Lezley Saar

Lezley Saar moves between painting, drawing, photography, fabric banners, collages, and installations in her practice. All of these components operate within the distinct vein of Magical Realism that Saar has developed within her oeuvre since the late 1980s. Blending realist imagery with motifs of the supernatural or fragments of folklore, Saar’s pieces evocatively meditate on the intersections of race, gender, ancestry, sexuality and spirituality. The women in her paintings could have been plucked from the pages of Toni Morrison’s novels, or the Afro-Surrealist poetry of Suzanne Césaire. Appearing as omniscient ghosts or spirits, each figure is laced with ancestral weight. Bones, butterflies, snakes, or antlers form regal headpieces for these figures while their eyes pierce knowingly at audiences. Simultaneously drawing out dark histories and the resonant beauty of these women, Saar plays with the tropes of American Gothic to depict enrapturing, otherworldly figures who share stories often left untold. ...

Various Small Fires (Los Angeles /Dallas /Seoul) began as a series of conversations with artists and curators in Esther Kim Varet’s Venice Beach kitchen while working on her doctoral dissertation. VSF debuted in Hollywood as an official gallery in 2015 with a roster of artists and its current Johnston MarkLee Architects-designed building. The Hollywood gallery contains three exhibition spaces, a unique sound corridor, and an outdoor gallery. VSF’s exhibition program explores several curatorial lines: climate, equality, and an international conversation. The gallery is known for offering artists debut shows, creating intergenerational conversations among the artists on its roster, and solidifying artists’ legacies within art history. In 2019, VSF opened a second location in the Hannam neighbourhood of Seoul, South Korea, followed recently this Spring by VSFs third outpost in Dallas, Texas. While Varet has very personal connections to both locations, they are also superlative art communities. These expansions emphasise the gallery’s commitment to innovation and global dialogue in the twenty-first century. In 2021, VSF became a member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). ...