Lauren Mendelsohn-Bass. You can currently see her work in the group exhibition
Today we would like to share the work and current art happenings of Shoebox PR artist Lauren Mendelsohn-Bass. You can currently see her work in the group exhibition "Femella" at Golden West College Art Gallery and at Los Angeles' new cultural hot spot ArtBarLA! While acting in her position as co-owner of ArtBarLA and showing in group exhibitions, Lauren is also developing several bodies of work for solo exhibitions coming to Newport, Aliso Viejo and Reno in 2020. If you are interested in learning more, we would be happy to connect you with Lauren. |
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Lauren Mendelsohn-Bass is a painter living and working in Los Angeles. She received her Bachelor of Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. Mendelsohn-Bass is currently exploring the psychology of the mind’s inner conflicts and struggles, through her painting series' Sugar Coated and Fairy Tales, Fables & Food. She often emphasizes the psychological drama with a monochromatic, Film Noir feel in order to examine what makes us tick. Her large, figurative paintings have a climactic, narrative quality with a focus upon emotional suspense, with each glance suggesting a passion or crime.
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"Sugar Coated" takes us on a journey through the world of superficial reality--where artificially alluring and nostalgically innocent context masks darker thoughts, ideas and actions. Playing on the visual tropes of mass marketing and vintage advertisements, this work explores the ways reality is obscured when presented as ostensibly attractive. As popular culture navigates an era of “fake news”, social media, and alternative facts --nothing is as it seems. These paintings examine today’s culture where truth is fluid; ideas issues and events are routinely reframed to reinforce a brand, and even daily life is depicted in a series of perfectly posed, edited and filtered images on social media. "With vivid, rich colors contrasting with monochromatic images, artist Lauren Mendelsohn-Bass creates a hyper-realistic world that’s straight out of film. Using images and themes from popular candies, and contrasting them with lush black and white women, men, and couples, the artist offers viewers a wonderfully visceral contrast between a candy-coated dream world and reality.” Genie Davis, Lauren Mendelsohn-Bass Candy Coats Noir Cool, Art&Cake. |
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Guilty pleasures are portrayed in a vibrant world of bold imagery. The series delves into society’s complex emotions around what we desire, and more specifically, the mass marketed idea of desirability in lifestyle, perception, physical characteristics, conspicuous consumerism and more. "Sugar Coated" seduces the senses with luscious color and alluring imagery expertly depicted with great detail. Mendelsohn-Bass wields realism as a means to expose the lack of reality in socially constructed norms.
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Inspired by 1950's era advertising, "Sugar Coated" is a nod to classic Film Noir and its emotive German Expressionist roots. Mixing pop imagery and classic noir iconography, "Sugar Coated" draws the viewer into an enticing candy coated world, only to find all is not as sweet as it appears. The work appeals to a nostalgic longing for an idealized mechanism to identify villain and hero. In the classic films it was so easy, but careful branding and cultivation of image has made it harder to see the core characteristics of public figures, products and events. Through juxtapositions of symbolic and stylized iconic imagery with high emotional content, these paintings maintain a sense of dramatic tension. "Sugar Coated" retains the mystery and drama of noir while swapping the dark urban landscape of Hollywood classic films for bright candy colors and a facade of beautiful perfection.
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In addition to her "Sugar Coated" series, Mendelsohn-Bass takes a look at Fairy Tales, Fables and Food, visually critiquing the narratives that have shaped our cultural understanding of everything from body image and gender roles, to the over-use of pharmaceuticals in our everyday lives. The subjects in her paintings show a nostalgia and idealization of the past while at the same time yearn for something in the future. The sense of suspense makes the viewer aware that things are not always as they appear. The combination of composition, technique, and subject matter allows for the viewer to have a deeper psychological experience.
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Mendelsohn-Bass takes cultural critique beyond that of her visual art, as an owner of ArtBarLA. With LC Croskey of Cannibal Flower, she conceived of a new creative hub in Los Angeles, of which she said, “I would like to do something interesting in LA for artists and for Cannibal Flower, and...I wanted to create a space where we could show any kind of art, a place for visual artists and performers.” You can read more about the conception of ArtBarLA in ArtBarLA Is Just Where You Want To Be, in Diversions LA. |
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Current and Future Exhibitions
- "Femella," Golden West College Art Gallery, Oct 10-Dec 7, 2019
- "Made You Look," ArtBarLA, Oct 6- Oct 26, 2019
- Solo Exhibition at Newport Library March 9, 2020 through May 8, 2020
- "Sugar Coated," Soka University of American, Founders Hall Art Gallery, May 14- September 8, 2020
- Solo Exhibition in Reno, Date TBD, 2020
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new cultural hot spot ArtBarLA! While acting in her position as co-owner of ArtBarLA and showing in group exhibitions, Lauren is also developing several bodies of work for solo exhibitions coming to Newport, Aliso Viejo and Reno in 2020. If you are interested in learning more, we would be happy to connect you with Lauren.
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