Piano Duo in Concert: Natasha Marin + Gerald Robbins @ UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall on June 16th

PIANO DUO IN CONCERT
Pianists Natasha Marin and Gerald Robbins
Announce Classical Music Performances

West Coast Premiere on June 16 at UCLA Schoenberg Hall

LOS ANGELES – Pianists Natasha Marin and Gerald Robbins announce an exciting collaboration, which launches this summer with a concert at UCLA Schoenberg Hall on June 16 followed by a performance this fall at Carnegie Weill Recital Hall in New York.

The West Coast premiere showcases works by 19th-century quintessential romantic composers. The hour-long program opens with Anton Arensky (Silhouetten, Suite op. 23) and Johannes Brahms (Variations on a theme by Haydn, op. 56b). After intermission, the performance continues with Sergei Rachmaninoff (Suite No2 op. 17) and Camille Saint-Saëns (Variations on a theme by Beethoven op. 35).

Natasha Marin & Gerald Robbins
Piano Duo in Concert
Saturday, June 16 @ 8:00 PM
UCLA Schoenberg Hall
445 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095

TICKETS $15 general / $10 students & seniors • http://bit.ly/marin-robbins-piano
PARKING $11 in Lot 2 (enter at Hilgard & Westholme) • www.ucla.edu/maps-directions-parking
Doors open at 7:30 PM • INFO (213) 537-4483 • www.natashamarin.com

The East Coast premiere is at Carnegie Weill Recital Hall in New York on Thursday, November 8. Program and ticket information will be released later this summer. Both concerts are produced by CauseConnect and EVFA. To receive notifications on this and other performances by Natasha Marin, sign up online to join her mailing list atwww.natashamarin.com.

GERALD ROBBINS – www.geraldrobbins.com
“A pianist of authority and imagination. Versatile, secure in every respect, a spectacular technique.”
~ Los Angeles Times

Gerald Robbins has distinguished himself internationally as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician of poetic sensitivity and virtuosic technique. Since capturing a major prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1969, he has performed regularly in the world’s major music centers throughout Europe, Japan, and the United States. As a soloist accompanied by an orchestra, he has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and its affiliates, and Royal Liverpool Symphony under such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Neville Marriner, Edouard van Remoortel, Okku Kamu, Jorge Mester, and Lawrence Foster. In addition, Robbins’ chamber music activities include collaborations with noted violinists Nathan Milstein, Pinchas Zukerman, Kyung-Wha Chung, Glenn Dicterow, and Ruggiero Ricci. Featured on numerous radio and television broadcasts, Robbins performed Rhapsody in Blue on the Emmy-award winning Gershwin TV special starring Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and was the featured pianist on the soundtrack for the Academy Award-winning British film, A Shocking Accident. A champion of neglected romantic repertoire, Robbins’ artistry on the London-Decca, Orion and Genesis labels include world-premiere recordings of concerti by Litolff and Reinecke. He is co-founder of the Lyric Piano Quartet and is a member of the chamber music faculty of the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.

NATASHA MARIN – www.natashamarin.com
“… balancing pianistic flair with musical intellingence, Marin’s playing of the cadenza was a dazzling showstopper”
~ Crescenta Valley Weekly

“Natasha Marin was impressive … Under her hands, she nearly pinned the audience to their seats with a fiery rendition of Chopin’s scherzo” ~ Boulevard Sentinel

Russian-born Natasha Marin began studying piano at age 6 and was later accepted into the Special Music School for Gifted Children at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. She earned her B.A. in piano performance from the conservatory’s Rimsky-Korsakov Music College, graduating with honors, and later studied with Leonid Sintsev and Igor Lebedev. After moving to California, she attended UCLA where she studied piano with Vitaly Margulis and Professor Antoinette Perry, contemporary music with Grammy Award-winning pianist Gloria Cheng, and worked with acclaimed scholar/media author Robert Winter.

Currently, she performs classical genres (and non-classical repertoire) as a soloist and with piano duos, vocalists, and chamber ensembles. In addition to radio and television appearances, she has recorded and performed live at St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall in Russia, Comerica Theater in Phoenix, Gable Theater Stage in Coral Gables, Florida, Leo Bing Theater, Colburn School’s Zipper Hall, and Thorne Hall in Los Angeles, and other U.S. and international venues.

