Introducing Art Salon Chinatown

Art Salon Chinatown is a new program series of exhibitions and accompanying artist talks, organized by curators Sonia Mak and Shervin Shahbazi. The salon will take place at Realm, located in Los Angeles Chinatown’s historic Central Plaza, with the primary focus of showcasing contemporary Chinese American and Asian American artists.

All information regarding schedule of exhibitions and talks and other related programs will be posted on Art Salon Chinatown website. The first Salon will present works by Sandra Low, opening on March 17th, 2018. Hope to see you there.

John Kwok Exhibit

This February, we will install an exhibition of one of the pioneering Chinese American artists, John Kwok at Realm in the Los Angeles Chinatown historic Central Plaza. The exhibition of paintings and drawings will be on view from Saturday, February 17th through Sunday March 11, 2018. This is a rare chance to see and purchase artworks previously not available. Please check TheMinistryOfCulture.com for details. 

The Ministry of Culture Is Back!

Once upon a time in East LA a couple of arts professionals got together to form a collective in order to respond to all the talk about a government proposed 700 mile border wall, to be built along the US-Mexico border, in 2006! We called the “organization”  The Ministry of Culture and the project ‘The Great Wall of Chinga’. Seems like a long time ago, but it appears that the wall hype has made a come back. So, naturally we had to bring back the ministry along with all the projects that related to this issue like the WE SAY NO project that engaged the community to express themselves first hand and in under two minutes about why they oppose the proposed Wall.  

All the details will be announced soon on TheMinistryOfCulture.com. Back when we did this first smart phones did not really exist and yet we got a great response. Now, we aim to involve and engage as many people as possible. One can not remain idle when rolling downhill at great speed! Stay tuned.

Tomas & Ricardo

Tomas Benitez & Ricardo Duffy
All Rights Reserved
Copyright Shervin Shahbazi

Some time ago a couple of my good friends Tomas Benitez and Ricardo Duffy came to the gallery for a meeting. Tomas was the director of Self Help Graphics & Art for many years as well as a Los Angeles County Arts Commissioner and Ricardo is an artist who is known for his many public art installations as well as his wide range of artworks. It’s not often that you would get these two in a place with nobody else around, so I decided to have a mini photo session with them. This image is one of the pics from that day.

Larissa Sansour In the Future…

In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain (trailer) from larissa sansour on Vimeo.

In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain is the latest and final installment of Larissa Sansour’s sci-fi trilogy. This latest project follows A Space Exodus and Nation Estate which have been exhibited in numerous venues across the world.

I was introduced to Larissa Sansour’s work when I came across Soup Over Bethlehem – Mloukhieh (2006) while researching artists for one of my exhibitions. I was fortunate enough to have A Space Exodus as part of my exhibit It’s All True which debuted Larissa’s work in Los Angeles in 2011. I hope we get to see her new work in LA soon.

In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain is on view at Lawrie Shabibi in Dubai through March 3, 2016.
To learn more about Larissa Sansour please visit her website. You can also read Abdellatif R. Abdeljawad’s interview with her in the REORIENT magazine’s website.

Sarah Elgart and Dancers

Sarah Elgart and Dancers
I photographed some of Sarah Elgart dances in the 1980s. Sarah has always been a very inspiring artist. Sarah’s choreography sets off my imagination with every move. She is one of the greatest artists I have known. This still was shot during one of the rehearsals.

©Shervin Shahbazi

With Chris Francis

With Chris Francis I

Don’t miss Chris Francis: Shoe Designer at Craft & Folk Art Museum! ‘Chris will be relocating his shop to the museum. Stop by to view the exhibition, meet Chris, and see him in action.” Click here to view the information about Chris Francis’ exhibition and up-to-date schedule on CAFAM’s website.

 

Featured photo: Chris Francis by Shervin Shahbazi

Charles Dickson

Charles Dickson, Planting the Fist

I took this photo of Charles Dickson while he was working on one of his pieces he created for Listen With Your Eyes at Morono Kiang Gallery.

The title of the artwork is Serving It Up and it was a great sculptural piece that was interactive. Listen With Your Eyes was an idea I came up with because both Eliot [Kiang] , the owner of the gallery, and myself love jazz and we had been talking about doing an exhibit inspired by jazz music. In order to make this happen I approached a diverse group of artists and had great conversations about how we can visualize our love of jazz into physical artworks that are created much the same way a jazz musician makes his/her music. The result was a Celebration of Jazz in L.A. that included a fantastic exhibit and other events that involved several institutions including California Jazz Foundation, Catalina Bar & Grill, Culture Ireland and several other venues.

If you like yo see more pics you can visit MKG’s website here.