Vama Gallery is proud to announce Fabricated Truths, an exhibit by Los Angeles based artists: muralist Mike Norice, and mixed media artist Macha Suzuki. 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.
This is the first show of works on canvas for Norice, who is well-known muralist.. Norice inserts a cartoony and childlike character, “Powerful Paul,” into faithfully recreated images of iconic scenes, like the march of Civil Rights icons, or Da Vinci’s last supper. Imbuing Powerful Paul with childlike wonder, Norice allows a sense of hope and play to guide a reevaluation of hallowed truths.
Macha Suzuki’s sculptures look at reality through a compelling, tongue-in-cheek fiction, rejecting the notion of dull true-life stories: "I tell real-life stories about my experiences: what I have done, what I have seen, and what I have heard. I do not necessarily convey these experiences factually. Instead, I dress them up with elaborate fabrications some would call lies.” Exquisitely crafted his pieces project a sense of functional objectivity, but quickly draw the viewer into magical thinking with poetic and contradictory associations. His works beguile as they confound, leaving the viewer to settle on a truth that exists between the facts.
Macha Suzuki, born in Tokyo in 1979 immigrated to Los Angeles in 1988. He has an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in sculpture and a BA in studio art with emphases in painting and photography from Azusa Pacific University. Suzuki has exhibited his work regularly for the past two decades in museums and galleries, nationally and internationally. His solo exhibitions include Sam Lee Gallery, Wignall Museum, Vincent Price Art Museum, Laguna Art Museum, Gallery Lara Tokyo, Kravets/Wehby Gallery in NYC, Cypress College, and Biola University. Suzuki has also taught art and design at various institutions since 2005, and he is currently an Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Mike Norice, born 1980, is a Watts native and self taught painter and muralist with many commissioned murals throughout the City of Los Angeles and surrounding communities. Norice started a non-profit organization in 2017 called Artfully United; he received the African-American Artist Award from the City of Carson for his Transitional Skies of Freedom Mural, and other awards from the California State Senate, the California State Legislature Assembly, and recently the Los Angeles Unified School District and the City of Los Angeles for the Jordon High School Library art mural. His works have drawn the attendance of the Los Angeles political elite such as Maxine Waters and Marquise Daniels at his unveilings.
