Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles

Restless Index’, a group exhibition curated by Kelly Akashi and Cayetano Ferrer, opens Saturday, September 26th at our Los Angeles gallery, with an extended ope...ning day from 10am - 8pm! Featuring works by Nikita Gale, Madeline Hollander, Larry Johnson, Michael Queenland, Analia Saban, Sean Townley, and Lisa Williamson, the exhibition dives into how inadequacies of language are cast into stark relief during times of social and cultural upheaval, necessitating reform and reassessment. Within this condition of restlessness, artists continue to revise, reshape, adapt, and recondition existing cultural forms by breaking them down to their structural foundations or rehabilitating semantic objects in states of entropy. Employing a diverse range of media and underlying intentions, the work of the six artists presented in 'Restless Index' represents a vision within a specific bandwidth of this paradigm drawing on language, figures, monuments, and architecture. Pictured: Lisa Williamson, Body Board (Constellation), 2019 #tanyabonakdargallery #restlessindex #kellyakashi #analiasaban #nikitagale #madelinehollander #larryjohnson #seantownley #lisawilliamson

From The Los Angeles Times: "My final stop of the day, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, brought me full circle with its inadvertently timely, potent meditation on breath. Breath is both carrier of sound and conduit of life. Only now is it regarded first of all as dangerous, the primary vehicle of viral transmission. In the emotionally insinuating work of Scottish-born, Berlin-based Susan Philipsz (on view through Saturday), the artist’s own breath is broadcast from inside organ pipes... and photographed as condensation on panes of glass. Presence as breath, breath as fleeting. In the form of Philipsz’s work, this essential principle becomes more charged than ever. Experiencing this show in person reminded me that we carry our entire world into every gallery we enter. When ensnared by what we find there, we carry that art right back out with us, where it can continue its necessary, vitalizing work." - Leah Ollman

"If a folk song is understood to say something about the human condition, then each new utterance of the song adds color to that understanding, every manifestation refracts new meaning contingent upon the listener. It’s this expansive nature of sound and music that is at the heart of artist Susan Philipsz’s practice. In her solo exhibition Sleep Close and Fast, currently on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Hollywood, Philipsz complicates our understanding of that most gentle... of folk forms: the lullaby. For over two decades, Philipsz has explored the physical and psychological potentials of sound: how sound shapes space and vice versa, and the capacity for sound to trigger memory. Her installations often involve little more than audio recordings of her own voice singing a suite of carefully chosen music, from centuries-old folk songs to modern pop ballads. She has mounted projects in train stations, underneath bridges, and in a Tesco supermarket. Her 2010 installation Lowlands featured three versions of the 16th-century Scottish lament. It won her the Turner Prize, the first for an artist working primarily with sound. Philipsz brings about a heightened awareness of your surroundings. At turns unsettling and ruminative, her work has the uncanny ability to both ground you in the present moment while transporting you to another time and place." - Daniel Soto for Hyperallergic

Susan Philipsz: Sleep Close and Fast reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail. Make an appointment today to see the exhibition in its last few weeks before it closes on September 19.

Susan Philipsz at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles on Contemporary Art Daily.

Susan Philipsz at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles featured on KCRW this week. In an interview with VernissageTV, Philipsz explains, I became really interested in the sculptural aspects on sound, and how it can define architecture. What happens when you project your voice into space? Perhaps more important, Philipsz’s sound works affect the viewer on a deep and personal level, drumming up rooted memories hidden within our subconscious. She explains that she works with ...the psychological aspects of sound how it can be a trigger for memory, how it can heighten your sense of yourself while making you aware of the place you’re in. On view: July 15 September 19, 2020 https://www.kcrw.com//art-insider-august-18-black-shrines-

This week on #galleryplatformla, #gpla, #galleryassociationlosangeles, #gala Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to announce "Sleep Close and Fast", Susan Philipsz’s first solo exhibition at the gallery's Los Angeles location on view July 15 - September 19, 2020. Sleep Close and Fast presents a new seven channel sound installation featuring recordings of lullabies sung in the artist’s own voice. Culled from a variety of sources including cult horror films, opera and literature,... the lullabies chosen all share dark and haunting undertones. Emanating from stainless steel barrels, the sculptural acoustics suggest deep space, distance and memory. The voice recordings are accompanied by a percussion beat set to the rhythm of the artist’s heartbeat, acting as a metronome for the lullaby. In-person timed appointments can be made by visiting our website.

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to announce "Sleep Close and Fast", Susan Philipsz’s first solo exhibition at the gallery's Los Angeles location on view July 15 - September 19, 2020. This will be the artist’s debut one-person exhibition on the West Coast, following the US premiere of her twelve-channel installation Prelude in the Form of a Passacaglia (2020) at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on February 6, 2020. The gallery will be open by appointment only starting July 15. To make an appointment please visit our website.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter on our website and preview our new online viewing room, "Photography" from April 17-25, 2020. This week, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery presents a selection of artworks utilizing photography to expand the boundaries of what images can be. The influence of photography on today’s artists, as medium and as material, is unmistakable. An image making process that began as hazy, ethereal impressions has ricocheted from documentary truism to today’s cinema...tic and hyper-stylized facade. With such ubiquitous access and over-saturation, a photograph that now gives us pause, an image that truly strikes us, has become utterly rare. To do so, a powerful photograph must transcend style or fact. It must possess an awareness of it’s limitations, and a humility in it’s existence as a print. A photograph today must capture not only light, but an essence; to reveal while embracing all that exists beyond the pictorial frame. By addressing the materiality of a photograph, artists such as Lisa Oppenheim and Sarah Sze bring unique perspectives on the life cycle of an image or its physical print and its place in the visual ecosystem. Other artists such as Uta Barth, whose primary medium is photography, use it as a way of mapping the non-visible. Still, while the documentary function of photography is not lost in the practices of Mark Dion, its application plays a role in grander schemes of storytelling and education.

This past week we have found comfort and encouragement in the voices of friends, colleagues, and patrons across the world. Connections made over the decades from Beijing to Bogota, Berlin to Pittsburgh keep our mission clear, maintains our spirit and our sanity. Within our team, we find new commitment and remarkable abilities to adjust and contribute. And from our artists, as ever, we find our inspiration. Please visit our online viewing room exhibition: GLASS... The word fragility seems to be hanging in the air these days. Air that we only manage to grasp at through window panes. As a medium of glass separates us from the outside world we meditate on its presence in our life. Glass; an insight into the outside and the essence of fragility, this is a material fraught with poetic potential. Often cold and manufactured, artists can elevate this medium to be warm, undulating and porous, pulling us in and still shielding some greater mystery beyond. It is both protector and vulnerable itself, delicate and resilient. A reflection of gentle strength we might all aspire to. We invite you to this viewing room of work by selected gallery artists who take on this seductive and richly multifaceted material.

While we are staying safe at home in Los Angeles, step into an immersive sonic journey through artist and musician Jónsi’s first solo exhibition at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery on SCI-Arc Channel. In this newly released video, art writer Jan Tumlir reflects on the design of the three spaces that comprise the exhibition, each leveraging combinations of sound, light, and sculpture to produce an array of atmospheric effects. Jónsi discusses how the exhibition moves music into different spaces, in one instance using the walls of the gallery as a transducer. #jonsi #tanyabonakdargallery #losangeles