Danny Heller “Vintage New York City”
George Billis Gallery
This event has ended.
Artist Statement:
I paint the reality of the Southern California environment: how structures once revered for their groundbreaking ideas in design and social planning have been perpetuated and how they have been forgotten.
Primarily focusing on the area’s mid-century identity, I play with lighting, dramatic angles, and specific colors to form engaging paintings that also capture architectural elements. I use a realistic style to paint those moments where design and environment come together harmoniously in order to showcase the compelling characteristics of these spaces. In some ways, I act as a type of documentarian of an endangered architectural culture in California. However, these paintings are a bit more personal, as they tend to focus on locations from my childhood or at least slices of an era recounted to me from my parents’ and grandparents’ times.
By painting these historically and personally significant scenes, I hope to reconnect with a presumably by-gone time period whose remnants actually still exist. Because especially in Los Angeles, where the past is demolished to make way for the brand new, we are at risk of losing our cultural history. Without which, we leave ourselves devoid of a foundation to build our future on.
Media
Schedule
from September 02, 2014 to September 27, 2014