Del Cielo (of the sky)
Rinko Kawauchi, Detail from Des oiseaux, 2022
November 2nd, 2023
Birds hold a strange place in contemporary society - they are citywide pests, portents of evil, tiktok stars, and even accused Drones spying on the general population. But this fascination with all things avian isn’t isolated to one generation or location. A quick look to art history and our literary past, and you'll find representations from across centuries. Spanning everything from intricate illustrations by John James Audubon, to Hitchock scarring generations of movie goers with ornithophobia.
Del Cielo, a collection of photographs by Graciela Iturbide, Masahisa Fukase, Jo Ann Callis, Rinko Kawauchi, and James Gallagher at Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, deep dives into this strange relationship we have with birds, tracking their visual presence through photography. In celebration of the exhibition, and intrigued by the theme and context of the show, we spoke to Rose Shoshana, Founder and Owner of Rose Gallery, and Gallery Assistant Brianna Tenhouten, to talk curation, freedom, and things from the sky.
Jo Ann Callis, Parrot and Sailboat, 1980
Jo Ann Callis, Raven and Cake, 1980
Public Offerings Ltd: As the press release mentions, birds have different meanings and symbolism across different mediums and artists, how did this final collection come together?
Brianna Tenhouten: The Idea for Del Cielo originally came to us when looking through work from Graciela Iturbide from her Pajaros Series - We have worked with Graciela Closely for decades, so her presence is always very much felt at ROSEGALLERY. However, when we began looking through our archives we realized just how prevalent the theme birds are across many of our artists - slowly the show grew and came to be a group show, which includes Jo Ann Callis, Rinko Kawauchi, James Gallagher, Masahisa Fukase, and Graciela Iturbide.
Interestingly, without this common interest in birds, this likely wouldn’t have been a group of artists shown together. Visually, each has a different style. In terms of scale, in terms of color, in terms of playfulness - some of the work by Graciela is quite serious, solemn, even mournful. And then you look at images like Raven and Cake from Jo Ann Callis and it feels almost playful - seeing how differently birds spoke to each artist brings a lot of balance to the show and it really speaks to how universally significant birds are in art - they represent something we want to see in ourselves - freedom, flight, community…
Graciela Iturbide, Señor de los Pájaros, Nayarit, Mexico, 1984
Graciela Iturbide, Halcón [Bird], territorio de los seminoles, Florida, USA, 1999
POL: You mention stylistic differences across the imagery, and there is a mixture of staged and documentary photography on display in the show - is there a difference in approach when displaying works so visually disparate alongside each other?
BT: Hanging a show is always interesting because even when the work is visually cohesive, it’s not always immediately apparent how best to lay out the show - the way photos occupy a space can have such an impact on how the images feel.
We played around with the space a lot with Del Cielo in particular because the documentary photos have so much more of a weight and a serious feeling to them, than the staged photography - we wanted to be sure they complemented each other.
It was the photos displayed from Rinko Kawauchi series Under the same Sky that served as a very nice way to bring both worlds together - they are documentary, yet have a softer, lighter, feel to them, and of course they are shot in color unlike Masahisa Fukase and Graciela Iturbide’s work. In addition to this, Rinko herself is very involved in her installation even when working from Japan - the unique layout of her pieces was almost entirely determined by her, and her sense of the space is always so crucial to her work - so having them be the first work you see when you enter the show really helped unite things visually.
Rinko Kawauchi Installation, Del Cielo, Rose Gallery, 2023
Installation, Del Cielo, Rose Gallery, 2023
POL: Many of the birds in the images on display are often seen as melancholic or macabre, however the works themselves appear to act as representations of optimism or new life. What kind of emotional resonance would you like visitors to take away from the show?
Rose Shoshana: Graciela Iturbide's password for her WiFi is 'Pajaro Solitario', a solitary bird. Her portrayal of birds is often one of longing and solitude, which is a state that is a known one for humans. We know ourselves to be solitary yet we long also to be part of a 'flock', making a connection with other humans lives deeply within us.
Birds are often seen as symbols of freedom which I believe we as humans long for. To be able to spread our wings and fly to parts unknown is an inherent desire that lives within us.
