Opening Reception: Saturday, November 11th, 11:00 - 3:00 PM
Open Saturdays and Sundays 11:00 - 3:00 PM and weekdays by appointment. On view November 11th through November 24th, 2023.
The Tack Room
4690 Live Oak Canyon Road
La Verne, CA 91750
Stas Orlovski
In the Land of Liars
This series of works is inspired by a Soviet-era children’s book, “Gelsomino in the Land of Liars”, by Italian author Gianni Rodari. The story is about a boy whose voice is so loud that it breaks everything in its path. Persecuted and banished from his home, he comes across a strange land ruled by a blond king, where everything is backwards and it is compulsory to lie.
I have carried a copy of this book with me, like a dog with a bone, ever since my family fled Moldova in 1973 to Tel Aviv, then Paris, Toronto and finally Los Angeles. For many years, Rodari’s political parable was relegated to a distant memory, or past condition that I could revisit at a comfortable distance. I always looked to the book as source of formal invention (color, texture, composition, design), but given recent events in this country and abroad, it was time for me to address the narrative.
Informed by Soviet-era propaganda (monuments, commemorative objects, graphic design, film), this series of works combine stop-motion animation, found objects, drawing, photography and sculpture to explore memory, migration, collapse and transformation.
Biography
Stas Orlovski is a Los Angeles based visual artist whose multi-faceted studio practice includes painting, drawing, sculpture and animation. Orlovski was born in Kishinev, Moldova in 1969. His family fled the Soviet Union to Tel Aviv, then Paris and eventually settled in Toronto, Canada. Orlovski studied art in Toronto and Los Angeles, receiving a BFA from York University, a B.Ed from the University of Toronto and an MFA from the University of Southern California.
Orlovski has exhibited widely throughout the U.S. with solo shows in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and the Bay Area. His work has been included in museum exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pomona College Museum of Art, Long Beach Museum of Art, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Weatherspoon Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco among others.
His work is represented in public and corporate collections including the American Embassy in Belgium, Davis Art Museum, Chevron Corporation, Crocker Art Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Palm Springs Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Progressive Art Collection, Samella Lewis Collection of Contemporary Art at Scripps College, Vincent Price Art Museum, Twitter and the West Collection.
Awards, fellowships and residencies include the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, George Rickey Fellowship from Yaddo Corporation of the Arts, Art Omi Residency Program, City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship (COLA), J. Paul Getty Trust Fellowship from the California Community Foundation, Artistic Innovation Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant.
Orlovski's multi-media installation, "Chimera" traveled to the 56th Venice Biennale as part of "We Must Risk Delight, a collateral exhibition at the Magazzino del Sale No. 3. Recent solo exhibitions include Young Projects in Los Angeles, Traywick Contemporary in Berkeley, Wende Museum in Culver City and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.
