Debra Disman

Artist

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Group Show

Eye Opening: The 2021 California Open at TAG Gallery

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I am thrilled to participate in the The 2021 California Open  at TAG Gallery!

ABOUT THE SHOW

The 16th Annual 2021 California Open is a national juried competition celebrating contemporary and modern art by US Residents over the age of 18. All medias of fine art were considered by our juror, Gronk Nicandro. Accepted work displays at TAG Gallery from August 4–21, 2021. An opening reception celebrating the selected artists will occur on August 7, from 7-10pm. All awards will be announced at the public opening. (Masks may be required).

Juror Gronk Nicandro

Gronk is the moniker of artist Glugio Nicandro. Along with vast and never-ending self- education, he studied visual art at the East Los Angeles College and California State University, Los Angeles in the 1970s. Gronk is an enduring and influential figure in the Los Angeles and international art scenes — maintaining an active studio in downtown Los Angeles that functions as his live-work space and an epicenter for other artists and community members. Along with a core group of artists, Gronk helped establish Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in 1978. In 1993, a traveling retrospective of his work, Gronkl: A Living Survey, 1972 – 1993, was organized by the Mexican Museum in San Francisco and traveled to several institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Gronk exhibited at LACMA again in 2011 for the exhibition ASCO: Elite of the Obscure. Gronk’s work is represented in numerous private and museum collections across the country, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of modern Art (SFMoMa); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles. Gronk’s Theater of Paint marks the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Los Angeles in more than two decades.

I am pleased to be showing “Prairie”,10.25″ x 47″ x 15.25″, mixed media (book board, watercolor paper,  jute cord, paper board, and tissue paper)

 

Exhibitionista: “Reflection” at the Korean Cultural Center and Launch LA

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REFLECTION

A LAUNCH LA  GROUP EXHIBITION

In partnership with The Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles

Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles

AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 27, 2021

 A reflection may be an image mirrored back to the observer or serious thought and consideration. In the case of this exhibition, it’s both. “Reflection” brings together artists from across Southern California whose practices contemplate and reflect our times.  Through their work, they provide an authentic lens to view contemporary culture.

JURORS:

Sunook Park is a professor in the CSULB School of Art and Brand Coach at SUNOOKPARK Branding. He is the independent curator and founder of ANDLAB: a motivational retreat center, alternative exhibition space, and education lab of art and design thinking.

Terrell Tilford is an accomplished actor as well as long time collector and curator of contemporary and modern art. He founded Band of Vices in the West Adams area of LA in 2015. The gallery serves as a platform for emerging, mid-career & established Contemporary artists.

I am showing, “Maximum Security“, 15 x 18 x 10.25”, mixed media (book board, canvas, wood, hemp cord, watercolor paper, acrylic paint and ink)

“Building Networks of Empathy”

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I am honored to participate in:

“Building Networks of Empathy”

at the Airport Gallery of 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA

October 26  – December 15, 2020 

The exhibition Building Networks of Empathy is the second of a two-part show that asks us to consider the ways in which art empowers not only the artist, but its viewers to transform their most difficult experiences into enlightened outcomes. The first part of the show is an ongoing online-only exhibition entitled Facing Darkness, which encouraged artists in our community to reflect internally on our current moment of pandemic, isolation, and structural inequity laid bare.

For this second part, which will be physically installed in 18th Street Arts Center’s spacious Airport campus hangar galleries, artists were asked to respond to how they have changed as a result of their inner reflections on darkness, and to imagine new futures and societal structures as we see our way out of crisis. Each artist grapples as well with the role that art can play in social reflection, expression, and cultural paradigm shifts as a result of a deeper understanding of each other, and the empathy that follows. The exhibition sees empathy not only as a way to share and understand what others are going through, but also as a natural and endless resource that we can all rely on when crisis and emergency hit, with hopes that we can turn this moment of collective fear into a sublime experience.

Debra Disman, Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches. Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.
Debra Disman, Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches.
Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.

“I was commissioned to create an interactive book for Craft Contemporary’s 2017 exhibition, Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California, which opened shortly after the 2016 presidential election. Visitors could choose file cards in an array of colors, draw and write on them, and insert them into the pocketed pages of the book. A range of feelings, responses, and concerns were expressed through the cards, which the Museum Staff saved and gave to me at the end of the show. I stitched them together grouped loosely by theme, to express the network of empathy they depicted, held together by golden thread.”