Masahisa Fukase, Nayoro, 1976
Masahisa Fukase, Nayoro, 1976
Del Cielo (of the sky) , a collection of photographs by Graciela Iturbide, Masahisa Fukase, Jo Ann Callis, Rinko Kawauchi, and James Gallagher, is open at ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica, until November 25th 2023.
James Gallagher, Untitled, 2015
About The Artists
Graciela Iturbide is known for her black-and-white images of local people in her native country of Mexico. She most often depicts women, believing them to embody independence and sexuality, and in 1979 she notably published Juchitán de las Mujeres, a book of photographs which inspired her lifelong support of feminist causes.
Iturbide has photographed in the Sonora Desert and Juchitán de Zaragoza, Mexico as well as in Cuba, Panama, India, Argentina, and the United States. Born in 1942 in Mexico City, Mexico, she went on to study film at the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónama de Mexico in 1969, where she came under the influence of acclaimed Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Iturbide went on to work as Bravo’s photography assistant, and his methods and aesthetics have had a lasting effect on her photography practice.
Rinko Kawauchi is a contemporary Japanese photographer known for her lyrical images of elemental subjects. Based in the Shinto religion as well as the works of Irving Penn, Kawauchi’s photographs capture ordinary moments with a profound almost hallucinatory perspective. “From the black ocean comes the appearance of light and waves. It helps you imagine birth,” she has mused. “I want imagination in the photographs I take. It’s like a prologue. You wonder, ‘What’s going on?’ Youeel something is going to happen.”
Born on April 6, 1972 in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, she began pursuing photography while attending the Seian College of Art and Design in Osaka during the early 1990s. Working mainly in advertising for a number of years after graduating, Kawauchi published her first photo book in 2001 and went on to release several others, including Illuminance (2011), Ametsuchi (2013), and Halo (2017). She currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Today, Kawauchi’s works are held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Huis Marseille in Amsterdam, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, among others.
Masahisa Fukase (1932-2012), a legend and an enigma in his native Japan, produced a body of work whose dark expressionism reflects the artistic reaction to a country ravaged by defeat. He began showing his photographs in the 1960s, focusing on industrial scenes. By the early 1970s, he turned to the tender subject of his wife, gaining critical and commercial success. In 1974, together with contemporaries including Shomei Tomatsu and Daido Moriyama, he established a photography school, The Workshop, which propagated the grainy, raw style they pioneered. That same year, his work was included in “New Japanese Photography,” a groundbreaking exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. By the late 1970s, bereft after the dissolution of his marriage, Fukase began photographing ravens, their inky-black bodies serving as ciphers for the pain and loneliness by which he was plagued.
Jo Ann Callis was born in Cincinnati, OH and relocated to Los Angeles in 1961. She enrolled at UCLA in 1970 where she began taking classes with Robert Heinecken, among other prominent artists. She started teaching at CalArts in 1976 and remains a faculty member of the School of Art’s Program in Photography and Media.
She has continued to photograph, draw, and paint, and her work has been widely exhibited in such venues as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and many others. In 2009 a retrospective of her work, Woman Twirling, was presented by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Callis has received three NEA Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other awards and prizes.
James Gallagher uses collage to investigate human form and personal identity. Piecing together images cut from discarded books, and forgotten issues of National Geographic, Gallagher creates stark and provocative scenes that reflect the world around him. His work focuses on personal space, physical relationships, and enigmatic situations. The human forms that he creates have obscured identities, allowing for their actions to convey the drama. He constructs scenes by sifting-through, and piecing-together imagery cut from obscure books and magazines. In a constant state of layering paper, moving shapes, adding and subtracting colors, he waits for figures to form, and something exciting to happen.
Gallagher’s art has been shown in galleries around the world. He has recently curated a series of exhibitions showcasing contemporary collage entitled Cutters (Brooklyn, New York 2009, Berlin, Germany 2010, and Cork, Ireland 2011) and has edited a related book published by Gestalten entitled Cutting Edges: Contemporary Collage. Gallagher’s art has been featured in magazines such as Arkitip, Juxtapoz, Elephant, Cent, NYArts, Twill and Lines & Shapes. His images have appeared in numerous books, including American Illustration, Communication Arts, and a variety of Die Gestalten Publications.