute to the expertise of the Far East, graffiti, a controlled and thorough pop culture colorimetric. Her passion for architecture inspired her to create conceptual installations still using canvas and paint. Beyond her resolutely modern pictorial expression, Katrin Fridriks  is continuing her research into matter and color with the avowed intent to place technique at the service of artistic expression. Creating new perspectives, her work brings an innovative dimension to abstraction. A recent graduate of Los Angeles’ Otis College of Art and Design, Nate Frizzell has spent his time since graduation dedicated to painting and honing his style. Using bold and colorful images of children at play – and in turmoil – Frizzell creates intimate stories that mask his own feelings of immaturity. Using both highly rendered images and softer graphic design elements, Frizzell weaves stories into his paintings that we all can see ourselves being a part of. Frizzell is building a strong resume as a young painter with recent sold out shows in Los Angeles and New York.

Matt Haber’s artwork is connected to a civilization that once existed in the artist’s own mind. He presents a catalogue of characters in scenarios which explore moral and ethical dilemmas in a stage-like setting. Referencing existing allegory and pop culture he creates a familiar feel to his works. Within them you may see the innocence of the 1950’s, the industrial invention of the Victorian Era, or the eloquence of the Rococo Era. He believes storytelling is the most important things we can pass on. Matt has worked for Walt Disney Feature Animation, Fox Animation and has been artist assistant to Takashi Murakami . He  currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Melissa Haslam graduated with a Bachelor of Computing (Multimedia Technology) from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. However, after working in computer graphics for a few years she found herself wanting to push her creative skills further and went back to school to study Visual Arts at RMIT, focusing on painting and drawing. With an emphasis on narrative theme and a romanticized, escapist view of the world, her paintings are populated by beautiful adolescent women in fairytale-like scenarios, allowing her to explore the transitional stage between innocent play and the adult psyche.

LeBasse Projects is focused on the development of a carefully selected roster of international emerging artists. Since opening its doors in the Culver City Art District in 2009, LeBasse Projects has presented a program that fosters the growth of its artists by allowing them the freedom to create across a range of mediums. In March 2011, LeBasse Projects expanded its gallery footprint with a second location in Los Angeles historic Chinatown Gallery District. Along with a series of international exhibitions, LeBasse Projects is putting forth an ambitious program of some of the most cutting edge work in new contemporary art today. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.lebasseprojects.com

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