This exhibition may be viewed by appointment only. Please visit here to sign up to visit the exhibition!

Participating artists include: Alexandra Dillon, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Luigia Gio Martelloni, Rebecca Setareh, M Susan Broussard, Julia Michelle Dawson, Lionel Popkin, Ameeta Nanji, Siru Wen, Elham Sagharchi, Debra Disman, Luciana Abait, Sheila Karbassian, Daniela Schweitzer, Joan Wulf, Loren Harris-Heller, Nung-Hsin Hu, and Susie McKay Krieser.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live Zoom panel featuring Alma Ruiz and Karen Sherman, moderated by Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, on November 12, 2020 at 12pm. For this panel discussion, curators, artists, activists, advocates, and scholars are invited to meet virtually  to reflect on the public opening of Facing Darkness, and consider how the show renders a public crisis and artists’ circumstances evident and knowable. Moderated by artist-scholar Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, with talks by curator Alma Ruiz and dancemaker Karen Sherman, (Inter)facing Darkness will frame a dialogue on how artists are operating as second responders, as thought leaders, and resource gatherers at this time. Participants will be invited to speak on their experience of the show at this moment. Register here.

“Building Networks of Empathy”

By

The exhibition Building Networks of Empathy is the second of a two-part show that asks us to consider the ways in which art empowers not only the artist, but its viewers to transform their most difficult experiences into enlightened outcomes. The first part of the show is an ongoing online-only exhibition entitled Facing Darkness, which encouraged artists in our community to reflect internally on our current moment of pandemic, isolation, and structural inequity laid bare.

For this second part, which will be physically installed in 18th Street Arts Center’s spacious Airport campus hangar galleries, artists were asked to respond to how they have changed as a result of their inner reflections on darkness, and to imagine new futures and societal structures as we see our way out of crisis. Each artist grapples as well with the role that art can play in social reflection, expression, and cultural paradigm shifts as a result of a deeper understanding of each other, and the empathy that follows. The exhibition sees empathy not only as a way to share and understand what others are going through, but also as a natural and endless resource that we can all rely on when crisis and emergency hit, with hopes that we can turn this moment of collective fear into a sublime experience.

Debra Disman, Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches. Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.
Debra Disman, Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches.
Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.

“I was commissioned to create an interactive book for Craft Contemporary’s 2017 exhibition, Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California, which opened shortly after the 2016 presidential election. Visitors could choose file cards in an array of colors, draw and write on them, and insert them into the pocketed pages of the book. A range of feelings, responses, and concerns were expressed through the cards, which the Museum Staff saved and gave to me at the end of the show. I stitched them together grouped loosely by theme, to express the network of empathy they depicted, held together by golden thread.”

This exhibition may be viewed by appointment only. Please visit here to sign up to visit the exhibition!

Participating artists include: Alexandra Dillon, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Luigia Gio Martelloni, Rebecca Setareh, M Susan Broussard, Julia Michelle Dawson, Lionel Popkin, Ameeta Nanji, Siru Wen, Elham Sagharchi, Debra Disman, Luciana Abait, Sheila Karbassian, Daniela Schweitzer, Joan Wulf, Loren Harris-Heller, Nung-Hsin Hu, and Susie McKay Krieser.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live Zoom panel featuring Alma Ruiz and Karen Sherman, moderated by Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, on November 12, 2020 at 12pm. For this panel discussion, curators, artists, activists, advocates, and scholars are invited to meet virtually  to reflect on the public opening of Facing Darkness, and consider how the show renders a public crisis and artists’ circumstances evident and knowable. Moderated by artist-scholar Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, with talks by curator Alma Ruiz and dancemaker Karen Sherman, (Inter)facing Darkness will frame a dialogue on how artists are operating as second responders, as thought leaders, and resource gatherers at this time. Participants will be invited to speak on their experience of the show at this moment. Register here.

