Author: lightray

SPACE

A Collection of Essays and Images Curated
by Shana Mabari and Andi Campognone

134 pages, hardcover, 7.5 x 9.25 inches, 20 photographs

$39.99

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“Children at play, artists at work, and scientists measuring quantum effects share this in common: they are all creating reality.” – LEONARD SHLAIN

ABOUT THE BOOK
An intimate meditation on an almost infinite subject, Space aims to explode an ordinary everyday word into a dazzling prism via an exploration of some of the many interpretations of the term. Artist Shana Mabari asked more than a dozen individuals from dramatically different walks of life—from an astronaut and a filmmaker to an art critic and a musician—what they think about when they think about space. Their answers, which alternate with exceptional work from contemporary Southern California artists selected by curator Andi Campognone, invigorate and inspire, and in turn become fodder for reflection upon our relationship to ourselves, to others, and to the universe at large.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Andi Campognone has over 30 as an arts and culture leader in the southern California region. She is the Executive Director of AC Projects, a non-profit consulting organization focused on promoting arts and culture. Projects include developing museum exhibitions, public engagement, mentoring programs and book and film publications of historically relevant southern California artists. Campognone is also the Arts Manager/Senior Curator for the City of Lancaster’s museums. She is responsible for the development and maintenance of partnerships and community engagement initiatives with artists, businesses, stakeholders, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Los Angeles County Supervisors office, California Arts Council and higher level institutions. She develops curatorial direction for exhibition, educational and engagement programming and additionally leads the public art initiatives for the City of Lancaster. She has previously served the City of Pomona as Cultural Arts Commissioner where she co-wrote and implemented the City’s Master Cultural Arts Plan and the adopted Arts in Public Places Policy. She is the cofounder of Kipaipai, a professional development workshop for artists in Hawaii, California and New York. Campognone is on the Board of the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation and on the Board of the Holualoa Foundation for Arts and Culture. She volunteers as a regular speaker and mentor to art students at both the undergraduate and graduate level and is on the advisory board of the Los Angeles Arts Association. She is a member of ArTTable.

Shana Mabari is an American contemporary artist with a studio practice based in Los Angeles and Ibiza, Spain. Previously she has lived and worked in Paris, Northern India, Southeast Asia, and Tel Aviv. Central to Mabari’s practice are her ongoing investigations of the intersections of art and science, as evidenced by her sculptures, installations, and immersive environments that explore the dynamics of visual perception and the ways in which we experience physical space.

Zen Psychosis

by Shana Nys Dambrot
Photographs by Osceola Refetoff

172 pages, hardcover, 5 X 8 inches, 33 photographs

$34.99

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Video recording of livestreamed April 20th reading from Chungking Studio (talk starts at about the 4-minute mark): https://www.facebook.com/ChungkingStudio/videos/557837838470387/

L.A. Weekly podcast, March 6th: https://www.laweekly.com/slipping-into-zen-psychosis-with-l-a-weekly-arts-editor-shana-nys-dambrot

Signed copies can now be purchased & shipped to you directly from A.G. Geiger Fine Art Books — a brilliant place for all your art-book and (culture podcast) needs! www.aggeiger.com/shop/zen-psychosis-86bel 

Zen Psychosis on Instagram: instagram.com/zenpsychosis 

PRESS FOR ZEN PSYCHOSIS
Shana Nys Dambrot was interviewed by Flaunt Magazine about the inspirations and influences for the book and her collaboration with photographer Osceola Refetoff.

“The Los Angeles-based art critic, curator, and now author has taken scenes from her unconscious and transposed them into something tangible and inventive.” — Bree Castillo in FLAUNT Magazine.

Poet Milo Martin wrote of the book:

“The new novella by Shana Nys Dambrot, “Zen Psychosis” is so serpentine sandy dreamy hyper-romantic Anais Nin naked Joan Didion kissing Henry Miller… not to mention the lush pinhole camera photographs by Osceola Refetoff…”

Dambrot and Refetoff were the guests on the A.G. Geiger Podcast in advance of the launch event.

Press mentions surrounding the January 25 launch event at A.G. Geiger Fine Art Books:
Art & Cake included us in their recent Recommended Artists Books roundup.
Osceola was interviewed in Victoria Looseleaf’s DaVinci Questionnaire.
LA Art Party featured the event. 
Cartwheel Art featured the event.
Location Managers Guild Magazine featured the event.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Zen Psychosis is a work of experimental fiction: the attempt to construct a personal memoir culled not from diaries, but dreams. In a way, as the scenes are taken from my own journals, this book is not fiction at all; the dreams are real, their meanings form a story. As a critic of art and an amateur student of Jungian psychoanalysis, I am often compelled to decode intuitive, inscrutable symbols and assemble meaning from the clues the dream or the artist leaves behind. In this novel, I’m applying the technique to my own inner self.

This was directly inspired by Henry Miller, who in 1923 slipped an account of a vivid dream into a collection of short stories in [Black Spring]. “Into the Nightlife: A Coney Island of the Mind” later became an illustrated book in a collaboration between Miller and the artist Bezalel Schatz in 1947, as its tantalizing surrealism and literary voice actively blurred the boundaries between experience and imagination.

The accompaniment of fantastical pinhole photographs by Osceola Refetoff augments and expands on this dynamic; bringing a beguiling dreamlike quality to what are in fact, people and places in the real world outside ourselves. As an artist and student of cinema, Refetoff has long been fascinated with the conventional visual language of what dreams are supposed to look like.

Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Downtown LA. She is the Arts Editor for the L.A. Weekly, and a contributor to Flaunt, Artillery, and other publications. She studied Art History at Vassar College, writes essays for books and exhibition catalogs, curates and juries exhibitions, and speaks at galleries, schools, and cultural institutions nationally. Dambrot is a member of ArtTable and an award-winning member of the Los Angeles Press Club.

Osceola Refetoff is a photographer interested in documenting humanity’s impact on the world, both the intersection of nature and industry, and the narratives of the people living at those crossroads. His parallel careers as an editorial and fine art photographer are characterized by an evocative, cinematic understanding of how scale, point of view, architecture, and motion can express the essence of a given place. Osceola graduated from NYU Film School and is the recipient of the 2018 Los Angeles Press Club National Photojournalist of the Year.