Diversity inspires L.A. curator’s Brandstater Gallery exhibit

 01/02/2020 –  Arts+Culture –  Author: Darla Martin Tucker

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Los Angeles artist Gary Brewer noticed the diversity of La Sierra University’s student body while teaching a campus class, and was inspired to design an exhibit communicating the importance of cultural variety to the national character.Images of art works by Fatemeh Burnes appearing in the “Woven Threads” exhibit at Brandstater Gallery.Images of works by Iva Gueorguieva who composes enormous paintings and stained pieces of muslin in vibrant hues.Photographic images by artist Mei Xian Qiu draw upon the fluid and ever-shifting identities that have comprised her life.Los Angeles artist Alison Saar’s work connects with the myths and stories from Africa, the Caribbean and South America, as well as the history of race and racism in the United States.

A long-time artist and noted arts writer, Brewer curated the show “Woven Threads: The Migration of Myths & Metaphors ” exclusively for La Sierra’s Brandstater Gallery featuring the works of four artists — Alison Saar, Iva Gueorguieva, Fatemeh Burnes, and Mei Xian Qiu, respectively representing the United States, Bulgaria, Iran and Asia. They will exhibit their prints, paintings and sculptures Jan. 13 – Feb. 13 and will participate in an artists’ reception on Sunday, Jan. 26 at 6 p.m. at the gallery.

Brewer taught an art history class during this year’s fall quarter for La Sierra’s Art+Design program. He arrived at La Sierra through his friendship with Assistant Professor of Art Tim Musso who is also director of Brandstater Gallery.

“I wanted the show to reflect the positive impact of immigrants bringing their stories and cultures to America,” said Brewer. “We are so fortunate to live in a country and especially the Los Angeles area that has such a rich tapestry of people from all parts of the globe. It makes the world so much richer.”

Brewer has written essays about all four artists whose works he loves, he says, and describes their artistic insights, perspectives, practices and vastly differing backgrounds in eloquent style. They are included in the Brandstater Gallery “Woven Threads” exhibit’s 40-page catalog in which Brewer states, “Each of us has migrated from another part of the world, either recently or in deep time. … This exhibition brings together four important Los Angeles artists, each with a unique history, coming from different worlds and using their stories to inform and shape the content of their art.”

In the early 1990s Gueorguieva traveled to America as a child with her family who sought political asylum, and Burnes, born in Iran, came to the states at age 16. Qiu, of both Chinese and Indonesian descent, was born and raised in Indonesia at a time when Chinese were banished from the country, and came to the U.S. as a teen.

Saar, an African American artist raised in Los Angeles through her art connects with her ancestry and the myths and stories from Africa, the Caribbean and South America, as well as the history of race and racism in the United States. She employs sculpture, drawing, painting and printmaking.

“Their traditions are an asset to our culture,” Brewer said of the artists, “a culture whose fluidity and dynamic character, at its best, embraces and welcomes the richness of different people who bring with them their stories and ideas, and that enlarges the richness of our world.”

Saar’s sculptures and graphic work draw stylistically from folk art, German expressionism and African sculpture. “Her sculptures have their own personal vocabulary that speaks in a direct language about history, race, and mythology. If her sculptures are the melodies that capture one’s soul, the narratives behind them are the lyrics,” writes Brewer in a 2018 piece for “Hyperallergic,” an online arts publication. His articles are also included in a catalog for the Brandstater exhibit in which Brewer writes that Saar’s pieces in the show “represent a range of techniques that she employs to convey her ideas. … Her sculptures have a powerful presence and use the pure emotional force of form to shape the subjective content of her narratives.”

Burnes’ fluid, free-associated improvisational-style paintings are formed of layers and splashes, with ghosts of images invoking architecture, Islamic patterns and figures, places and memories. The works ultimately represent elements of her own history or matters of personal importance. “Her passionate embrace of the world with all of the suffering and beauty informs these improvised narratives,” states Brewer.

“These are complex paintings; they are ambitious and beautiful, they seduce and draw one close to see hidden details where shapes become protean forms – looking like a musical note, a figure, the muscle and sinew of the body, or a map,” he writes in a 2018 essay for “Art and Cake,” a contemporary arts magazine. He also wrote pieces for the publication about Gueorguieva and Qiu and their work.

Gueorguieva composes enormous paintings and stained pieces of muslin in vibrant hues of geometric slants and lines, bright, interwoven, interlayered bits of experiences, insights, feeling and recollection. The artist refers to the large works as tapestries, says Brewer, and “seeks to turn the world of painting upside down” by hanging the canvas loose on the wall and by cutting openings in it and placing strips and bunches of material on the surface, he said in the exhibit catalog. “She drips, pours, stains and dips the shreds of muslin and canvas in pigments, creating visually and physically complex monumental pieces.”

Brewer writes in a 2017 essay, “Iva’s paintings are like a river of ideas, their movement reshaping the landscape around us. It is a place where the dynamics of memory, ideas, images and primal forces are translated into visual dramas.”

Qiu’s intricately and beautifully composed photographic images, often displayed on sheets of mounted plexiglass or suspended off a white background when framed, Brewer writes, draw upon the fluid and ever-shifting identities that have comprised her life, continual adjustments which as a child were necessary for her family’s survival. She is an artist “who sees the illusive nature of self as a form of potential,” he states. “Her art is an expression of magical realism, where history and identity are a reflection of her life experiences that have given her insight into endless possibilities of transformation and renewal.”

In the 2019 essay Brewer describes Qiu as “an artist who sees the fugitive nature of self as a form of potential. Her art is an expression of magical realism where history, identity and self are a reflection of her life experiences that have given her insight into the endless possibilities of transformation and renewal.”

Brewer, a native of California, has exhibited his own nature-inspired paintings in galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. His works are included in private, corporate and museum collections around the United States. While his art will not be included in the Woven Threads show, he is planning an exhibition of his own at Brandstater Gallery in January 2021, he said.