Preview: Jalal Poehlman Picture Yourself in a Boat on a River Jan 28- Feb 28 at The Alley, Downtown Los Angeles.

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Join us at The Alley in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District, on Saturday January 28th from 6-9pm,  for Jalal Poehlman’s solo show “Picture Yourself in a Boat on a River” opening reception.

For Poehlman’s show, he is transforming The Alley, a relic of old Downtown Los Angeles’ which features a uniquely shaped brick and timber exhibition space, into a dual large-scale art installation.

Utilizing canvas, burlap, copper, acrylic paint, plate gold finish, inkjet photograph, and tar, one of the installations consists of twenty interlocking mixed media paintings while the other is comprised of two paintings and a sculpture representing a Hyper-Cube (a cube represented in more than our 3 perceivable dimensions).

According to the event press release:

Taking to heart Brian Eno’s statement that “ the artist is someone who creates the occasion for an art experience,” Poehlman’s work combines mixed media and hard-edged graphic systems along with painterly gesture to create dense visual landscapes that aim to seduce the viewer into submitting to an evolving visual experience. Referencing the Beatles’ (psychedelic era classic), “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the title of the show itself invites a certain artistic experience as it can hardly be thought or said without singing it. Poehlman uses all the tools at his disposal to take you on a surprising and enlightening visual and intellectual journey inside-out and backward, leaving you back right where you were, but more than whole again and more than a little high.

Expanding on the psychedelic aspect of the installs, Poehlman states:

“I think that art reaches its best potential in the mind’s eye. It’s the concepts and experiences that you take away with you that evolve and are most interesting. Novels, songs, paintings, movies they all work on our imaginations after we take them in through our senses. I’m interested in the structure of our perceivable and conceptual reality. Having a psychedelic experience can result from just looking and thinking and finding a way to be open to it, and can reveal an unexpected potential that we can incorporate into our lives. I’m making psychedelic references to suggest to the viewer a way of being open to experiencing an artwork.”

Jalal Poehlman is also the owner of Poehlman Press, a fine-art printing studio in Downtown Los Angeles, with clients spanning the globe including artists, photographers, and many commercial establishments. Upon graduation from art school and moving to Los Angeles, Poehlman found work at Dugan Atelier, a premier fine art inkjet printing studio, in order to have access to the technology for his artwork. When he started his own company, he was able to combine his art studio with his own printing equipment. When asked about how he splits his time between his business and his art, Poehlman says: It’s a constant challenge balancing life’s endeavors. The printing business is project based and in the time between projects I’m working in the art studio. I organized my business to subsidize my art practice.

The Alley and space curator Sarkis Vartanian
Downtown Los Angeles’ The Alley, features a unique, old European-style cobblestone alley nestled between two brick buildings, and was formerly The Nabisco Company, going back to the days when trains were used to deliver goods right to the factory doors. The Alley is currently a successful cafe, serving locally sourced organic food and beverages to downtown locals and visitors.

Owner/curator Sarkis Vartanin has presented 20 art shows in his space and notes that locals no longer have a place to show their art and has offered The Alley to them, to help fill this void. Vartanin is planning 2017 to be a big year for the local art at The Alley, planning six shows with local up and coming artists.

Says Vartanin:

“… local artists are also losing out in our district with brand new larger more powerful galleries opening up, I feel like there will not be room for the local artists. Jalal Poehlman is such an artist; local, worked and lived here many years and has printed and worked with the greats, but doesn’t have the space to show his work. I am hoping to expose him to the local residents and hopefully give him the opportunity to be discovered by the bigger galleries.”

Poehlman has always liked the idea of showing work in non-traditional spaces and says of the upcoming show

“I was making some work that I thought would work in his exhibition space and finally asked to take him up on his offer and he enthusiastically agreed which I couldn’t be more thankful for. It’s a great opportunity to show this new work in Los Angeles. I’ve been working on the specific pieces for this show since October. Sarkis has been massively supportive which has made the preparation for the show run very smoothly. 2016 seems to have been a hard year for everyone, and the election results were such a shock. We pushed the opening to a week after the presidential inauguration because I thought it was distracting. Besides that, the big challenge was that I had to learn to braze copper to create the sculpture that is included in the show. That proved more difficult than I had expected but it finally came together.”

Picture Yourself in a Boat on a River….
I hope it reflects a sense of wonder and that some joy and pleasure is taken away from the experience
.
Jalal Poehlman

Exhibition Dates:
Jalal Poehlman
Picture Yourself in a Boat on a River
Jan. 28 – Feb 28, 2017

Opening Reception:
Saturday, January 28, 6-9 PM

Facebook Invite

Address:
The Alley (next to Daily Dose Cafe)
1820 Industrial Street
Los Angeles, CA 90021

Preview:

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