Where Art Never Dies

           During my visit to the ArtSpace Warehouse gallery in Los Angeles, California, I stumbled upon a small section dedicated to two separate artists, Raul de la Torre and Len Klikunas. While their art is inherently different in make, perspective, and color, both artists use a similar ideology: mixed mediums. The former uses the hyperpigmentation of paint to create a linear color palette, then strategically chooses a thin thread in the same colors of the paint to complete it. The latter uses canvas over protruding, architectural forms, thus manipulating the shadows produced. In comparing the two to each other, we may discover a similar purpose: to experiment with new forms of interconnecting worlds. Artists Raul de la Torre and Len Klikunas focus their expertise on mixing multiple forms of mediums into nuanced and complex pieces that reflect the specialties of various art fields. By combining thread with paint and fabric with wood, the two create works of art that challenge the borders of professions and expertise, pushing the boundaries between them and asking the viewer to reconsider what it takes to make art art. 

            The first piece I’d like to discuss is Raul de la Torre’s Fils|Colors DLIII, a vertical scale of paint and fabric. On a large-scale canvas, the artist paints create a perfect rectangle within thick white barriers from the edge of the canvas to the middle. Approximately 34 long, straight streaks of paint make up the scale of color, encompassing various shades of blue, red, purple, black, and green. The streaks blend slightly, with some more so than the others, yet still maintain their colors’ integrity. Below the rectangle, the colors leak down in globs of paint, keeping their lines sharp and only slightly blended, contrasting the more blended and hand painted streaks above. Amid the rectangle are eight almond shapes made up of multicolored thread and which blends in perfectly with the paint. De la Torre used matching thread to replicate and replace the streaks of paint in these places, establishing a feeling of continuity between mediums. Each thread coordinates with its respective color below and above the thread as well as mirrors the blending of the paint by overlapping various colored threads, essentially creating an ombré effect. The artist’s expert color matching skills and seamless transition from paint to cloth shows his skill in two fields: painting and sewing. 

            Similarly, Len Klikunas combines canvas fabric with geometric wooden structures to create eerie, 3D pieces. Pictured above are three of his works Ritual Object Pause, Gray Block with Bands, and Empire of Light B. The piece that stood out to me the most was the latter, a vertical canvas with five horizontal wooden planks protruding beneath the fabric. In the center is the largest and thickest plank with the others gradually and symmetrically becoming skinnier as they get nearer to the end of the piece. The planks create shadows and an uneasy feeling as if they are trying to escape. To add to this, the artist incorporates shading around the corners and across the canvas to create the illusion of a wall rather than an art piece. By centering his work around the structural impact of architecture and reducing that field down to five planks and one canvas, Klikunas imitates the look of a building in ruin. 

            Both artists focus their art on mixed mediums in order to raise the question of expertise and break the boundaries between fields. In Klikunas’s work, he uses shapes and stark figures to create a scaled down form of architecture that tells a creepy story, meant to be interpreted by the viewer. Raul de la Torre, on the other hand, uses his mixed mediums to create a piece focused on continuity between them and display multiple sets of skills. In my opinion, his most impressive skill is his ability to recreate exact colors and blending patterns from paint to thread. Fils|Colors DLIII and Empire of Light B fascinated me because of both of their inherent integration in multiple art fields beyond the simple paint and canvas. The artists dare to create three dimensional pieces with texture, movement, and sharpness, effortless intriguing their viewers into wonder.