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On The Table Read, the “Best Entertainment Celebrity Magazine in the UK“, the Corey Helford Gallery shares the Sixth Sense exhibition, featuring work by Arinze Stanley, Chen-Dao Lee, Chloe Early, Jana Brike, RYOL, & Zoé Byland.
OPENING RECEPTION
April 2, 2022 | 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
ON VIEW
April 2 – May 7, 2022
COREY HELFORD GALLERY
571 S. Anderson St. Los Angeles, CA 90033
Open: Tuesday-Saturday, 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Visiting Hours: Thursday-Saturday, 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Downtown Los Angeles’ Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) is proud to announce Sixth Sense, a six-artist exhibition featuring new works from world renowned Nigerian painter Arinze Stanley, Taiwaneseartist Chen-Dao Lee, London-based artist Chloe Early, Latvia-born artist Jana Brike, Indonesia-born pop-artist RYOL, and Switzerland-based painter Zoé Byland, opening Saturday, April 2nd in the Main Gallery.
Arinze Stanley is inspired by his personal experiences growing up in Nigeria and the current state of society around him, Stanley is driven by creating drawings that trigger a degree of emotional connection between the viewers and his artworks. Using his works as a form of social and political activism, Stanley hopes to use his art to speak for those who can’t speak out for themselves. CNN shares, “You’re not alone if you do a double-take when you see one of Arinze Stanley’s drawings—his portraits are so life-like, they are often mistaken for photographs.
The Nigerian-born artist has no formal training and works with charcoal and graphite pencils, capturing everyday people and their emotions in extraordinary detail. Arinze uses his art to comment on issues affecting Nigeria as well as the rest of Africa, speaking for people who can’t speak for themselves.” Stanley made his solo show debut at CHG in October 2020 with Paranormal Portraits.
Chen-Dao Lee creates scenes of extraordinary and ordinary life utilizing the composition style of old master paintings.
The artist creates portraits of people wearing masks of celebrities from films or animations and places them in unique frames that look like sculptures.
Regarding his new series, Lee shares: “I’m trying to incorporate and combine images from pop and classic art (including comic books and fairy tales), as well as current topics such as gender issues.”
Chloe Early adopts tropes from the history of Western painting, seamlessly merging figuration and abstraction. Drawn from her own photographic sources, Early’s meticulously rendered figures evoke both romantic and renaissance paintings in their allegorical functions, suggesting pleasure or pain, agony, or ecstasy. The series of paintings featured in Phoenix depict a female figure in various states of rise and fall.
Regarding her new series, Early shares: “The paintings take inspiration from the ‘phoenix’ (an immortal bird associated with Greek mythology and many other cultures). Phoenix is associated with the sun and is destroyed by flames only to rise again reborn from its ashes.
The predominance of red and warm tones throughout these paintings are a reference to fire; from embers to roaring flames, these paintings aim to portray the cyclical nature of life; a continuous cycle of birth, death, rebirth, and resurrection.
The figure spins solitarily through the darkness, alluding to our sun and the infinite other stars in deep space and drawing a micro and macro parallel between the individual experience and the totality of the universe.”
Latvia-born artist Jana Brike’s interest is visual art with a strong narrative and depiction of a figure, mostly using the traditional medium of oil painting on canvas. She has also explored other mediums such as drawing, animation, mixed media sculpture, installation, and digital art. Brike’s main focus in her work is the internal space and state of the human soul ─ dreams, longing, love, pain, the vast range of emotions the human condition offers and the transcendence of them all, the growing up, and self-discovery. Brike’s work is her poetic visual autobiography.
Regardingher new series, Brike shares: “This body of work is about the sacred feminine in its growth and transformation steps, its wisdom, pivotal turning points, its deep connections to the world around and the others but also its solitude, its acceptance, and wholeness. This is also my search for a way back to the primordial woman, reconnection with nature, both as a worldwide force that holds us together and the true inner nature of the self. Beauty is an important aspect to me, beauty in a more profound sense as a mirror to the soul’s strivings.
The fleeting touch to the beauty creates loneliness, strong emotion, and longing deep enough that it makes us go out into the primordial nature for the fulfillment, for the true source of strength. Into the wild open spaces where the nature elements flow from and into the human being, where there is no separation. But I also perceive all my work as visual poems, multidimensional, with no one direct narrative. I find it beyond important for people to find their own interpretation and not get attached only to mine.”
The work of Ryo Laksamana (aka RYOL) utilizes the appropriation method and focuses on themes around consumer culture.
Regarding his new series, RYOL shares: “I’m a consumer of western culture, such as cartoons, comics, and even fashion. I work by taking what already exists, and then I examine and recreate it with whatever is on my mind. The acceleration of information available due to the internet has become one of my concerns in reading the general art discourse.
It seems that art has become more instantaneous, and information is shared faster. Aesthetics are constantly evolving. I made these pieces based on that acceleration. For each piece, I learned about an issue, then took a stance on the issue.”
In her work, Zoé Byland incorporates elements of vintage photography, film noir, graphic novels, superheroes, tattoos, and classical genres of art history ─ combing the traditional and the contemporary, the classical and the subcultural.
Regarding her new series, Byland shares: “We are all unique, nevertheless the handling and liberation of ideas about how one should behave, be, and look accompany us throughout our lives. We spend lots of time trying to conform to a (non-existing) norm, hide our vulnerability, or please others ─ yet our diversity and uniqueness distinguish us and make us magical. Finding individual expression, courage, and peace within makes us beautiful.
