LINDA DANIELS
DOUBLE DOUBLELos Angeles | October 26th - December 14th 2024
“There is an intentionality and playfulness in this balance that permits an array of doublings to occur: Double entendres, double vision, double texture, double sound, double thought, double pleasure. The paintings, however, go beyond just doubling.”
When looking at Linda Daniels’ paintings, the word phosphorescence comes to mind. There’s a palpable glow that expands the atmosphere of her work onto a pliable plane. Despite their systematic structure, Daniels’ paintings are fluid and exploratory, opening up a dialogue between perception and location. The viewer is introduced to her work as both a tangible thing and an idea. The crisp, geometrically aligned shapes filled with vibrant, seductive hues confront us with the physicality of her work. The different sizings and variations of these shapes, along with the range of colors she employs, present us with a flexibility that grounds her work in an ever-changing web of interpretation. These perceptual nuances that Daniels plays with generate a multimodal movement. The paintings move and so do we. As we navigate our way through this expansive network of meaning, color, shape, and scale, the paintings shape-shift and compliment our own movement with their own. Like a dance partner, Daniels’ work encourages us to take hold of it intuitively and mindfully, emphasizing the subtleties of distance, bodily adjustment, and rhythm. We become immersed in an experience unmediated by external baggage and are carried into the depths of our own perception. What surfaces is a newfound awareness of our coordinates along time and space.
In the series of paintings selected for “Double Double”, Daniels is literally and figuratively doubling the stakes. These paintings are less ornate compared to some of her previous work. This choice marks her continuation of a career-long conversation between the tenants of formal abstraction and the decorative elements in painting. The decorative aspects of her paintings—color and curves—are shown in equal proportion to the formal aspects—structure and scale. Yet, decoration and formalism are not separate entities in this series. Rather, they interact fluidly. There is an intentionality and playfulness in this balance that permits an array of doublings to occur: Double entendres, double vision, double texture, double sound, double thought, double pleasure. The paintings, however, go beyond just doubling. They reach into a realm of innumerable meanings where nothing is absolute. They weave multiple strands of perception together, inviting a sense of openness that allows the viewer to be a more active participant.
By exhibiting Daniels’ series “Double Double” at FiveCarGarage, we hope to be adding another layer of complexity to the experience of it. The gallery, set amongst Santa Monica’s airy, oceanic light, has inherited the conditions that inspired the Light and Space artists. The unique and historically-marked atmosphere of FiveCarGarage will perhaps evoke another layer of dialogue with Daniels’ work—doubling up, so to speak, on our interactions with her paintings and the meanings produced.
Linda Daniels has been a painter for over four decades. She was born in 1954 and spent most of her childhood and early adult life in California. In 1984, she moved to New York City where she lived and made artwork for thirty years. She had six solo exhibitions in New York City, and in 1991 she received a Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts. She moved back to the central coast of California in 2014, and had a solo exhibition in Los Osos, California in 2022. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum International, Arts Magazine, Art in America, and The Brooklyn Rail. The paintings in “Double Double” were made over the last seven years, this is her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. She is currently living and making artwork in Lompoc, California.
Written by Gawain Semlear
When looking at Linda Daniels’ paintings, the word phosphorescence comes to mind. There’s a palpable glow that expands the atmosphere of her work onto a pliable plane. Despite their systematic structure, Daniels’ paintings are fluid and exploratory, opening up a dialogue between perception and location. The viewer is introduced to her work as both a tangible thing and an idea. The crisp, geometrically aligned shapes filled with vibrant, seductive hues confront us with the physicality of her work. The different sizings and variations of these shapes, along with the range of colors she employs, present us with a flexibility that grounds her work in an ever-changing web of interpretation. These perceptual nuances that Daniels plays with generate a multimodal movement. The paintings move and so do we. As we navigate our way through this expansive network of meaning, color, shape, and scale, the paintings shape-shift and compliment our own movement with their own. Like a dance partner, Daniels’ work encourages us to take hold of it intuitively and mindfully, emphasizing the subtleties of distance, bodily adjustment, and rhythm. We become immersed in an experience unmediated by external baggage and are carried into the depths of our own perception. What surfaces is a newfound awareness of our coordinates along time and space.
