Kim MacConnel
Launching Rosamund Felsen Gallery’s new location in Downtown LA, Kim MacConnel presents large & small-scale paintings from the late 80’s and early 90’s, which have never been exhibited on the West Coast. Bewildering in their beauty and iconoclast in their bravado, the paintings are an exercise of subversion in response to the notions of what painting is supposed to be and how it is supposed to be made. As an exploration into the nature of abstract painting, the paintings reprieve the confines, enforced by conceptualism and abstraction, which often privilege concept creation over authentic visceral engagement.
Created by a process where particles are flocked onto the canvas, the paintings are also a rumination of art made outside of the West and non-Western art’s appreciation of textiles, causing the textured paintings to appear as if on velvet.
The paintings defiantly combine visual memories of MacConnel’s childhood in Mexico and his awe & wonder of patterns seen on his travels in Africa, all the while using the formal techniques of Western abstractionism. The compositional play, use of cultural cross-pollination, and rediscovery of joy & sensuousness in the paintings, are all part of the coup d’état of the early Pattern & Decoration art movement, of which MacConnel was a key pioneer.
Moto Okawa
Traveling east from Santa Monica to Downtown Los Angeles, Rosamund Felsen’s new space in the industrial and truck noise-filled Santa Fe neighborhood is beautifully airy. Its much anticipated debut is marked by the bright and bold, decorative abstracted patterns created by the West Coast veteran painter Kim MacConnel. The inaugural moment is an opportunity for the legendary gallerist to once again make her statement and stake her claim in the hip and hopping scene. And she delivers.
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Hunter Drohojowska-Philp
Rosamund Felsen, who first opened a gallery in 1978, has left her Bergamot Station outpost for the industrial arts zone downtown. It is next door to the new location of CB1, the collector-turned-dealer space of Clyde Beswick, and very near the new location of Cirrus, the gallery of print publisher Jean Milant, who first opened downtown in 1970. An enormous rent increase forced him to move from his 6th and Alameda location with just 30-days notice but he is now in a hub of activity with Night Gallery, Francois Ghebaly Gallery and The Mistake Room within walking distance. A new gallery for the artists collaborative Durden and Ray is across the street. So old-timers join newcomers to add depth and history to the neighborhood.
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Carolina A. Miranda
There are a lot of reasons that longtime L.A. gallerist Rosamund Felsen is in love with her new exhibition space in downtown Los Angeles.
There is the light, a soft, filtered glow that pours down from the skylights onto a series of bright abstractions by Encinitas-based Kim MacConnel. There is the continuous rumble of the busy industrial street outside, with its mechanical parade of graffiti-bombed trucks and seafood delivery vans.
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