Wilding Cran Gallery hosts an opening art party for “Chronicle,” by Fran Siegel curated by jill moniz of Transformative Arts, and In the Shadow, an exhibition of new works by Elizabeth Malaska. The opening reception took place on Saturday, January 14, 2023, and the show remains open through March 4, 2023.

Chronicle is the culmination of recent works that express Siegel’s contemplation of place, dreams and perspectives. The solo exhibition features 216 small drawings on paper that Siegel started at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. She visualized the discourse around the virus as extensions of her focus on pinwheel and maps, as a shorthand of place, and the aesthetics approaching abstraction. moniz pairs these ephemeral works with Siegel’s painted tapestries that incorporate porcelain as armatures, structural hardware that deciphers colonial appropriation and cultural production.

From Left to Right: Fran Siegel, 2022, Porcelain mounts (top and center) painted and sewn fabric, scrim, 80 x 66 x 12 in., 203.20 x 167.64 x 30.48 cm; Elizabeth Malaska, Delivered (Among the Meadow Grass), 2022, Oil, Flashe and pencil on canvas-wrapped panel, 60 x 48 in., 152.40 x 121.92 cm.

Through her creative process, the Portland-based artist Elizabeth Malaska explores the metaphysical universe of the soul in an effort to puncture and uncover Western patriarchal perspectives of identity. The works featured throughout In the Shadow serve to illuminate systems of kinship and empathy between humans, plants, animals, and man-made objects. Whether rendering reflections of moonlight on water, a patchwork blanket, a discarded shoe, a solitary swan, or a mirror with no reflection, the series of four oil paintings flit between portraiture and still-life, figuration and surrealism, to allegorically unravel notions of subjective embodiment, animism, and the shadow self.

On view: January 14, 2023 – March 4, 2023

What: New Exhibitions, Fran Siegel,  Elizabeth Malaska
Where: Wilding Cran Gallery, 1700 S. Santa Fe Avenue, unit 460, LA 90021
Website: https://wildingcran.com