BANK 125 W. 4th St. Los Angeles, CA 90013 213.621.4055
Gallery Hours: TUES. – SAT. 11am-5pm
lorraine@bank-art.com http://www.bank-art.com
"...who art in Heaven..."
The relationship between art and religion has a long history. As the world grew more modern, theologians and historians predicted religion’s power and influence to wane. But with the turn of the 21st century, the exact opposite has occurred. Religion and spirituality have played a much more significant role in the shaping of society, popular media and world politics. Contemporary artists have taken this social phenomena to task, creating works that ask critical and challenging questions about religion’s impact on culture today.
“…who art in Heaven…” introduces Jonathan Lee Stevens (U.S.) and Ismael Castro Garcia (MEX), two emerging artists who each reframe questions of devotion, faith, myth and divinity through their respective works. Both artists’ works transform the gallery into a space where notions of truth and belief are constantly in flux and in question.
Jonathan Lee Stevens’ work deals with the relationship between evangelical religion in America and how it affects its culture and history. In Stevens’ untitled work he creates a narrative sculpture of manifest destiny influenced by the work of Clergyman John Murray Spear, a leader in the early American spiritualist movement. Spear’s 1855 attempt to build a mechanical New Messiah yielded a larger-than-life metal and wooden structure, a sculpture that attempted to transcend its material form. With Stevens’ work, the viewer is confronted with a construction of supporting pulpits seen in many Midwestern evangelical churches, sprouting forth an overgrown mass of wooden forms, a topographical sculpture reminiscent of a view of the mountains or a rocky stream. Attached to this is a large monochromatic painting facing the gallery wall, a nod to Christian notions of transcendence and the inevitable paradox that comes with manifesting faith in material form.
For Ismael Castro Garcia’s project “El Lupon,” the artist spent over two years creating a mythical saint to protect those who cross the border between Mexico and the United States. As an investigation into the intersections between religion and pop culture in Mexico, Garcia actively promotes El Lupon, building upon the saint’s myth with all sorts of religious memorabilia as well as songs, prayers, and folkloric stories regaling El Lupon’s past and present miraculous acts. While the veracity of EL Lupon’s actual physical existence remains in question, his impact is undeniable. Since creating this saint, many shrines to El Lupon have spontaneously cropped up along the border, testaments to people’s faith in El Lupon’s protective power. In the gallery a large shrine, a chapel of sorts, pays homage to El Lupon, “Guardian del Camino, Senor de las Fronteras.”