Premiering June 2008 in Los Angeles, her piano duo “Double Sharp” with Maria Demina won the Grand Prize at a regional competition and appeared live and on the radio nationwide. The program features music of Russian romantic and 20th-century composers, incorporating an innovative presentation with custom costumes by designer Vera DeFehr. “Double Sharp” has performed also at charity events like Robert Shapiro’s Foundation and Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Foundation.

Together with French soprano Nicol Mecerova, Marin created “Voyage a Paris,” program spanning 200 years of the French Art Song, which was presented in the US and Russia. She also performs with her husband actor/comedian Cheech Marin. The couple has appeared at the Hollywood Bowl, Valley Performing Arts Center of the California State University, Northridge, and Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. She has also worked with Grammy Award-winning producer Peter Asher, playing piano on “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” for the album “Siren” by vocal duo Sasha and Shawna (Manhattan Records, 2007).

UNSETTLED: The Art of Vincent Sabella. Opening Reception & Book Release @ EVFA

UNSETTLED: The Art of Vincent Sabella. Opening Reception & Book Release.

VINCENT SABELLA

Curated by Shana Nys Dambrot

Edgar Varela Fine Arts (EVFA)

May 18 – June 16th, 2012

Opening Reception: May 18, 7 – 11pm

727 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90014

Edgar Varela Fine Arts is honored to present an exhibition of work by artist Vincent Sabella, curated by Shana Nys Dambrot, May 18 – June 16th, 2012. Culled from three discrete collections of the artist’s work produced over the past twelve months, this solo exhibition of mixed media paintings demonstrates Sabella’s sweeping, cinematic ambition, his penchant for working in series, and his usage of text as a narrative framework by which viewers are able to assemble, disassemble and re-construct varied meanings in his work.

Selections from the following three collections will be on view at this exhibition:

Bear on a Hot Tin Roof established Sabella last year as a rising star in text-driven painting. In Bear on a Hot Tin Roof Sabella sets a passage of Tennessee Williams text against a second, fractured passage of internal text. Throughout this 29 piece collection, recurring iconic images of teddy bears revel in these two counter-narratives against varied representational, action-abstraction, and street-art scenarios. Mixed media on canvas; dimensions variable.

A Hollywood Story captures the aspiration, drama and delusion of Hollywood. Set to a Norma Desmond monologue from the film Sunset Blvd., this collection imprisons and ultimately obscures the myths and realities of the world’s dream factory in brightly colored canvases. The complete collection consists of seven acrylic and spray paint works on canvas; 48 x 48 inches each.

Extermination, Sabella’s most recent body of work, is a full-frontal look into the ravages of war. Refining his layered approach to painting, and moving the text narrative to the spines of each canvas, the artist lets the metaphors of military history fly: soldiers stare blankly out from behind lit cigarettes; a fresh-faced boy Hitler is backed by a rising swastika moon; even Little Boy himself makes an appearance as a phantom clown face in a mushroom cloud. The total collection is 15 pieces at 48 x 48 inches each.

Vincent Sabella (b. 1980 / Queens, New York) is a Los Angeles-based painter. Recent exhibitions include You First at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (OCCCA), Chain Letter at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, and selections from Bear on a Hot Tin Roof at the USC IGM Art Gallery. This is his first exhibition at Edgar Varela Fine Arts.

 

John Klukas, Solo Exhibition “Phantom Queen” at EVFA 4/28

Edgar Varela Fine Arts is proud to present:

A solo exhibition for John Klukas ( http://www.45houses.com/ )

“The Phantom Queen”

Opening reception is April 28th from 7-10pm
Exhibition runs to May 15th.

EVFA
727 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, 90014

Pages 24-42 of Fabrik
http://issuu.com/fabrik/docs/fabrik16

Artist Statement: ( http://www.45houses.com/ )

I like creating something that doesn’t really exist – a physical representation of a fantasy or dream. I begin an image usually with a vision or a sketch from a dream. From there I pull together my team, cast a model and build the environment in which the image is to take place. I often invent lighting schemes and camera techniques to support the realization of my images. These settings do not exist and so I cannot use traditional means to document them. I must go outside the normal boundaries of how a camera is used and instead use it’s unique characteristics to distort and blur reality in order to create my images.

