FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 2024
Eruption: A new art gallery in the San Fernando Valley debuts its first exhibition
The new art gallery launches its program with its first exhibition Eruption, bringing artists from around the country in an exploration of color, pattern, and abstraction
Kasee Shambora, Implosions, variable dimensions
Los Angeles, CA – Kasee’s Art Gallery is pleased to announce the grand opening of its new art gallery location with its first exhibition Eruption, featuring artists JMikal Davis, Alejandro Gehry, Bob Landström, and Kasee Shambora, with an opening reception on Saturday, November 16, from 6 – 10 PM. Eruption will be on view November 17 – December 14, 2024.
Eruption brings together four artists united by their approach to color, pattern, and abstraction. Through painting, photography, and mixed media, the works in the exhibition explore the emotional response to color, materiality, and the intersection between constraint and spontaneity.
The artists’ inspirations are split between natural and built environments, yet their color palettes show a shared sensibility, each artist saturating their compositions with bold, contemporary hues. Landström’s volcanic rock paintings and Shambora’s abstracted photographs of nature directly reference transformative phenomena found in the natural world and the sublime, respectively, while Gehry’s abstract paintings and Davis’ patterned spray paint works reflect shapes and geometries often found in the built environment.
Eruptions can take on several forms, from volcanoes to graffiti, and their meanings are channeled in the exhibition through both literal and metaphorical mark-making by these artists in a new gallery space.
Located in the San Fernando Valley, Kasee’s Art Gallery is an extension of Shambora’s photography practice as he produces upcoming programming with exhibitions that introduce the community art scene to a range of artists
Exhibition Details
12445 Magnolia Blvd
Valley Village, CA, 91607
Gallery Hours:
Thursday – Sunday, 12 – 7 PM
For private appointments, please contact (818) 284-0968
About JMikal Davis
JMikal Davis, aka Hellbent, is a muralist, painter and street artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. Davis began making street-based artwork in the late 1990s while still in art school at the University of Georgia. Upon graduating and moving to Brooklyn in 2000, he took up the nom de plume Hellbent, experimenting with various media and becoming known for his hand-carved plagues that he pulled throughout New York City and eventually across the globe.
Since 2011, the backgrounds that started on these plaques became the focal point of his work both on and off the street. The abstract configurations of multiple patterns layered on top of each other are derived from American quilt-making and folk art traditions, inspirations not typically associated within murals and street art. In his public work he aims to include elements from different textiles associated with the citizens of the community and weave them together harmoniously.
His work has been shown with the New Museum and C24 Gallery both in New York City as well as shows in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the United Kingdom and Tehran, Iran. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The New York Post, Juxtapoz Magazine, and Vogue. He has collaborated with fashion brands like Ralph Lauren and Coach along with commissions for Conde Nast Traveler and the Hudson Square BID. Architectural Digest chose his large painting at 44 Wall Street as one of the top 12 best artworks in commercial spaces in New York.
Website: www.jmikaldavis.com
Instagram: @hellbent_
About Alejandro Gehry
Born in Santa Monica in 1976, Alejandro Gehry graduated in 1998 with a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is also a teacher of illustration and painting at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. Gehry has primarily worked in oils on a large-scale. Honing in on his skills and aesthetic development, he finds himself pushing against societal boundaries. Gehry currently lives and works in Venice.
Website: www.alejandrogehry.com
Instagram: @agehry
About Bob Landström
Bob Landström is an artist who primarily works with crushed, pigmented volcanic rock. His abstract paintings, with their highly granulated texture and color combinations only achieved through such a medium, reconsider our relationship with meaning by eliciting the iconography of ancient languages, science, religions, and mysticism.
Born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Landström studied fine art by invitation at Carnegie-Mellon University. He later continued his fine art education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. Landström also earned a Bachelor and Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering.
Landström’s work has exhibited extensively and can be found in public, private, and corporate collections around the world. He is the winner of the 1993 SOHO International Competition in New York, the 1994 and 2002 Open Studios National Competition, and other awards. When not in the studio, Landström spends considerable time abroad and has visited archeological sites across the world, which inform his studies and artistic practice.
Landström currently lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.
Website: www.boblandstrom.com
Instagram: @boblandstrom
About Kasee Shambora
Kasee Shambora is a Los Angeles-based photographer whose work explores alternative perspectives of the natural world and urban environments.
Often employing the use of oversaturation and abstraction, Shambora’s photography bends the reality of subject matter in favor of colorful or even surreal images in order to elicit the emotional responses found within such landscapes.
Shambora also works in the film industry and as a portrait photographer. He has worked with the likes of Elijah Wood, Kal Penn, Vivica A. Fox, Nicolas Cage, Pete Holmes, and many others. He recently opened a new art gallery in the San Fernando Valley.
Website: www.kaseesphotography.com
Instagram: @kaseesphotography