Everyone must find their way to express their very own truth. There are as many ways and meanings as there are individuals. My characters have their own way to meet the world, through imagination (‘Girl and Ghost Owl’), energy and activity (‘Wind up Lady’), serenity (‘Boy and Snail’), and contemplation (‘Lady and White Raven’). They invite and encourage the viewer to explore their own uniqueness and find its magic.”
Sixth Sense opens Saturday, April 2nd from 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm in the Main Gallery, alongside a solo show from Miho Hirano, entitled Harmony With Material and Spirit, in Gallery 3. Proof of COVID-19 vaccination is required for entry into the gallery, plus guest temperatures will be checked and masks are required.
World renowned painter Arinze Stanley Egbengwu was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1993 and graduated from Imo State University with a Bachelor of Engineering in Agricultural Engineering. Starting at the early age of six, Stanley had always been enthusiastic about drawing realistic portraits on paper. Being exposed to his family’s paper conversion business, Stanley grew to love and use paper and pencils as his toys at a very tender age.
Over the years he gradually taught himself how to master both pencils and paper in harmony, as a medium to express himself through what he calls his three P’s: Patience, Practice, and Persistence. The three P’s have guided him throughout his journey as an artist. Working in a genre of art known as hyper-realism and drawing from personal experiences growing up in Nigeria, Stanley is driven by creating art that triggers a degree of emotional connection between viewers and his works. Also, gearing his works toward social and political activism, he hopes to use his art to speak for those who can’t speak out for themselves.
Stanley’s debut group show was held in Nigeria in 2016 and since then he has exhibited internationally, both in the UK and all around the U.S., plus he’s participated in notable art fairs around the world including: ART MIAMI, SCOPE ART FAIR and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. Plus, the artist’s work has been profiled by CNN’s Great Big Story, BBC News, VICE, HuffPost, Juxtapoz, Afropunk, and This Is Colossal, among many others.
At first glance, Chen-Dao Lee uses people around him as motifs. He creates, however, mainly works of scenes unfolding extraordinary and ordinary life with composition of old master paintings, portraits of people wearing masks of celebrities, and works which consist of characters in films or animations and puts them into unique frames that look like sculptures.
His home country, Taiwan, accepts a lot of culture from Japan and the U.S., and his paintings incorporate Taiwanese mixed culture. They are works that have been homogenized with the same admiration, even for combinations such as “Hollywood films and anime” or “Japanese porn videos and Western master paintings,” which are unthinkable overseas.
Born in London in 1980, Chloe Early grew up in Cork, Ireland and graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2003. Since then, Early has exhibited in Dublin, London, Los Angeles, and New York. Early adopts tropes from the history of Western painting, seamlessly merging figuration and abstraction. Drawn from her own photographic sources, Early’s meticulously rendered figures evoke both romantic and renaissance paintings in their allegorical functions, suggesting pleasure or pain, agony or ecstasy. She shares, “I’ve always been interested in opposites in my work and exploring themes which can have a dual interpretation.” Early currently lives and works in London.
Born in 1980 in Riga, Latvia, Jana Brike studied academic painting at the Art Academy of Latvia, where she earned her Master of Arts degree in 2005. Since 1996, Brike has had 13 solo exhibitions and nearly 100 other projects and group exhibitions all over the world.
Ryo Laksamana (aka RYOL) was born in Banyuwangi, Indonesia in 1993. Since 2013, his work has been exhibited around the world, first throughout Indonesia and Southeast Asia, then in London, Paris, Japan, Korea, and Los Angeles. He shares, “My artwork is created out of my dissatisfaction with what I imagine about the cartoons I watched throughout my childhood, because what is imagined does not match with my real world. The dimensions of my imagination are highly beyond my real world.”
Zoé Byland attended the F +F school for art and media design in Zurich, Switzerland. She studied contextual painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where she earned a master’s degree in 2008. Byland also studied art history at the University of Vienna in Austria, where she lived for several years, painting and teaching at an art school. She now lives and works in Bern, Switzerland with her family.
Byland shares, “In terms of style and content, my paintings are based on elements of vintage photography, film noir, graphic novels, superheroes, tattoos, and classical genres of art history. I combine the traditional and the contemporary, the classical and the subcultural. Disguises are another aspect of my work. My characters never fully reveal their identity, they retain a degree of secrecy, protect themselves, while simultaneously being visible and vulnerable. The viewer’s imagination has room to think up their own narrative, ideas, and meanings. Just like a good story, a good painting for me needs an atmosphere that draws you in and defines the genre in which the narrative is taking place.”
Established in 2006 by Jan Corey Helford and her husband, television producer/creator Bruce Helford (The Conners, Anger Management, The Drew Carey Show, and George Lopez), Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) has since evolved into one of the premier galleries of New Contemporary art.
Its goal as an institution is supporting the growth of artists, from the young and emerging, to the well-known and internationally established. CHG represents a diverse collection of international artists, primarily influenced by today’s pop culture and collectively encompassing style genres such as New Figurative Art, Pop Surrealism, Neo Pop, Graffiti, and Street Art. Located in downtown Los Angeles at 571 S. Anderson St. Los Angeles, CA 90033, in a robust 12,000 square foot building, CHG presents new exhibitions approximately every six weeks.
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm, with visiting hours being Thursday through Saturday from 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm. For more info and an upcoming exhibition schedule, visit CoreyHelfordGallery.com and follow on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. For available prints from CHG, visit CHGPrints.com.
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