I do my work because it is the only way I can communicate these beautiful visions. They are my representations of the beauty which I see in the world. When I create, I am reminded that the vision inside of me is larger than the sum of the individual parts that are invested in its creation. I view being able to create these images as a remarkable gift and the amount of trust and cooperation that it takes to create my images is reflected in the intimacy present within them.

Currently, I’m trying to refine the language I use to communicate my dreams. I want to increase the impact and potency of my images. I am exploring how far I can bring the camera into my dreams and how well I can document things that don’t exist and have never happened. I am exploring people’s reactions to these things and using their perceptions of the camera as an archival truth-teller to confuse and disorient the viewer into believing that these ephemeral apparitions exist in the material realm. When people see my work I would like them to use it to reflect upon their own attitudes about beauty and to see that these visions are an intimate part of me, which I am sharing with the world.

 

“Looking Glass” A New Photo Exhibition curated by Shana Nys Dambrot on April 20th at Analog Salon

An official MOPLA event (Month of Photography LA)
Image by Suzanne Adelman (Untitled, 2011)

EVFA & Digital Fusion Presents Analog Salon

“Looking Glass”, A Photography Exhibition curated by Shana Nys Dambrot

Opens Friday April 20th 2012, 6pm -9 pm with a reception for the artists. It is open to the public.

Sponsored by PAMA Liqueurs an Frey Organic Wines.

The exhibition will be open from April 20th, through June 1st at The Analog Salon at Samitaur Constructs, 3535 Hayden Avenue, Culver City, California. Gallery hours are 9am through 5pm, Monday through Friday.

Participating artists:

Viggo Mortenson

Gary Baseman

Lawren Alice

Sam Comen

Marjan Vayghan

Jody Zellen

Mark Schumacher & Scott Elgart

Sara Jane Boyers

Emily Bradley

Johnny White

Jennifer Vanderpool

Suzanne Adelman

“Looking Glass”

Everyone knows a painter, for example, starts with a blank canvas and piles of pigment and that whether they makes landscape, portrait, or abstract images based in whole, in part, or not at all on external phenomenon, that the thing they make is wholly created from “nothing” or, put another way “imagination” whereas photography by definition involves interacting with the external world not entirely of your making. For LOOKING GLASS I’ve assembled a dozen photographers whose work is in various ways made in a collaboration between the imagination and the world — to explore ways that the camera is an expressive, fantastical, imaginative and pliable medium as well as form of document that contains evidence of external reality.

-Shana Nys Dambrot, Guest Curator ( http://sndx.net/ )

The Analog Salon is a fine art photographic exhibition space housed at Samitaur Constructs, the noted architectural firm, in partnership with Digital Fusion, a premiere digital photographic rental and post-production facility and produced by Edgar Varela (EVFA). Located in Culver City, California, The Analog Salon highlights the exceptional talent of new, emerging and established photographers with an emphasis on Los Angeles based artists. Supporting the arts by providing not only a space but a full production and marketing effort to showcase talent and support artist projects, The Analog Salon will contribute to the art dialogue integrating its associated artists and partners as an important part of the cultural life of Los Angeles.

The Analog Salon at Samitaur Constructs, 3535 Hayden Avenue, Culver City, Californiahttp://www.analogsalon.com/ http://gallery-store.digitalfusion.net/The-Analog-Salon/

Ansel Adams Los Angeles (Circa1940)

Ansel Adams Los Angeles

February 18 -March 17, 2012
Opening Reception Saturday, February 18, 2012 6-10pm
727 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014

Edgar Varela Fine Arts (EVFA) in association with drkrm are honored to present Ansel Adams Los Angeles, rarely seen photographs that reveal the lost landscape and lifestyle of a prewar Los Angeles. These nostalgic images from the archives of The Los Angeles Public Library Ansel Adams Collection, represent Ansel Adams as a photojournalist on assignment for Fortune Magazine in 1940. Ansel Adams Los Angeles will be on display from February 18 through March 17, 2012.

