Package Nocturnes

curated by Beth Fiedorek

October 17 - November 5

Windows at ArtCenter DTLA

In February I had a chance midnight encounter with a pair of shrieking raccoons. These animals are foragers: resourceful, disguised, cunning and making do with less. Such qualities remind me of the artists I sought for this show. Artists creating in and against a plasticky, technicolor, gizmo-d world that makes visual artwork seem at once superfluous and urgently necessary. Like the raccoons who forage our cities at night, these artists make the leftovers into life.

Some of the artists in the show work directly with consumer materials and products, while others embody the perspective of an outsider who is nevertheless part of the ecosystem. The works peer inside a world that appears fully formed, sifting through its garbage, highlighting how desire and access can be nefariously mediated but also understood – perhaps even cherished.

Beth Fiedorek, artist and curator

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Artist Bios

Sharon Barnes is an inter-disciplinary Los Angeles-based artist who uses process and materials to create meaning. Through the medium of Social Abstraction and the poetics of materiality, her work is interested in addressing social and cultural concerns through visual languages, while moving freely between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. Barnes is an American artist of African descent, born in Sacramento, CA, and raised in Los Angeles. She studied at Otis College of Art & Design where she returned to complete her MFA in Fine Arts. She earned her B.A. in Television-Film at CSULA.  Barnes has exhibited in galleries, universities, museums and art fairs, including group shows at the California African American Museum, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Aqua Art Miami, the Los Angeles Tom Bradley Airport and a site installation at the Arco Chato in the Republic of Panama. Her work is part of the permanent collection of the UCLA Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies as well as private and business collections.  

Working between the traditional methods of landscape painting en plein air, and figurative studio painting, Will Bruno’s work explores the narrative intersection of painting and comics. His work has recently been exhibited in Night Swim at Good Naked Gallery in New York, Spring Break Art Show with Desert Center Los Angeles, and Hormone High at Alone Time Gallery in New Orleans.  He Received a BA in Studio Arts from Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, and an MFA from Portland State University, Portland, OR. His work can be viewed at willbuno.com or instagram.com/willbruno

Cameron Cameron (b. 1991) was raised in Texas and lives in Los Angeles, California. Her work revolves around collecting and categorizing as ways to understand nature and situate one's personal relationship to their health and community. She relies on the generosity of her community to collect dead insects. These are often found on the ground, gifted, or caught by her cat Jasper.  She then creates sculptural interventions to compensate for generic imagery, questioning how the mundane may represent feelings of loss or longing within day-to-day disorder. She received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014, attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2017, and received her MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2018. She currently teaches Visual Art at Campbell Hall School in Los Angeles.

Beth Fiedorek (curator) received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BA from Yale University. Her artwork has appeared at venues and projects including Arts Brookfield, The Mortuary, Los Angeles Road Concerts, and Crane Arts Philadelphia. She previously curated Emp(h)athy, a group show at the California Institute of the Arts which explored how empathy functions within art practices.

Teresa Flores is an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her work examines identity and wellness and includes drawing, video and social practices. Flores has led programs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and Spike Art Quarterly in Berlin and her artwork was featured in the exhibition Centennial, 100 Years of Otis College Alumni. She has taught Visual Culture at California State University, Fresno and for the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. She holds an MFA in Public Practice from Otis College of Art and Design and most recently received a Certificate of Appreciation from the City of Los Angeles for her project, Experimental Quesadilla Lab.

Rochele Gomez earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach, CA and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine, CA. Her work was recently featured in a two-person exhibition, Green Leaves, Pink Light at Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, CA.  She has had solo exhibitions at mandujano_cell, Los Angeles, CA; Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles, CA; and LAXART, Los Angeles, CA. Recent group exhibitions include Odd Ark LA, Los Angeles, CA; National Museum, Berlin, Germany; and Galería Curro, Guadalajara, Mexico.  In 2016 her work was part of  Caza: Rochele Gomez, Margaret Lee, Alejandra Seeber, curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.  Gomez lives and works in Los Angeles with her dog Max.  

