A Look
at Both Sides
NOW
Review by Katie McArthy

While some trumpet the changes they can make to improve the quality of life Downtown, if only the City/County/State/Federal government will give them a few paltry millions by way of tax breaks and outright funding, others are quietly and independently enriching our urban core, sometimes with not enough notice and attention being paid.

A case in point is the current show at Art Share Los Angeles, on a nondescript corner in the Downtown Arts District, exhibiting recent paintings by Robin de Vick, and a photo installation by Jeff Higinbotham titled "Set for Dying."

At first this seems an unlikely pairing of disparate styles, the plein air renderings of Ms. de Vick contrasted on opposing walls with Mr. Higginbotham's elegiac presentation.

Like many non-natives, Ms. de Vick perhaps has a more appreciative, astute eye for Southern California signature sights than we jaded natives do. Her water color/mixed media paintings on paper and canvas capture the romantic, slightly blurred icons of the beach in Malibu, the jumble of Spanish architecture on the hills of Laguna, the call of the road from that siren Highway 1. It makes one nostalgic for a time that really never was in our lifetime - or any other lifetime. She suffuses these images with a clean and fresh-washed glow, something you would expect in the purer air and softer light of her native Seattle.

Jonathan Club take note: You've never looked less stuffy or more accessible.

To turn one hundred eighty degrees and see Mr. Higinbotham's work on the opposite walls of the gallery is to stumble on a wildly unexpected scene, and immediately recognize, "Of course." These two artists, at this time and in this show, are opposite sides of the same coin.

Mr. Higinbotham installed hundreds of four by six inch photographs in a free flowing scatter across a generous space, giving his images the randomness of falling autumn leaves. Images are repeated, sometimes right next to each other, which reinforces the natural, seemingly unplanned sweep of the exhibit. This free form hanging reminds one of broken reflections on a wet city sidewalk during a storm. The photographs, with few exceptions, are about angles, light and shadow, rather than texture or the mystical. They are as literal as the early Georgia O'Keefe studies of Northern New Mexico doors and courtyards. This literalness is not surprising when one considers they were taken in an abandoned tuberculosis clinic in an abandoned town near Kamloops, British Columbia.

What saves Mr. Higinbotham's pieces from what could have been cold remoteness or depressing heaviness is his technique of printing the photos on vinyl, which gives them a warmth and depth reminiscent of the early French auteur movies. The existential tone of these pictures serves as an excellent blank slate for the viewer to project whatever he or she wishes.

In this particular case, considering the show as a whole, one is reminded that while the present is not quite as soft and welcoming as we wish it were, neither is the final, dimming light as scary or uninteresting as one worries it is.

The show was curated by Daniel Dodd at Art Share, who refreshingly introduced himself as such - and as the janitor and everything in between - at this newly ambitious non-profit art site.
The show continues to October 1st at Art Share Los Angeles,
801 East Fourth Place, Los Angeles.