http://www.lalouver.com/html/chihuly.html
Dale chihuly's post-Mille Fiore's installations that are based on a
similar glass garden theme ...
AROUND THE GALLERIES
Chihuly's delicate garden of blown glass
The artist's colorful, oceanic forms appear ever more dynamic and
virtuosic at L.A. Louver Gallery. Also: Dan McCleary, Jean Lowe.
By Holly Myers, Special to The Times
Of all the reactions likely to be observed among visitors to an
exhibition of contemporary art â quiet contemplation, hushed
commentary, a smile or a chuckle â a genuine gasp is surely among the
most rare. Good art can be beautiful, intelligent, humorous or moving,
but it takes something pretty spectacular to cut through the refined
atmosphere of your typical gallery and evoke a real, spontaneous
expression of astonishment.
The glasswork of Dale Chihuly is just such a something and elicited
just such a reaction several times on the afternoon I visited his
exhibition at L.A. Louver Gallery, shortly after the opening.
Undoubtedly the most famous name in the field of glass blowing today â
the only such name most Americans are likely to recognize â Chihuly
embodies a sort of populism that tends to arouse suspicion in an art
world context, where accessibility is all too often associated with
superficiality and a lack of sophistication.
The presumption doesn't hold in this case, however. Far from stalling
in the spotlight of popularity, Chihuly's colorful, oceanic forms
appear ever more dynamic, ambitious and virtuosic. The three
large-scale installations that make up this exhibition â each drawn
from the artist's recent "Mille Fiori" series ("a thousand flowers" in
Italian) â are simply dazzling creations, as technically masterful as
they are aesthetically graceful. Walking into the gallery's darkened
main space is like walking into an enchanted garden.
An immense, shrub-like mass of curling red and yellow tendrils greets
you near the entrance, dominating one end of the low, 16-by-40-foot
platform that provides the base for the largest of the installations.
Beyond lies a grove of slender, free-standing, blue and lavender
stalks, some up to 9 feet tall, scattered among which are several
squat, green, yucca-like creations and smooth, globular forms
emblazoned with various organic patterns. Another explosion of coiling
tendrils â this primarily yellow and green and roughly the shape of a
Christmas tree â holds down the far end, alongside a cluster of
mid-size stems resembling swaying champagne flutes.
The two smaller installations, each about one-third the size of this
one, are less extravagant but equally delightful, with a similar
repertoire of forms drawn into tighter, more coherent configurations.
One consists primarily of tall, green, slightly curling, grass-like
stems and slender yellow flutes with yawning, buttercup mouths. The
whole cluster, nestled in the darkest corner of the gallery's ground
floor, seems genuinely alive to the spotlights above, as though
unfurling luxuriously in a beam of morning sunlight.
The other work, installed in the open-air patio on the gallery's
second floor, enjoys the actual seaside sunlight of Venice. It
responds with an appropriately playful attitude, the dominant form
being a slender, hooked stem resembling the head and neck of a swan,
festooned in gorgeous green and purple stripes.
The L.A. Louver show is one of two gallery exhibitions mounted to
accompany a survey now at Pepperdine University's Frederick R. Weisman
Museum of Art. The other, at Frank Lloyd Gallery, contains smaller,
individual works dating from the early 1980s through nearly the
present day.
Though far humbler in scale than the installations, the works at Frank
Lloyd are equally impressive. Elegant and sensual, they are
characterized by an innovative manipulation of basic, organic forms
and an often breathtaking delicacy.
LA Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through
Jan. 15. Closed Sunday and Monday.
Frank Lloyd Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 264-3866,
through Jan. 8. Closed Sunday and Monday.
--
Regards,
Sanjeev Narang
***
email: ask (at) eConsultant dot com
www.Sanjeev.NET
