Fabricated Truths:
Macha Suzuki and Mike Norice
In Fabricated Truths, the intersection of reality and imagination takes center stage. Both artists blend real life with imaginative fictions to create narratives that challenge commonly held perceptions of cultural norms within the Western canon. Impeccable craftsmanship and a sense of humor draw the viewer in to recontextualize their assumptions about what we know and who we are.
Exhibition: February 5 - March 7, 2024
Opening reception: February 7, 2024, 5-8 p.m.
This Archipelago
Osh Cloud, Brian Dario, Brad Eberhard, Echo Park Pottery, Rowan Harrison, Stanya Kahn, Lindsay Kane, CandiceLin, Jane Margarette, ChristopherMiles, Brittany Mojo, Jude Pauli, Tamara Santibañez, Aili Schmeltz, Claudia V. Solórzano, Nathan Stanfield, Cammie Staros, Tonna, Kim Torres, Christian Vargas, and Amia Yokoyama. Organized by Andrés Janacua
Exhibition: November 1 - December 15, 2023
Opening reception: November 1, 2023, 4 p.m. - 8 p.m.
ILLUSTRATION WEST 61
COMPETITION SHOWCASE AWARD WINNERS
VAMA Gallery, in partnership with the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, presents a competition showcase celebrating the best California based and international illustration from established and emerging artists
Exhibition: October 4 - 27, 2023
Opening reception: October 4, 2023, 4-7 p.m.
New Clothes:
Tanya Aguiñiga, Maria Maea, Marco Rios
Often masking our inner selves through the distraction of our exterior representation, how the world views us is filtered through our choices of sartorial distinction. Clothing is the message to constitute a self that consistently shifts to meet the needs. The artists in New Clothes look to materials and processes that are suggestive not only of corporeal forms, but figures linked to a history, place, and time. The materials in question go beyond their tactility; they are used as proxies, a means to approximate, if not adopt, identities. Evidence of a substitution initiated by the artists in New Clothes may infer the vestiges of displacements where one body is replaced for another.
March 23, 2023 - May 2, 2023
Opening reception: March 23, 2023, 4-7 p.m.
four pictures that move:
Matthew Brandt solo exhibition
Calling his approach “a little bit messy and experimental,” Matthew Brandt produces large-scale photographs through labor-intensive processes recalling the 19th-century origins of photography, often incorporating the physical matter of the subject itself. Attuned to the history of his medium — and its resolute physicality — and inspired by classical American landscape photographs, Brandt traverses the West, photographing and collecting material samples from nature and cities. The reciprocal relationships that Brandt creates between his subjects and the materials used to represent them are al- ways conceptually grounded, often in response to social and environmental issues. He is deeply inquisitive, even fearless, in his exploration of subjects, materials, and processes, reinvigorating the medium of photography with a sense of wonder.
February 16, 2023 - March 20, 2023
Opening reception: February 16, 2023, 4-7 p.m.
SPIRITUAL NATURE:
MICHAEL MASSENBURG
In this solo show, Massenburg’s wonderfully vibrant paintings function as a ritual to “connect the dots” spanning the connection of cultural and spiritual practices from the Motherland to the New World. It illustrates a tale of survival and salvation, tracing the journey of his ancestors from enslavement to empowerment, and evoking questions about the notions of status and place in the world. With this long overdue exhibition, Massenburg affirms his place among his peers (artists like John Outerbridge and Kerry James Marshall), and as mentor to countless younger artists.
Exhibition curated by Elizabeth Preger.
November 17, 2022 - January 20, 2023
MESS
An exhibition exploring women, domesticity, and representation
Curator Candice Greathouse organizes an exhibition about the complicated nature of being a woman and all the messy aspects – domesticity, representation, objectification, empowerment, and contradiction. Featuring artworks spanning from the seventies to now, MESS includes performative video, figurative photography, and experimental sculpture. Exhibiting artists, all women artists, each addressing a unique aspect and approach to the exhibition concept, are: Beth Abaravich, Jaime Bull, Jo Ann Callis, Danielle Deadwyler, Tirsa Delate, Flo Kasearu, and Lee Materazzi.
Exhibition: August 29 - October 5, 2022
Opening reception: September 7, 2022, 5-7 p.m.
Tambayan
A group exhibition of Filipino American artists
Tambayan narrates the timelines and perspectives in the Filipino diaspora, while questioning issues of cultural assimilation, traditions, and surveillance.
June 10 - July 15, 2022
Revolutionary Talent
2022 Student Scholarship Show
Visual and Arts Media Department presents work by the winner’s of the VAMA Gallery scholarship. We are proud to share the art of students from the Los Angeles City College Art programs; studio art, photography, journalism illustration, digital arts, and photojournalism.
Under Investigation:
Alberto Lule solo exhibition
Alberto Lule's recent activist artworks focusing on the prison industrial complex, gentrification, surveillance, and identity designation. Lule, a former Graffiti artist incarcerated for a total of 14 years at several California prisons, draws on his own experiences in the prison industrial complex to creates artworks that explore institutional roles of gatekeepers of knowledge, authorities of culture, and administrators of discipline and punishment.
Exhibition: March 10 - April 15, 2022
Artist Talk: March 23, 2022
Panel Discussion: March 29, 2022
Bringing Imagination Into View
A New Future Awaits
At Bringing Imagination Into View you will experience the process firsthand and see the artwork that helped make some of your favorite places and characters into reality. Welcome to the future, taking shape before your very eyes.
February 1, 2022 - February 25, 2022
Broke with Expensive Taste:
Surge Witron and Jynx Prado
Broke with Expensive Taste, a two person exhibition by Los Angeles based artists Jynx Prado and Surge Witrön. Embracing non-traditional methods and materials, these two artists work with an exuberant love for the handmade and resulting in unlikely synergies.
2021 VAMA Scholarship Show
Visual and Arts Media Department presents work by the winners of the VAMA Gallery scholarship. We are proud to share the art of students from the Los Angeles City College Art programs; studio art, photography, journalism illustration, digital arts, and photojournalism.
9/30 - 10/28, 2021
REVOLUTIONS GENERATOR:
ISMAEL DE ANDA III
Revolutions Generator (2021) pluralistically evokes the definition of a revolution as an instance of revolving or spinning, or the replacement or evolution of social order, in favor of an alternative system or experience. Online interactive exhibition.
Distant Lives
2020 VAMA Faculty Show
The Los Angeles City College VAMA Gallery is hosting an exhibition of work by faculty members from the Visual Arts and Media department. The faculty 2021 show, Distant Lives, showcases the recent work of LACC professors who took inspiration from the unusual events of the last year.
January 6, 2021 - February 28, 2021
2020 VAMA Scholarship Show
VAMA Gallery Annual Student Art Show 2020, is an online experience featuring student work in various mediums, including digital art, graphic design, painting, drawing, and photography. All work shown was created by the talented students of Los Angeles City College through classes taken in the 2019-2020 school year.
May 2020 - June 2020
