A Journey In Time
Presented by Art Meets Architecture
Although Dean and Laura Larson have collaborated on projects over the years, this is the first time that they have come together in a collaborative photography exhibit. Dean has been a photographer for over 40 years. Laura has only come to this medium in the last decade with the advent of the digital camera. What glues this show together is their shared interest in France. They were gifted a trip to France in 2013 by their cousin, Jan and followed it up with another one in 2016. Needless to say, thousands of photographs were taken on their adventures up the Rhone and Seine, in Bordeaux and the magic city of Paris.
History and the ghostly remembrances of those who walked amongst ancient edifices, hallowed halls and cobbled streets permeate Dean’s images, whereas Laura’s interiors are inhabited by hybrid animal/human creatures in mourning cloaks. Dean’s photos, from his "French Impressions" series take on a painterly quality as he revels in the age of the architecture and the lush landscape. Laura’s are straightforward interior shots, albeit with mysterious sculpted bronze creatures from the "In The Mourning" series (which take on a life of their own). Bringing these two separate styles together sparked the idea for a story. As with many good stories, this one is a journey. The creatures seem to be gathering, whispering, stopping at various locations. Are they tourists? Perhaps they are retracing their steps, visiting old haunts, looking for comrades. Eventually they find themselves in the great hall – awaiting “roll call.” The ferret looks up from her harpsichord. She says to the gathering, “Dearly Beloved…”
"A Journey In Time" was exhibited at the Fine Arts Building, an historic cultural landmark in downtown Los Angeles, California in November and December of 2016. The exhibit was curated by Lisa Ames, from Art Meets Architecture – 21st Century Art Presented in Extraordinary Architectural Settings.
ESSAY: Entropy Magazine, March 10, 2017
Written by Will Alexander, well known poet, playwright, philosopher, visual artist, pianist and native of Los Angeles.
The Larson's Journey Beyond Time
The images emblazoned by Dean and Laura Larson's European sojourn had an extended stay at the Fine Arts Building in downtown Los Angeles during the fall of 2016. The exhibit entitled a Journey In Time cast an atmosphere that was suffused with duration rather than a glimpse into lineal time. Laura's hybrid animal beings seamlessly inhabit her photographic interiors while Dean's photographic exterior scapes combine as a mellifluous collaboration. An oneric harmony if you will, presenting in this case a collective document of their of double travels in France that included the years 2013 and 2016. The result invaded my eye as a living compendium not a simplistic blending, but a tapestry that brings to mind the aesthetic verbal colour that Pere Gimferrer employs in his work Fortuny that poetically chronicles the "aesthetic opulence of the European Belle Epoque and sucessive decades."
Rather than a more inclusive domain the Larson's circuitry remained confined to France traversing its earlier eras as they explored locales such as Cluny and Versaille bringing forth new found wonders from what I would tend to describe as the historically inert.
The works at hand pervade the visual field with a magnetism of hypnotic fluency evoking an architecture of melliflous assemblage providing the viewer with a fleeting seminar on beauty. Thus, the works give glimpse to a dimension that foretells itself allowing each work to emanate with striking insistence a telapathic clamour that the subconcious seems to spontaneously conjoin with. Saying this, I am not saying that the exhibit propounded itself via quasi-mystical obsfucation, but on the contrary elicited an ineluctable quality defying the quantitative as containment.
Laura's hybrid beings interact with the mythical plane that they kindle in the viewer almost palpable respiration. There exists a susurrant call and response between Dean's exterior scenes and Laura' vibrant interior decor. It is not unlike synaesthesia, as visual had translated to aural seepage suffusing the derma so that the uniqueness of each work begin to concretize in one's consciousness as a hidden spectral dye alive with heightened interior wisdom. All the while a type of arcane commentary persists as if the factor of menace enthralled the atmosphere with comment. Take Laura's apparitional ferrets haunting the private chamber of Marie Antoinette, or Dean's otherworldly locomotion implied by his Auxerre with its lane engulfed by a teeming spectral presence. Then there exists their collective image that contains its sudden upright bull fiercely gazing over an interior decor at Cluny.