FACING DARKNESS in the time of pandemic

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I am honored to participate in the exhibition: FACING DARKNESS in the company of fellow 18th Street Art Center makers: Deborah Lynn Irmas, Beth Davila Waldman, Elham Sagharchi, Gwen Samuels, Rachel Chu, Debra Disman, M Susan Broussard, Lionel Popkin, Leo Garcia, Alexandra Dillon, Gregg A Chadwick, Ameeta Nanji, Yrneh Gabon, Claudia Concha, Luciana Abait, Rebecca Youssef, Crystal Michaelson, Susie McKay Krieser, Melinda Smith Altshuler, David McDonald, Julia Michelle Dawson, Daniela Schweitzer, Luigia Gio Martelloni, Sheila Karbassian, and Joan Wulf.

ONLINE from July 27, 2020 to June 30, 2021

”In our darkest hours, it is natural and human to seek connection with others, to face the darkness together so that we can imagine a brighter path forward. In our current pandemic-time of crisis and isolation, this instinct can feel thwarted, and lead us to even darker places. Art is one of the ways that communities can find resilience in isolation, a method of aesthetic communication that empowers both the artist and the viewer to transform the most difficult and paradigm-breaking experiences into new visions for the future. Even as the arts and cultural infrastructure in the US is in deep crisis, the work of artists reflecting on this time and its socio-cultural reverberations is even more necessary for binding us together and rebuilding our world. As Californians for the Arts director Julie Baker quipped “A first responder comes in and saves a life. A second responder comes in and helps rebuild a life.”

Artists are second responders, and this exhibition of 25 varied artists from 18th Street’s artist community present multivalent ways that artworks that address the human capacity to overcome hardships on both global and personal scales. From meditations on memory, investigations into the warped passage of time, working through fraught familial relationships, and grappling with fear and longing in a time of public health crises and inequities laid bare, the artists in this show address our current moment both obliquely and directly, with humor, melancholy, and uncomfortable propositions. Creation during this time feels nothing like luxury; rather it is deeply necessary in navigating the darkness ahead.” 

Collective – “The only way out is through”

“Hopes and Fears and…”, 2020, 24.5 x 16.25, mixed media

18th Street will host related online events over the course of the exhibition.

Join Us HERE and now….

Exhibitionista: FACING DARKNESS

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I am thrilled to be included in FACING DARKNESS, an online exhibition of works created by artists from 18th Street Art Center‘s 18th street and airport campuses.

Tour the Show!

“In our darkest hours, it is natural and human to seek connection with others, to face the darkness together so that we can imagine a brighter path forward. In our current pandemic-time of crisis and isolation, this instinct can feel thwarted, and lead us to even darker places. Art is one of the ways that communities can find resilience in isolation, a method of aesthetic communication that empowers both the artist and the viewer to transform the most difficult and paradigm-breaking experiences into new visions for the future. Even as the arts and cultural infrastructure in the US is in deep crisis, the work of artists reflecting on this time and its socio-cultural reverberations is even more necessary for binding us together and rebuilding our world. As Californians for the Arts director Julie Baker quipped “A first responder comes in and saves a life. A second responder comes in and helps rebuild a life.”

Artists are second responders, and this exhibition of 25 varied artists from 18th Street’s artist community present multivalent ways that artworks that address the human capacity to overcome hardships on both global and personal scales. From meditations on memory, investigations into the warped passage of time, working through fraught familial relationships, and grappling with fear and longing in a time of public health crises and inequities laid bare, the artists in this show address our current moment both obliquely and directly, with humor, melancholy, and uncomfortable propositions. Creation during this time feels nothing like luxury; rather it is deeply necessary in navigating the darkness ahead.” 

Collective – “The only way out is through”

“Hopes and Fears and…”, 2020, 24.5 x 16.25, mixed media

18th Street will host related online events over the course of the exhibition.

Participating artists include: Deborah Lynn Irmas, Beth Davila Waldman, Elham Sagharchi, Gwen Samuels, Rachel Chu, Debra Disman, M Susan Broussard, Lionel Popkin, Leo Garcia, Alexandra Dillon, Gregg A Chadwick, Ameeta Nanji, Yrneh Gabon, Claudia Concha, Luciana Abait, Rebecca Youssef, Crystal Michaelson, Susie McKay Krieser, Melinda Smith Altshuler, David McDonald, Julia Michelle Dawson, Daniela Schweitzer, Luigia Gio Martelloni, Sheila Karbassian, and Joan Wulf.