Luke Harnden (b. New Orleans, LA.) is a multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Los Angeles. From 2012-2017, he co-founded and operated a discursive arts and performance venue in Dallas Tx. Known as Beefhaus. Exhibitions include ‘Songs’ Nick Kochornswasdi Gallery, Los Angeles; ‘Ritual Images’ Sean Horton Presents, New York, NY; ‘Borborygmi’ Box Co., Dallas, TX; Powerlines, Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas, TX; Black, Site 131, Dallas TX; ‘Circuit Breaker’, TWU Denton TX; ‘Give Me Shelter’ Civic TV, Houston TX. He received an MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts where he co-organized the student run Paul Brach visiting artist lecture series in 2019

Amanda Horowitz (b. 1991, Washington, DC) is an artist and writer currently based in Highland Park, New Jersey. She writes plays, makes sculptures, and performs in videos. Right now, she is pursuing her MFA at Rutgers University.  

David Muenzer is an artist and writer. His most recent solo exhibition, Sylvan Plug, 2019, occupied a 19th-century ranger cabin in Altadena. In 2018 he co-organized storefront: Full Haus: The Seeld Library at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, curated by Lanka Tattersall. Muenzer's work has appeared in Artforum, Flash Art, Mousse, Contemporary Art Daily, and The New York Times, among others.

Gozié Ojini received his BA from the School of Arts and Architecture at University of California, Los Angeles. Gozié’s work has been featured in exhibitions and events at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Reparations Club (Los Angeles), The Pit (Glendale), Fellows of Contemporary Art (Chinatown), and in lieu gallery (Los Angeles). Gozié is currently based in Los Angeles.

Yoshie Sakai is a multidisciplinary artist, working in video, installation, performance, and sculpture. She received her BFA from California State University Long Beach and her MFA from Claremont Graduate University. She attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received the 2012 California Community Foundation for Visual Artists Emerging Artist Fellowship. She has shown work throughout the United States in film festivals and art exhibitions at institutions such as the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, California State University Dominguez Hills in Carson, California, Verge Center for the Arts Sacramento, Antenna New Orleans, University of Albany University Art Museum, Chinese American Museum Los Angeles, and the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as internationally in Cambodia, Canada, Germany, and Japan. 

Originally from Jerusalem, Israel, Assaf Shaham disrupts the intended functions of images, objects and texts in order to rediscover their poetic and politic potential while using humor and absurdity. Shaham considers himself as a ‘photographist’, although he often uses different mediums such as film, sculpture or painting. However, it is the medium of photography and the readymade that are always at the core of his practice. His latest body of work, “Taste of The Wild,” evolves around the (over) consumption of food, the (over) consumption of images and how the two collapse into each other. Recent exhibitions include the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Yossi Milo Gallery (NYC), Braverman Gallery (TLV) and Gallery 1993 (L.A). His work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, The Shpilman Institute for Photography in Tel Aviv, Petach Tikva Museum of Art (Israel), Centro Cultural Clavijero in Morelia (Mexico), Jewish Museum in Vienna, UCLA New Wight Gallery, In Lieu Gallery and more.

Jazmín Urrea is a visual artist who works with themes of identity, consumer goods, class, food equity, and justice. She received her MFA in Photography and Media from the California Institute of the Arts (2017), and a BFA in Photography from CSU Long Beach (2014). Urrea’s works have been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, The J. Paul Getty Museum Los Angeles, CalArts, UAM Long Beach, Santa Clarita City Hall, Blue Roof Studios, The Music Center, UCF, Flatline, and SADE LA. She participated in CURRENT LA: FOOD Triennial (2019) funded by the Department of Cultural Affairs and recently received the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2020). She currently lives and works in South Central Los Angeles, CA.