By Jim Gilles
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 1/12/22 – Parisian gallerists, collectors, and art advisors Dimitri and Jennifer Lorin are pleased to announce the opening of their new space, Lorin Gallery, in Melrose, with a second location in Downtown Los Angeles. Its grand opening took place on Saturday, December 11th, 2021, from 6 to 9 PM in 607 N La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036. The opening exhibit LIGHTS will highlight the works of six contemporary artists who graduated from the New York Academy of Art, including Meg Rossetti, whose compositions explore abstracted figures using the body as a starting point.
The exhibit also includes works by AXA Prize Finalist Erin Milez, Jeffrey L. Wood, Hannah Murray, Pedro Troncoso, and Yang Du. Artists were present at the opening and are available to discuss their works, which are mostly figurative paintings. This current exhibition runs through January 15, 2022.
Dimitri Lorin, owner and founder of the gallery explained: “With Lorin Gallery, we’ll focus on working with young, emerging artists, supporting them from the very early stages of their career. I’m excited to collaborate with different people from the art world, including curators and art collectives with extraordinary taste and global vision.” He continued: “Our goal is to grow together with our artists and bring a fresh proposal to Los Angeles’ art scene. With numerous collectors from Europe and Asia and an international presence at Art Fairs worldwide, we want to be the bridge for our art community.”
After running Avenue des Arts Gallery in Hong Kong and Los Angeles for seven years, Dimitri and Jennifer Lorin are ready to write a new chapter as gallerists with Lorin Gallery. With their name on the front and a new location, the Lorins hope to create a space where collectors can discover talents, locals can experience artworks in person, and bring a roster of worldwide artists to L.A’s flourishing art scene.
Pedro Troncoso, b. 1996 La Romana, Dominican Republic. Pedro explains: “Regardless of art being passively present as a kid, I ended up studying aviation. While dealing with this stereotypical decision, my honesty, intuition, and spontaneity from childhood were deteriorating. Since I quit aviation and moved to the U.S, my work questions cultural roles, stereotypes, and identity uncertainties. I explore in a fantasy world fused with realism whatever remains of us as we “grow up” and adapt to society. Incorporating the only toy remaining in adulthood: Imagination.
Pedro said that he works mainly from childhood memories, and his stories take place in oil/acrylic paintings with either self- portraiture or imagined alter egos. “Spontaneously juxtaposing contradictory scenarios through a realism that might morph into nonsense, reminds me that our identity is distorted and threatened by social standards as we age. Almost pushing us to wear artificial masks in order to fit within ‘the norm’ and expectations. Which repeatedly makes me wonder: what does it even mean to be my real self at this point?”
Hannah Murray is a painter from London, England. Murray has just completed a Masters in Painting at the New York Academy of Art and was awarded their esteemed Chubb Fellowship 2022. Prior to continuing her studies, she acquired at BFA in Fine Art and was a secondary school Art Teacher for three years. Murray’s work employs traditional techniques with contemporary narratives to create illusionistic, seductive paintings. She has exhibited in many exhibitions in London and New York, and was recently also awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant, the most prestigious grant for figurative art. She has had her work acquired by many collectors, including the public Ruth Borchard Collection. Delicious colors, seductive textures and alluring light make the women in her paintings hold your gaze. Hannah explains: “In my work, I find myself re-examining the idea of the goddess Venus: how has she developed and who is she today? Venus still embodies the concept of feminine sexual beauty, but this beauty is a wealth that the women in my paintings can spend as they so choose. Their power is their own. Their power may be uncomfortable. I aim to present this power in an unexpected way; such as an emanation of heat in a shadow.”
Meg Rossetti is a Brooklyn-based artist, originally from Atlanta, GA. Meg’s approach is quite different, as she elaborates: “For the past 5 years I have been painting nude selfies with the consent of the subject in an effort to negate the harmful effects of revenge porn by changing the context in which the photos are seen. By spending time recreating these stereotypically fleeting digital images through traditional techniques I hope to elevate them as meaningful depictions of sexual expression. At the beginning of 2020, I began to shift into making a new body of work. While I’m still interested in exploring themes of body positivity and transformation, I want to have a bit more freedom with my subject matter. I began composing images more abstractly utilizing the body as a starting point.”
Erin Milez (b. 1994) grew up in Chicago and has split her adult years between Seattle and New York City. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Seattle Pacific University and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2021. She currently lives and works in Bayonne, NJ with her husband and daughter. From the claustrophobic discord of quarantine to the overwhelming joy of creating new life, the couples in Milez’s work are living through experiences from her own life and filtered through a language of dance. Inspired by the duet partners in George Balanchine’s 1957 ballet Agon, Milez saw dancers who worked through conflict and learned from the other’s body. They were partners dedicated to each other and their task of creating together and supporting each other – much like a couple who has moved in together and is dedicated to their task of making a home together and loving one another, operating with conflict and love. The couples in Milez’s paintings are workers, wrapping around each other with thick limbs and rubberized joints, contorting into and away from each other. Their work argues for the significance of everyday life and that the menial tasks required by it are not mundane but a tether to creation.
