Edward Cella Art & Architecture is proud to present the work of Aili Schmeltz and Amir Zaki at Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2020 from February 13–16, 2020 that takes place at the Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset Boulevard. The gallery’s participation in the eleventh annual edition of Art Los Angeles Contemporary provides the opportunity to exhibit new work of two Los Angeles artists whose practices converge at the intersection of art and architecture. Both Artist’s unique processes utilize the technologies and methodologies of their respective mediums to connect contemporary art to architecture. Offering new and unfamiliar points of view of the artificial environments that make up California’s landscape.
The research-based practice of Aili Schmeltz alludes to utopian ideologies that inform the development of the American West and the vast artificial environments in which we now live. Reflecting on Modernism and its obsessive engagement with architectural forms; Schmeltz’s ongoing project, Object/Window/Both/Neither seeks to collapse the spatial differentiation of interior and exterior; depth and flatness; wall and window into series of paintings, drawings and sculptures. In the newest works built intuitively using line, mass and fields of color; Schmeltz creates simple compositions to evoke complex experiential phenomena manipulating and reducing these ideas into massive hangings of overlapping flaps of canvas and paint. Contrasting with these will be a presentation of small format painting studies.
Amir Zaki has dedicated himself to exploring the suburban landscape of California though his photographic practice often taken from unique points of view. His newest and most ambitions series to date, surveys a quintessential California architectural form, the concrete skatepark. Within two complementary bodies of work, Concrete Vessels and Broken Vessels; Zaki plumbs the tensions between solidity and fragility; intentional and accidental; monumental and minuscule and seeks to create compositions that he describes, “appear to be wholly instantaneous, yet reveal subtle clues regarding their extended temporality.” ECAA’s presentation coincides with a more expansive exhibition of the new series entitled, Empty Vessel – Amir Zaki currently on view at the Culver Center of the Arts at UC Riverside though April 5, 2020 and is accompanied by Zaki’s first international monograph California Concrete: A Landscape of Skateparks. Published by Merrell Publishers the hardcover book features essays by legendary pro skateboarder Tony Hawk, and Los Angeles based architect Peter Zellner along with 72 color plates.