In 1940 Los Angeles had a population of 1.5 million. The cost of gas was 10 cents and a new car was $700. The U.S. began rearming for World War II and the prestigious Ansel Adams was commissioned by Fortune Magazine to photograph a series of images for an article covering the aviation industry in the Los Angeles area. For the project, Adams took over 200 black & white photographs showing everyday life, businesses, street scenes and a variety of other subjects. But when the article, City of the Angels, appeared in the March 1941 issue, only a few of the images were included.

In the early 1960s Adams rediscovered the photographs among papers at his home in Carmel and donated them to the Los Angeles Public Library. He wrote in a letter: “The weather was bad over a rather long period and none of the pictures were very good… I would imagine that they represent about $100.00 minimum value… At any event, I do not want them back.” But as many critics will agree, sometimes an artist is not always the best judge of their own work.

Ansel Adams (1902-1984) created some of the most influential photographs ever made; he was one of this century’s leading exponents of environmental values. It seems that every third family in America has an Adams’ poster on the wall, images that were difficult to make but easy to love. His images portray a romanticized and unspoiled Western American landscape, but Ansel Adams Los Angeles is a whole other body of work that is rarely discussed, let alone seen.

drkrm, in association with Edgar Varela Fine Arts (EVFA), and with the cooperation of the The Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection and The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, will create and exhibit new silver-gelatin prints made from the original negatives. These dramatic black and white limited-edition photographs, on display to the public for the first time, will be offered for purchase with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the LAPL.

Ansel Adams Los Angeles is part of Pacific Standard Time. Pacific Standard Time is an unprecedented collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. Initiated through grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time will take place for six months beginning October 2011.

Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
All gallery events are free and open to the public.

“Ansel Adams, Looking South on Hill Street, LA c.1939″

Ansel Adams Los Angeles (Circa 1939) Feb.18 – Mar.17

“Ansel Adams, Looking South on Hill Street, LA c.1939″

Ansel Adams Los Angeles

Edgar Varela Fine Arts / DRKRM.gallery @ 727 S. Spring Street, LA 90014

February 18 -March 17, 2012

Opening Reception Saturday, February 18, 2012 7-10pm

In 1939, Ansel Adams was commissioned by Fortune Magazine to photograph a series of images for an article covering the aviation history of the Los Angeles area. For the project, Adams took over 200 black & white photographs showing everyday life, businesses, street scenes and a variety of other subjects, but when the article, City of the Angels, appeared in the March 1941 issue, only a few of the images were included.

In the early 1960s Adams rediscovered the photographs among papers at his home in Carmel and donated the photographs to the Los Angeles Public Library. He wrote in a letter: “The weather was bad over a rather long period and none of the pictures were very good… I would imagine that they represent about $100.00 minimum value… At any event, I do not want them back.”

drkrm, in association with EVFA (Edgar Varela Fine Arts), with the cooperation of the Los Angeles Public Library, present these rarely seen and some never before exhibited photographs that reveal the lost landscape and lifestyle of a prewar Los Angeles.

Photography exhibition by Stephanie Vovas

“Some Time with You” a photography exhibition by Stephanie Vovas

Edgar Varela Fine Arts (EVFA) presents

Some Time With You.
http://www.stephanievovas.com/

This solo exhibition will run November 5th to December 3rd
Special closing event to be announced.

Saturday November 5th, 2011 (7-10pm)
EVFA @ 727 S. Spring Street, LA 90014

Stephanie Vovas

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, based in Los Angeles, CA, Stephanie Vovas is a winner of a bronze PX3 2011, and a PDN Faces Contest Winner, 2011. She has been in numerous group shows in the past few years, including MOPLA/Smashbox, and is also in private collections.

She graduated from the University of Maine/Maine Photographic Workshops, in 1993. It is there she discovered her photo idols: Helmut Newton, Larry Sultan, Gary Winogrand, Stephen Shore, and learned to express herself through her photography. She was heavily drawn to experimenting with photo processes, rather than formal studio work. She has an extensive body of Polaroid work in addition to her recent digital work.

Stephanie makes photographs of people that tell stories, and show a side of the person no one has ever seen, be it real or made-up. Private moments, transformation, beauty, sensuality, and uncertainty are what she is interested in photographically. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend Tom.