LOS ANGELES 2020 | LOS ANGELES 2021 | ITALY 2021 | BERLIN 2021
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About Suturo

suturo.com is a new dynamic and interactive website that reacts uniquely to each visitor as they navigate the site, allowing for exploration that fosters new formal and conceptual perspectives between the art, the poems, and the viewers.

Project Team
Steven Wolkoff
Alexandra Wiesenfeld
Eugene Ahn

Website
VAMA Creative

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Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021

It’s said that people tend to believe God believes what they believe.

When I was young I loved to get up before every dawn of the world, still sweetly baffled by the possibility of unbelief.
 
Perhaps grace is not so poor a thing that it can’t also appear in this instance like a new definition of luck,

akin to tiny blossoms out of cactus thorns in spring, their loneliness crushing your lungs.

Isn’t everything sloughed from the same star? What is believable and possible, what is acceptable and what is nothing?

Caught between the old and new year, why do you think that the old will be famous for its pain, the new from the liberation from pain?

Some kind of belief still runs off me in strings;

to enjoy the clarifying effect of participation without remainder may be the most mysterious thing.

When I come to the right place, I believe I’ll paint a door on it and walk right through.

Artwork
Untitled 2021
digital photograph
Nicole Belle @nicole_t_belle

Poem
The Vanishing World 2013
from The Wilderness
Sandra Lim
W. W. Norton

Explore more in Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021

Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021

Curated by members of the Durden and Ray curatorial collective

Exhibition Team
Steven Wolkoff
Alexandra Wiesenfeld
Eugene Ahn

Artists
Nicole Belle, Gary Brewer, Gul Cagin, Joe Davidson, Mariquita “Micki” Davis, Danny Angel Escalante, Nancy Evans, Rebecca Farr, Leslie Foster, Christine Frerichs, Gajin Fujita, Iva Gueorguieva, Hasef, Mike Hazel, Regina Herod, Kiel Johnson, Aline Mare, Stephanie Mercado, Sandeep Mukherjee, Hung Viet Nguyen, Elizabeth Preger, Max Presneill, Bruce Richards, Colin Roberts, Karrie Ross, Orly Ruaimi, Debra Scacco, Sonja Schenk, Greg Schenk, Coleen Sterritt, Devon Tsuno, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Marnie Weber, Lisa Wedgeworth, Liat Yossifor, HK Zamani

About Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021

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Curatorial statement

Early in the pandemic, several facebook friends posted that they were looking for poems to read at a funeral. Given the number of deaths around the world, this request was probably too common.

We often turn to poetry to mark big occasions, to help give these moments more meaning, to better convey the sentiments we feel but cannot express, or to help make sense of things we don’t fully understand.

In the middle of this pandemic, and all the other crises running alongside it, when so many moments are limited to words shared at a social distance, the need for poetry seems much greater.

In Artists and Poems we are inviting artists to pair their work with a poem that has meaning for them given the current state of their world. The pair of works – poem and visual art – are presented together.

Artists and Poems creates a platform for contemplation, responding to the turmoil of recent events through a lens of art and poetry. The juxtaposition of visual art and verse provides insight into both the artists’ work and the poems they have chosen.

The first show was a survey of Los Angeles artists in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election. The second show, Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021, covers the period from Election Day until Inauguration Day. Future shows will explore other cities and other curatorial frameworks, and will include additional curators.

--- Steven Wolkoff, February 2021