In the series of paintings selected for “Double Double”, Daniels is literally and figuratively doubling the stakes. These paintings are less ornate compared to some of her previous work. This choice marks her continuation of a career-long conversation between the tenants of formal abstraction and the decorative elements in painting. The decorative aspects of her paintings—color and curves—are shown in equal proportion to the formal aspects—structure and scale. Yet, decoration and formalism are not separate entities in this series. Rather, they interact fluidly. There is an intentionality and playfulness in this balance that permits an array of doublings to occur: Double entendres, double vision, double texture, double sound, double thought, double pleasure. The paintings, however, go beyond just doubling. They reach into a realm of innumerable meanings where nothing is absolute. They weave multiple strands of perception together, inviting a sense of openness that allows the viewer to be a more active participant.
By exhibiting Daniels’ series “Double Double” at FiveCarGarage, we hope to be adding another layer of complexity to the experience of it. The gallery, set amongst Santa Monica’s airy, oceanic light, has inherited the conditions that inspired the Light and Space artists. The unique and historically-marked atmosphere of FiveCarGarage will perhaps evoke another layer of dialogue with Daniels’ work—doubling up, so to speak, on our interactions with her paintings and the meanings produced.
Linda Daniels has been a painter for over four decades. She was born in 1954 and spent most of her childhood and early adult life in California. In 1984, she moved to New York City where she lived and made artwork for thirty years. She had six solo exhibitions in New York City, and in 1991 she received a Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts. She moved back to the central coast of California in 2014, and had a solo exhibition in Los Osos, California in 2022. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum International, Arts Magazine, Art in America, and The Brooklyn Rail. The paintings in “Double Double” were made over the last seven years, this is her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. She is currently living and making artwork in Lompoc, California.
Written by Gawain Semlear
RAYCHAEL STINE AND JENNIFER SULLIVAN
THE TENDERNESSLos Angeles | AUGUST 24TH- OCT 5th
“In the paintings where it's there—the tenderness—I work for it. I'm not afraid of it. If I could put my bleeding heart in there, I would.”
– Susan Rothenberg
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– Susan Rothenberg
The genesis of this exhibition can be traced back to late 2022, when Raychael Stine received a precious gift of paints from the New Mexico studio of the late painter Susan Rothenberg, who passed away in May 2020. Recognizing the profound significance of this inheritance, Raychael chose to share a portion of these paints with Jennifer Sullivan, knowing their shared admiration for Rothenberg's work. Both artists regarded this gift as transformative—a sacred transmission from their artistic hero, sparking a new phase in their creative development.
This exhibition marks the public debut of the paintings created with these materials, conceived as valentines or love letters to Susan Rothenberg, to the act of painting itself, and to the emotional expressiveness that guided Rothenberg's work. The collected works reflect each artists' individual interpretations and resonances with Rothenberg's enduring legacy, who continues to inspire and shape their artistic journeys in unique and generative ways.
Raychael Stine’s sensual, ebullient abstractions of distilled hidden dogs and exuberant flower gardens toss around and reconfigure painterly conventions of landscape, portraiture, and painterly approaches to depth scale, and level of legibility. The paintings embody the feelings of wonder, awe, and joy, and become hovering pictures of transitional time.
This body of paintings serve as both fantasy thank you notes to Susan Rothenberg and valentines to her cherished dogs from the past. Dogs, a recurring motif symbolizing physicality and intuitive spirit, are central in Stine's work, echoing Rothenberg’s exploration of animal subjects throughout her career. Each painting, in a square format, features a heart embedded in both border and composition, often portraying two dogs in tender embrace. Grounds for the works are built upon fragments of album covers that can be found in Stine’s and Rothenberg’s music collection. known elements like sky and landscape blend with the dog figures, occasionally incorporating human forms like arms or breasts embracing the painterly animals.
