Spring is coming and the preparations for BAGL SPRINGtime 2011 in Berlin (from April 29 to May 3) move into final phase. Apart from interesting events there will be many exciting works of art to be discovered by the public – and this in a top location with large bright exhibition rooms: Spandauerstraße 2, 10178 Berlin (S-Bahn station Hackescher Markt).
Exhibition at Gate 22, 2012.
An Evening of Discovery and First Dibs for Savvy Collectors: gem Celebrates 5th Anniversary as One-Night-
Only VIP Preview, Exhibition and Sale Benefiting the Los Angeles Art Association, on April 2nd, 2011.
With more than 200 affordably priced original works for sale, the Los Angeles Art Association’s 5th annual gem show allows everyone to become an “art gem” collector. This one-night-only opportunity at Gallery 825 on La Cienega Boulevard is widely embraced by the Southern California art community as an important showcase of emerging art trends. The first 100 registrants for the 6 to 7pm VIP Reception will receive an original signed print by acclaimed artist Yoichi Kawamura; and they’ll have the first opportunity to preview and purchase additional gems by Flora Kao, Michael Salvatore Tierney, Brad Howe, Kareem Ralph Amin as well as work by other emerging and mid-career artists. They’ll also enjoy sipping bubbly and sampling the international flavors from Susan Feniger’s STREET. The doors open for general admission from 7 to 10pm. LAAA Executive Director Peter Mays explains, “Our gem benefit is the best place to discover emerging talents at the onset of their career paths and while they are still affordable to a broad base of collectors…it’s THE perfect kick-off to L.A.’s spring art season.”
In the years since its inception the gem exhibition has proven to be both a launch pad for emerging artists, as well as a tremendous value opportunity for beginning and seasoned collectors. Past gem attendees have secured original works by Alexandra Grant, Meeson Pae Yang, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Frank Gehry and many more! The 2011 Benefit Committee includes such art world luminaries as Franklin Sirmans, Robert Galstian, York Chang, Sue Hancock, Michelle Pobar and Louis Stern. “The Los Angeles Art Association — L.A.’s first visual artist organization, founded in 1925 — remains one of the region’s most vital forums for the presentation of emerging artists. Its program of solo exhibitions, juried shows, and its annual gem benefit at Gallery 825 are wonderlands for anyone truly interested in what’s happening artistically in Los Angeles, an international focal point for new art,” said Howard N. Fox, curator emeritus of contemporary art of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and gem benefit committee member. View an online preview of available works after March 15, 2011.
The first annual “Citybeat Covers Art” Exhibition is planned for February 22- March 1 at Alexander Salazar Fine Art.
By Annika Dawson
With San Diego in his heart, Guyana-born abstract artist Kareem Ralph Amin is taking on Los Angeles and the international art scene. A self-proclaimed people person, Amin’s works feature colorfully mastered and enigmatic mystical figures. Self-taught, with works recently featured at JETT Gallery here in San Diego and Open Art Code in France and London, Amin’s star is certainly on the rise. Currently working on a new series titled Transfiguration Room, the 34-year-old’s abounding talents and fervor are spicing up the art world.
944: You’ve recently moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. How do you think the move has affected your recent work?
KAREEM RALPH AMIN: Los Angeles is an amazing place for any prolific artist. I’ve been here since last June. My studio is spacious, with a 22-foot ceiling that I absolutely love. It’s constantly self- provoking that “new painter” discipline. The new energy in my building is all work — serious work.
944: How would you describe the San Diego art scene? What about the Los Angeles art scene?
KRA: The art scene in Los Angeles is all around you and is very visible with public sculptures in the city outside the businesses and outside the institutions. Also, the graffiti expression formulates itself as visual art that makes you say, ‘Wow!’ Not to mention the urban art — it is alive here. I think San Diego is still underground. The voice is being heard, but I think that voice has not resonated fully.
944: What is your favorite place in San Diego and favorite place showcasing art that inspires you?
KRA: My favorite place to be in San Diego is the beach in La Jolla. I like the salt air; it is very refreshing. I also enjoy the La Jolla Contemporary Art Museum.
944: What upcoming events do you have planned?
KRA: The LA Art Show Janurary 19 to 23, a solo exhibition at the Garboushian Gallery in Los Angeles in 2011 and the World Art Vision Fair that I was selected to participate in, in Barcelona, Spain from May 19 to June 5.
944: You’ve said that you would like viewers to interpret the figurative images in your work as their own. What do you see in these images and what are the influences behind them? Do you have any personal favorites?
KRA: These figures are created [so that it’s] simple to understand them visually. I think it is like drawing the face or anatomy, but removing the details. It becomes simpler to have its own subject, being abstract. The influence of these works came from the identity of people I grew up with in the Caribbean. I see life, gestures and voices when I paint these figures. My favorite work is “Harmony.”
