RE: PURPOSE: A Public Facing Art Instllation at the Beverly Connection, Los Angeles Featuring : Chenhung Chen, Jynx Prado and Stephanie Sherwood

LAUNCH LA with the generous support of the Beverly Connection and through an Artist Project Grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs presents RE: PURPOSE. This public art presentation transforms a vacant retail space into a laboratory of creativity holding a mirror to our city and ourselves.

Chenhung Chen, Jynx Prado and Stephanie Sherwood see beauty and potential in discarded items. These artists invite you to look into a space where refuse is given a second chance to inspire. This installation is on view from the sidewalk and street at the northwest corner of West 3 rd St and La Cienega Blvd. through Friday, May 24 th , 2024.

 

Sculptural works by artist Chenhung Chen use defunct electrical materials such as wires and conduit to represent “Chi,” the Taoist concept of life force, which flows through our bodies. Chen crochets and weaves these materials into flowing tapestries that are transformed to rivers of energy.

 

Jynx Prado’s sculptural pieces are created using materials such as burlap, found fabrics and discarded furniture to create figurative works that employ humor and biting commentary on our social surroundings. These three-dimensional characters and their components address themes of queerness, their Latino/a/x/e community and historical and mythological texts.

 

Stephanie Sherwood’s primarily paint-based art practice has morphed in recent years to incorporate guerilla-style paintings on streets and in alleyways onto piles of furniture left by Los Angeles residents. In these recent sculptural works, she employs found discarded materials to create three-dimensional painted works, which address the oftentimes-uncomfortable human experience, which can result in beauty. 

 

Through these unique transformations of abandoned and unusable materials, each artist addresses powerful aspects of human nature.

 

About the artists:

Chenhung Chen is a Los Angeles-based artist whose mixed media drawings, photography, sculptures, and installations navigate modernity through her transforming of mainly found industrial materials. Chen’s work investigates physical, social, and spiritual structures and how they intersect in contemporary culture. Born in Taiwan Chen has lived and worked in Taipei, Taiwan, New York, N.Y., and Los Angeles, CA. She received a BA from the Chinese Cultural University, Taipei, Taiwan, and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she studied with Michael Singer, Ursula von Rydingsvard and Jackie Winsor, etc. Their engagements with architecture, wood and uncommon materials in contemporary discourse influenced her experimenting with the possibility of space and materials, including wires and electrical cables.

 

Jynx Prado received their MFA at Otis College of Art and Design in 2020 and their BA in California State University Dominguez Hills in 2018. Born and currently based in Los Angeles, Jynx Prado critiques and questions the subtle and drastic shifts and mixtures of internal and external motions and emotions within cultures and nature and the coexistence of them through an interdisciplinary practice. With mediums ranging from traditional drawing tools, fiber, found objects and themself, they create humorous and yet uncanny characters and iconography to embody the irony and absurdity of current events and personal and community conflicts. Prado creates sculptures, performances and visuals that intertwines queerness, their Latino/a/x/e community and historical and mythological texts.

 

Stephanie Sherwood is an artist and curator living in Los Angeles. Her artwork has been shown internationally and in the United States, including the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, LA Artcore, The Brand Library and Art Center and DAC Gallery. Sherwood’s work and curatorial projects have been included in several publications including Artillery, Art and Cake, ArtHabens Contemporary Art Review, LA Weekly, Murze Magazine and Voyage LA. The elevation of abject forms fascinates me—fleshy shapes bound within a rigid cage; haphazard fabric, plastic, and paper cast aside in a shopping cart on a sidewalk; overflowing dumpsters.

 

The stark contrast of chaos within a structure strikes an unexpected beauty. My exploration begins with strong lines and progresses with thick paint. Recently, the expression of these fleshy obsessions has manifested into sculptural forms that use base materials such as cardboard and found paper. They have even become urban art interventions on discarded furniture in Los Angeles.