Inspired by Stine’s first favorite painting, Rothenberg’s Cabin Fever (1976), the largest two-panel work in the exhibition depicts a dog in profile, head to the sky, amidst a swirling cosmic garden of joy. This painting marks a pivotal exploration for Stine, using Rothenberg’s influence and ethos as a foundational ground rather than mere aesthetic reference.
If paintings are prayers, as Rothenberg once asserted, then the artist’s studio must be the altar. Jennifer Sullivan’s recent paintings capture intimate compositional moments inspired by spontaneous arrangements of materials, mementos, and gifted objects she has assembled into a makeshift painting shrine within the sanctuary of her home-studio. This "shrine" prominently features a portrait and quote by Rothenberg as a central element, serving as visual reminders of artistic integrity and encouragement to persevere. Set against walls transformed into varying shades of pink, these works evoke a metaphysical space of creation infused with love and personal history.
The arrival of gifted paints and brushes from Rothenberg’s studio sparked Sullivan’s contemplation of the symbolic power of her creative space and its nuanced details—a theme also explored by Rothenberg and earlier by Matisse. In contrast to her predecessors, Sullivan portrays her studio in fragmented, close-up views rather than depicting it in its entirety, within a rose- colored atmosphere that exudes soft, feminine energy. Her approach to painting is playful and romantic, a reflection of her artistic evolution. Within her emotional and creative realm, where everyday objects and personal reflections converge, the cat replaces the dog as a companion figure — a symbol of femininity and unwavering authenticity
REBECCA FARR
“A Field of TenderThings”Los Angeles | Aug 24th - Oct 5th
‘Something to Give” 60x48’ Oil on linen 2024
In the series, "A Field of Tender Things," Rebecca Farr loosens paint and plays in fields of color exploring on the mythic stories of Rabbit. As a legendary figure of contradictions Rabbit is a symbol of both fertility and chastity and is associated with fluid trans and shape-shifting erotic energy, In the moon rabbit represents immortality and enlightenment, in the burrow rabbit represents cycles of birth and death as they repeatedly descend into the earth and return anew. Farr creates saturated and dense environments of color line and gesture to explore our human relationship to rabbit symbolism.
The Rabbit is a trickster creator of the world; a fool, a spiritual master and an incredibly normal everyday sighting all across our planet. Such a being has been a delightful humble and gentle muse of holistic sexual, sentient and spiritual energies. Rebecca’s new series celebrates and investigates the power of this totem animal as a presence of healing, integration and wisdom.
Rebecca Farr’s philosophical and historical paintings of the natural world bounce between intuitive mark-making and classical modes of Impressionism. Working between thick, gritty paint and light, tender brushstrokes, Farr colors various mythic and religious motifs with the queer feminist dramas of history, recording collective or personal splits, reunions, and consciousness gained.
Rebecca Farr was born in 1973 in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BA from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA (1996).
The artist has mounted recent solo exhibitions at Five Car Garage in Los Angeles, CA (2023) and Klowden Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2019).
She has participated in group shows such as In the Middle With You at The Middle Room Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2023); Nada House in Governor’s Island, NY (2022); This Is My House at Porch Gallery in Ojai, CA (2022); and Forest and The Sea at Five Car Garage in Los Angeles, CA (2021).
Farr has won residencies at Kaus Australis in Rotterdam, Netherlands; Les Laboratories Aubervilliers in Paris, France’ and NADA house on Governors Island, NY.
NINA KLEIN
“LADDER IN THE GLASS”Los Angeles | JUNE 1ST - JULY 15TH
“ Drawing from her Evangelical upbringing the artist interrogates the enduring influence of institutional power structures on the autonomy and representation of women’s bodies in contemporary society.”
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
-Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
Emma Gray HQ is pleased to present “Ladder in the Glass,” a solo exhibition by Nina Klein, expanding on her first solo show with the gallery, Mary in Me, in Garage #1.
A central theme of the show, materially and conceptually, is a stain. The fabric, a site of both mess and controlled gradation of color— holds space for representations of stained glass windows, portals, or bodies built out of collaged soak-stained fabrics. Drawing from her Evangelical upbringing the artist interrogates the enduring influence of institutional power structures on the autonomy and representation of women’s bodies in contemporary society.