944: You have been a full-time artist since 2003. In that time what do you think the biggest changes in your work have been ?
KRA: Significantly, my work has changed from primitive to modern … I knew what I wanted, but it took the passing of my grandmother to fuel me into the painter I am now.
September 30 – October 15, 2010
Download the Press Release
In the new series of work, Amin combines the discipline of drawing and sketching with pastels to reveal the transformation of imagery. It is the true identity of these mystical “figures” the artist is trying to convey that evokes the feeling of recognition within and connection to the work. His most recent exhibition at Open Art Code London showcased one of his latest works, “Harmony”; which was also recently featured on the cover of San Diego City Beat Magazine.
Since the beginning of his career in 2003 Amin has been searching within to find a subject for his work, often taken back to his Caribbean roots. His only connection was felt towards a subtle image of a mystical figure, thus realizing a quest towards rediscovery and inevitably isolation. Vibrantly colored figures are the social subjects of his series, instigating a connection with the viewer as the subtle melancholy approaches from the depths within each piece.
This series shows a strong resemblance to Amin’s earlier works, featuring the similar monochromatic background. Each image is created with thick visible lines outlined with softly constructed lines; forming arcs like dancing patterns of rich gold and browns that links the harmony of combined technique. The work gestures a primitive vibe with relation to the space and composition.
Kareem Ralph Amin is a worldly man. Born in Guyana and raised both there and in the neighboring island of Antigua, the 32-year-old’s artwork has been exhibited throughout Italy. But, he chooses to live in San Diego.
“My dad used to live out here at one time. He was always fascinated about us coming to live in California,” he says in a light Caribbean accent. “That kind of provoked myself and my other brother that this was a direction which we should venture.
“But, the essence of it, I think it also has to do with a girlfriend, too. They say, ‘Only a woman can make a man’s mind change,’” he jokes easily.
Regardless of what brought him here, it is in San Diego where he was able to hone his craft as a self-taught painter.
“I can’t speak for everyone else,” he says. “Some of us have natural gifted talents. Sometimes we recognize it and we tap into it very, very early. I realized instinctively my ability to draw; I always recognized it.”
But, Amin did not pursue his passion directly. Instead, he took a more circuitous route, brought on by family and cultural expectations.
“What tends to happen when you’re born in most of those British territory islands, your parents instill in you that technology and science will rule the world. The whole fact of the matter is that education is very sound, so that department is where I focused; I basically focused on technology as I was growing up.”
At one point, he accepted a temporary position at a paint company in Barbados, rekindling his artistic interest.
“I was watching how these guys manufacture these colors, and I was just fascinated with it. My natural instinct—that I can create these formulas, put them in the computer and come up with these colors—was beautiful.”
When he came to San Diego, he worked again in paint.
“When I moved here to San Diego, one of my first jobs I took was in a paint corporation as an outside sales rep. In addition to that, when I was at home, I was always painting—that was the driven motivation.”
It was here in this coastal city, busier than his homeland yet with a similar atmosphere, that he created his trademark organic style and began to make a living as a full-time artist.
“In the home I lived in, I was just creating these imaginative figures in my head and came up with different ideas. And that’s where I found that type of style, that kind of figurative pattern.”
His “figurative pattern” is evident on the cover of this week’s CityBeat. Amin says the piece, “Harmony,” is open to interpretation.
“You know that whatever way you look at it, with two figures together, creating a path and walking in a direction, it tends to have its own subject and its own voice for itself.”
To see Amin’s work in person, check out his show at Little Italy’s JETT Gallery (989 W. Kalmia St.) later this year. You can also see his stuff at kareemaminfineart.com.
Born in Guyana and currently living in California, Kareem is a highly dynamic and genuine artist who has been exhibited in the San Diego Museum of the Living Artist .
“As an Abstract Painter, I am forced to create images and patterns with selfless authority. These images develop from an imaginary concept of reoccurring visions that includes figures, representing movement with over- lapping brush strokes. The textural pattern is painted to balance the figures, di- stinctively allowing contrasting color-palettes to render as Light and Darkness. This dichotomy in my work is brought about by disguising the figures so that the viewer is free to interpret their own subjects and voices.”
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Written by Chantal Gordon
When I arrive at painter Kareem Ralph Amin’s studio in San Diego, the first visual key to his life that he shows me isn’t a painting – and isn’t a drawing. Rather it’s an old inkjet-printed photo pasted onto a piece of tag board. In the shot, an 18-year-old Amin is sitting at a desk, headphones on, beaming a puckish stare into the camera. Beside him, his best friend Dwayne Adams – earnest, at attention and clutching his leather bookbag – plays the sidekick and foil. Both are waiting for their technical drawing class to begin. “He was always the quiet one and I was the rudeboy,” Amin chuffs, using the reggae slang to mean a Mr. Popularity type. “I was in the forefront of getting all the attention.” The shot was taken in Georgetown, Guyana, where Amin, now 32, was born and raised by his father and stepmother. At age 20 he moved to another Caribbean nation, Antigua, to live with his mother and her family. “Antigua was sweet, Guyana was raw,” he says. “I enjoyed both sides. Living in [Antigua] you felt like there was a lot more to gain with regard to financial status; tourism is a big source of wealth for that country. But at the same time Guyana for me was the grassroots, the foundation. Living in Guyana was a way for me to acquire a good sense of business and being independent.”
