Art Rental & Sales Gallery Fall Exhibition Opening Night Reception

Ching Ching Cheng

As a child, Ching Ching Cheng first learned about science and engineering while spending time at her father’s factory in Taiwan. The complexity, integration, and fluid motion of the machinery fascinated her. Later, while studying the human form as an artist, she came to view the body as another kind of machine–one that provided the same sense of creative wonder. These two fields of interest were brought together when Cheng moved to Los Angeles and was introduced to a world where people’s cars are extensions of themselves. In her artistic practice, this immersion into car culture brought about a merging of human and machine-made forms most recently found in her recent “Engine Series” paintings. Subtly rendered in watercolor, the stark silhouettes strike a delicate balance with their organic interiors and hard linear edge.

Taryn Möller Nicoll

Taryn Möller Nicoll sees the human body as the ultimate symbol for regeneration, healing and positive progression. She is inspired by its constant physical and emotional adaptations and employs her artistic practice to alleviate the negative connotations of its darker, unknown qualities. Using gestural figure drawings, enlarged biological cross sections, and sheer washes of color, Nicoll portrays these uncontrollable and unfamiliar qualities with luscious, careful rendering and harmonious reconfiguration. Her work concentrates on acknowledging fear and answering it with visual metaphors for regeneration and transformation.

Special Projects

Marina Pinsky | Collineation

Using the architecture of the LACMA campus as a point of inspiration, Marina Pinsky photographed details of the buildings and interiors, as well as reflections and shadows of the artworks in the galleries. The resulting images were printed, folded, and re-photographed, adding further layers of translation and, in turn, abstraction to the experience of the space. The resulting photographs break up a grid of galvanized steel sheets that extend through the special projects corridor. The installation at once heightens the order of the structure of the museum and disrupts it with fleeting instances of distortion.

Art Rental and Sales Gallery, Art of the Americas Building | 5-7 pm | Free, tickets not required | For more information on the exhibition or the gallery, please call 323 857-6500.

Image: Ching Ching Cheng, Big Block, 2012