Garden, 2020

Opened Friday, January 10th, 6-9 pm 2020

LA Artcore Brewey Annex:

Is pleased to present an exhibition "Garden" by California-based artist Alan Chin. This is the artist's first public solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

In his psychologically charged objects and paintings, Chin portrays cultural modes against intangible circumstances. Whether depicting family history, gender, spirituality, mainstream culture, nature, or complex cosmic questions, his work attempts to navigate the continuous abundance of information through visual language in contemporary life. By integrating elements of painting, ceramics, architecture, installation, performance, he investigates the value we place on objects, color, and form, and explores how we create meaning within the vocabulary of life. Using everyday materials, ranging from found objects, nature, and humanity, he notes sculpture and painting as evidence of behavior. By using the process of experimentation, his work seems to hover in a transitional state of paradox, as if caught between life and death. His work becomes a self-perpetuating system, seemingly capable of a goal, decay, and rebirth. Like scientific instruments of measurement, his sculpture attempts to quantify and organize the universe through a fragile, personal system of order within the seemingly chaotic world. His work investigates culture's obscure undercurrents within our structured society by exploring the power of the human capacity. Much of Chin's work included in this exhibition is made of found materials as well as experimental and traditional materials such as oil paint, acrylic paint, plastic wood, ceramics, metal, sound, performance, purse handles, and other various mixed media and/or processes.

In Chin's Painting "Secret Garden", oil on canvas, 2018, his process of painting is a form of meditation and prayer, beginning with a blank canvas with the application of carbon black paint and dragging his brush to expose the final narrative that becomes the painting. The painting may appear to be black in color only with the reflection of light can one begin to get a clue to what is to be revealed.

In Chin's work "All Kinds of Weather," made of wood, steel, and glue, he explores the material of the wood as a source of narrative story telling, in relation to ancient wisdom structures and objects. The wood Chin used for this sculpture was original grown by Napoleon Bonaparte with the purpose of building battleships for war, but then wooden battleships became obsolete with the technology of Steel and the age of the industrial revolution in France. The tree was then used to build oak barrels for the sole purpose of aging and fermenting wine, the barrel source was then used to age wine from the 1973 barrel of California Winery Chateau Montelena in Napa Valley, which in 1976 won the "Judgment of Paris" blind taste test that put America on the map along with Stags Leap Wine Cellar's 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon. This was the first time the USA beat the French on French soil against French Bordeaux and Burgundy's, which at the time were thought to be best in the world with no chance of an American winning. In 2005 Chin acquired the barrels from a friend's father whom at the time was a wood dealer working for the hardwood company Macbeth in Berkeley, California. Chin's intention for the wood barrels were going to be for making wine and large Japanese style Taiko Drums when he eventually decided to make a sculpture called "One Pinecone" for the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Museum's Botanical garden pine grove in 2016. Then the fire department ordered the pine grove to be cut down and Chin was asked to take his work back when he noticed scraps from the "One Pinecone" sculpture on the ground of his Downey studio were forming concentric circles around each other naturally so he decided to cut up the rest of the wood components of "One Pinecone" and create a structure that resembles the cross section of a tree which on many levels uncover the dendrochronology (the science or technique of dating events, environmental change, and archaeological artifacts by using the characteristic patterns of annual growth rings in timber and tree trunks.) in more ways then one. The location of Chin's former studio in Downey where the sculpture was made was the former site for building USA military airplanes for World War II and birthplace of the Apollo Space Program. Where the material came from and traveled to become of great importance to Chin as he explored peaceful solutions for a material that could have potentially been used for War. The history of the material has the ability to continue to travel through out it's lifetime pick up new reference points, history, narrative and explore beyond in the realm of mystery.

LA Artcore Brewery Annex

650A S. Avenue 21

Los Angeles, CA 90031

Gallery Hours: Th-Sun. 12-4 p.m.

Ph. (213) 617-3274