Introvert/extrovert, sweet/raw, rich/modest; the same tension between opposites that has shaped Amin’s life is also evident in his work. He energizes contrasting (and at the same time harmonious) colors into dancing, overlapping brushstrokes, a feature that has become his signature. Human figures and faces emerge between, beneath and on top of these layers. His work is abstract portraiture in motion. To wit, in his recent piece Unusual faces, a scarlet dash upon a blue swirl becomes Amin’s comical, visual shorthand for a smile. “I think he helped mold us right,” Amin says of his dad, a journalist. “He provided what I called the one-way street program – get up every morning, listen to ‘BBC News,’ go to school, come back home. I did track and field, and soccer – things that really would spice me up – but soccer was my main thing. It was a smart sport to me, like a chess game when you’re on the field.”
Some of Amin’s pieces radiate an isolated, last-man-on-Earth feeling; his early breakthrough Harmony depicts two figures carrying walking sticks, one person taller than the other, and they are proceeding perhaps into a light, perhaps towards a chosen path.
Other paintings, meanwhile like his new, dizzying diptych Enlightenment are grid-locked, busy, voyeuristic.
It was Amin’s first after school job he had when he was 13 that taught him how to spot moods and personalities on an abstract, essential level. This was the deal. His dad would buy Amin and his brother 100 copies each of the Guyana Chronicle, and they would sell them at night and on the weekends if they wanted extra spending money. “On Wednesday nights the supper clubs would finish at four in the morning,” says Amin. “Basically we would wait until the club was over and everyone would come out and buy newspapers. [My dad] was there to shield us, but I think it opened up street sense to me, helped me learn to identify people.”
At 22 he left Antigua and moved to San Diego. “Straight to San Diego – I didn’t to no Brooklyn, no Miami – no place where [a lot of] Caribbean people are,” he says laughing. “At first it was a culture shock.” Although his background was in telecommunications, when he arrived in California he began working in the sales departments for Frazee and Vista paint companies, and at home he began painting during his free time. One day during a lunch break, he walked into a furniture store in well-heeled Encinitas, where he saw paintings on offer. “I asked them, ‘Do you buy artwork and sell them, or do artists just bring in their artwork and put it on show?’” he recalls. “Then they asked me, “What do you do?” And without missing a beat Amin replied, “I’m an artist.” Long story short – he displayed three of his works at the shop, and all three of them sold. In two weeks. Talk about an ‘aha” moment. “The first paintings were very primitive – rich earth tones, no primary colors, none of that. Just umber, brown, dirt color. It was just…raw,” says Amin, who counts Marc Chagall as an influence.
It was around this time his grandmother, another female force in his life, passed away. “Painting at home was a solace moment for me.” The morning after he returned from her funeral in the Caribbean, and with his mind made up to start his own decorative arts company, he walked into Vista Paint and quit. Before long, his library of wall finishes (think fresco, Tuscan, drift patterns) was in high demand, and in 2003 he used that money to open his own fine arts gallery in the hot design ‘burg of Solana Beach, in northern San Diego County. His following continued to build. Buyers included an interior designer, motivational speaker Steve Farber and residents of Tony Fairbanks Ranch. Two invitations to Florence’s Biennale followed.
The exuberance and high energy levels of his most recent work, and of the artist himself, seem to feed off each other in one continuous loop inside Amin’s new studio in Golden Hill, a neighborhood in mid-gentrification just east of downtown San Diego. (Amin has since closed the Solana Beach gallery). Here cafes with ambiguous tea menus, and patios groaning under hipster weight, coexist with taco shops and flower stands. Amin recently found an apartment here, too. So what’s next on his agenda? in September he’s in Tuscany for Biennale di Chianciano, and October 2 – November 6 is his solo exhibition at Jett Gallery, a hip newcomer on San Diego’s art scene. Next year you can find him at Art Show Zurich. When he does slip away from work, he gets his West Indian foodie fix at Eva’s Caribbean Kitchen in Laguna Beach, owned by a fellow Guyanese whose conch fritters draw tourists from all over California.
These days Amin says he’s finding a strong aesthetic kinship in architects, Zaha Hadid and David Adjaye to be exact; the latter was recently tapped to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC. “Their work is very simple but you understand the creativity that’s there,” says Amin. “Thats what people are looking for – that surprising, dangerous thing.”