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

 
So much insisting about 
Keeping the walls up 
and the lights on
 
Let the daily paint 
Peel off,—— Bark!
What lay beneath seemed 
Myriad eyes blinking back at me
 
Eyes wet, salivating for me   
Asking me, how do I behave? 
The room doesn’t know how to see
So it prints images constantly
and it teaches us to perceive
The proliferation, the articulation 
of Truth
 
Recursions, extrusions 
Images boomerang back 
To us, again 
 
Oh, so very nice to meet you, 
I see we’re sharing a vine! 
Evidently, we’re all entwined
 
Heaven-sent dissident, 
Humbled by heartbreak 
And then learned to fly again 
 
Mending is stitching is weaving
The present existing as we graph it
Observations magnetized 
By our memories and feelings
We render power; instrument
	to wield it is a window
 
Time wears space as skin 
We’re all wrapped in it 
AND that’s why feeling matters 
 
Eyes shut hands out,
Reaching around, breathing air
Standing the ground when you
Think you know it, but you don’t 
 
This monster is rainbow flesh,
I see every color twinkling at me 
This monster is everything I seen 
And dreamed, redressed

Artwork
Recursion 2020
digital photograph
Elizabeth Preger @elizabethpreger

Poem
(untitled) So much insisting 2020
Lusi Ajonjoli @fem_earth_cardinal

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