The series of paintings evoke a wide array of associations from cathedrals to paganism to domestic life. The works of the show invite the viewer to descend the ladder to uncover artifacts of their past and bring them to the surface to be re-examined.
Several of the works in the show feature loose depictions of the biblical women named Mary. The figures, lacking many defining characteristics, draw from the ambiguity of the Marys in the Scriptures.
One painting, An Open Myth, draws inspiration from the Book of Mary Magdalene, a fragmented text that was discovered in 1896. The work questions the historical representation of Mary Magdalene, suggesting her frequent mis-portrayal across the ages. The book, rather than operating as beacon of truth, functions symbolically in several paintings to underscore the instability of historical narratives, which are perpetually subject to revision and reinterpretation.
The largest work in the show, “Backyard Baptism,” operates as a dual visual metaphor, intertwining the imagery of a stained glass window with that of a domestic swimming pool, drawing from the artist's recollections of baptisms held in the backyards of churchgoers' homes. Being raised in a strongly Evangelical household, Klein navigates her religious upbringing, guiding the viewer toward this "pool portal" to examine the narratives that shape their beliefs and identities.
Other select paintings in the show employ a lexicon of motifs to create visual riddles. The works collapse seemingly disparate modes of representation: the synthesis of simplified iconographic shapes with the unpredictable dynamics of a soak-stained painting medium. Fabrics that host uncontrolled stains collaged with iconic sy
mbols such as a knife or a star, speak to the complexity of identity and the desire to make sense of the various threads.
The title of the show, Ladder in the Glass, is a dual reference to the ladders in Backyard Baptism, and Adrienne Rich's poem, Diving into the Wreck. We are encouraged to begin the descent into our own fragile, murky waters and return anew. The ladder is always there.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
-Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
Emma Gray HQ is pleased to present “Ladder in the Glass,” a solo exhibition by Nina Klein, expanding on her first solo show with the gallery, Mary in Me, in Garage #1.
A central theme of the show, materially and conceptually, is a stain. The fabric, a site of both mess and controlled gradation of color— holds space for representations of stained glass windows, portals, or bodies built out of collaged soak-stained fabrics. Drawing from her Evangelical upbringing the artist interrogates the enduring influence of institutional power structures on the autonomy and representation of women’s bodies in contemporary society.
The series of paintings evoke a wide array of associations from cathedrals to paganism to domestic life. The works of the show invite the viewer to descend the ladder to uncover artifacts of their past and bring them to the surface to be re-examined.
Several of the works in the show feature loose depictions of the biblical women named Mary. The figures, lacking many defining characteristics, draw from the ambiguity of the Marys in the Scriptures.
One painting, An Open Myth, draws inspiration from the Book of Mary Magdalene, a fragmented text that was discovered in 1896. The work questions the historical representation of Mary Magdalene, suggesting her frequent mis-portrayal across the ages. The book, rather than operating as beacon of truth, functions symbolically in several paintings to underscore the instability of historical narratives, which are perpetually subject to revision and reinterpretation.
The largest work in the show, “Backyard Baptism,” operates as a dual visual metaphor, intertwining the imagery of a stained glass window with that of a domestic swimming pool, drawing from the artist's recollections of baptisms held in the backyards of churchgoers' homes. Being raised in a strongly Evangelical household, Klein navigates her religious upbringing, guiding the viewer toward this "pool portal" to examine the narratives that shape their beliefs and identities.
Other select paintings in the show employ a lexicon of motifs to create visual riddles. The works collapse seemingly disparate modes of representation: the synthesis of simplified iconographic shapes with the unpredictable dynamics of a soak-stained painting medium. Fabrics that host uncontrolled stains collaged with iconic sy
mbols such as a knife or a star, speak to the complexity of identity and the desire to make sense of the various threads.
The title of the show, Ladder in the Glass, is a dual reference to the ladders in Backyard Baptism, and Adrienne Rich's poem, Diving into the Wreck. We are encouraged to begin the descent into our own fragile, murky waters and return anew. The ladder is always there.