Welcome Stuart Rapeport!
This Saturday, Apr 2, 2022, Valnes and Company is proud to host local and native artist, Stuart Rapeport. Stacey and I have greatly enjoyed getting to know Stuart, his wife Amy, and their whole posse! Stuart’s art is thought-provoking and refreshing and we are thrilled to be able to share it with our local community of Sunset Park and Ocean Park. We welcome all of you to stop by and enjoy an intimate experience with the artist and your local community!
This week, I’ll be using the press release written by bG Gallery curator, Sung-Hee Son, as our blog. Sung-Hee has been an inspiration and support to us as we continue to expand our art party vision and I’m sure everyone will appreciate her wonderful description of this Saturday’s events:
“Luck of the Draw” is inspired by the almost forgotten history of the Santa Monica gambling ships of the 1930’s (Noir Afloat: Tony Cornero and the Notorious Gambling Ships of Southern California by Ernest Marquez, 2011), combined with a playful new concept to sail along the Los Angeles River. Imagine the poker cards and chips found in the bay. The portholes provide views from the ship as it sails along the way and how those objects could be included into local history. Consider the personal expression of drawing marks onto a surface and the randomness of drawing a card, the Luck of Draw.
“I wish there were more people like Stuart making it in the current art world. Visionaries with imagination, talent and originality.” - Molly Barnes
Stuart Rapeport is a conceptual artist, native to Los Angeles and belovedly known for his quirky humor and anti-elitist themes. “One idea leads to another. My artwork holds free expression and humor in a delicate equipoise.” -Stuart Rapeport. This mindset connects his art since the 1970’s to today reflecting on topics from current events, patterns in human behavior and in nature, and often commenting on the art world itself in series and works like “Critics, Collectors and Curators”, “Levitated Giant Grapefruit: Road to LACMA” and “Expressive Paint Brushes for Expressionism Paintings”. He is included in the pivotal book “L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980” by Lyn Kienholz which acknowledges the artists who enabled Los Angeles to become one of the top contemporary art capitals of the world.
bG Gallery specializes in accomplished artists who regularly engage with and traverse traditional art ideologies such as expressive-conceptual, insider-outsider, high-low, figurative-abstract, among many others. bG’s aim is to bring authentic art with elements of human spirit back to the forefront of the contemporary art scene.
For more information visit https://bgartgalleries.com and https://www.rapeport.com
Curator: Sung-Hee Son, [email protected]