There is never the feeling of assumption or pre-scripted posture compromised by induction, instead there is a wave of rhapsody in the works that continue to instill their presence long after one has left their actual physical installation. One then associates these works with the realm empowered by Debussy and Ravel, and of the aforementioned Gimferrer, possesing themselves beauty that ascends to the plane of the indescribable.
History and the ghostly remembrances of those who walked amongst ancient edifices, hallowed halls and cobbled streets permeate Dean’s images, whereas Laura’s interiors are inhabited by hybrid animal/human creatures in mourning cloaks. Dean’s photos, from his "French Impressions" series take on a painterly quality as he revels in the age of the architecture and the lush landscape. Laura’s are straightforward interior shots, albeit with mysterious sculpted bronze creatures from the "In The Mourning" series (which take on a life of their own). Bringing these two separate styles together sparked the idea for a story. As with many good stories, this one is a journey. The creatures seem to be gathering, whispering, stopping at various locations. Are they tourists? Perhaps they are retracing their steps, visiting old haunts, looking for comrades. Eventually they find themselves in the great hall – awaiting “roll call.” The ferret looks up from her harpsichord. She says to the gathering, “Dearly Beloved…”
"A Journey In Time" was exhibited at the Fine Arts Building, an historic cultural landmark in downtown Los Angeles, California in November and December of 2016. The exhibit was curated by Lisa Ames, from Art Meets Architecture – 21st Century Art Presented in Extraordinary Architectural Settings.
ESSAY: Entropy Magazine, March 10, 2017
Written by Will Alexander, well known poet, playwright, philosopher, visual artist, pianist and native of Los Angeles.
The Larson's Journey Beyond Time
The images emblazoned by Dean and Laura Larson's European sojourn had an extended stay at the Fine Arts Building in downtown Los Angeles during the fall of 2016. The exhibit entitled a Journey In Time cast an atmosphere that was suffused with duration rather than a glimpse into lineal time. Laura's hybrid animal beings seamlessly inhabit her photographic interiors while Dean's photographic exterior scapes combine as a mellifluous collaboration. An oneric harmony if you will, presenting in this case a collective document of their of double travels in France that included the years 2013 and 2016. The result invaded my eye as a living compendium not a simplistic blending, but a tapestry that brings to mind the aesthetic verbal colour that Pere Gimferrer employs in his work Fortuny that poetically chronicles the "aesthetic opulence of the European Belle Epoque and sucessive decades."
Rather than a more inclusive domain the Larson's circuitry remained confined to France traversing its earlier eras as they explored locales such as Cluny and Versaille bringing forth new found wonders from what I would tend to describe as the historically inert.
The works at hand pervade the visual field with a magnetism of hypnotic fluency evoking an architecture of melliflous assemblage providing the viewer with a fleeting seminar on beauty. Thus, the works give glimpse to a dimension that foretells itself allowing each work to emanate with striking insistence a telapathic clamour that the subconcious seems to spontaneously conjoin with. Saying this, I am not saying that the exhibit propounded itself via quasi-mystical obsfucation, but on the contrary elicited an ineluctable quality defying the quantitative as containment.
Laura's hybrid beings interact with the mythical plane that they kindle in the viewer almost palpable respiration. There exists a susurrant call and response between Dean's exterior scenes and Laura' vibrant interior decor. It is not unlike synaesthesia, as visual had translated to aural seepage suffusing the derma so that the uniqueness of each work begin to concretize in one's consciousness as a hidden spectral dye alive with heightened interior wisdom. All the while a type of arcane commentary persists as if the factor of menace enthralled the atmosphere with comment. Take Laura's apparitional ferrets haunting the private chamber of Marie Antoinette, or Dean's otherworldly locomotion implied by his Auxerre with its lane engulfed by a teeming spectral presence. Then there exists their collective image that contains its sudden upright bull fiercely gazing over an interior decor at Cluny.
There is never the feeling of assumption or pre-scripted posture compromised by induction, instead there is a wave of rhapsody in the works that continue to instill their presence long after one has left their actual physical installation. One then associates these works with the realm empowered by Debussy and Ravel, and of the aforementioned Gimferrer, possesing themselves beauty that ascends to the plane of the indescribable.