Multifaceted: Exploring the Bandwidth

Tufenkian Fine Arts is pleased to present, Multifaceted, a two-part show featuring artworks by twelve contemporary artists co-curated between John David O’Brien and Caroline Tufenkian in the downstairs gallery space and a selection of artworks by John David O’Brien in the upstairs gallery space. Multifaceted seeks to subvert the traditional art historical paradigm of summarizing single artists as one evolving line of stylistic continuance, ignoring the multidimensional aspects which are often present in their creative sphere. The exhibition will run from Saturday, October 16^th, and will be on view through Saturday, November 20^th. 

The placement of artworks by Sigrid Burton, Stephen Douglas, Mary Addison Hackett, Gegam Kacherian, Kaye Freeman, Noel Korten, Erika Lizée, Farzad Kohan, Wendy Adest, Garo Antreasian, Fatemeh Burnes, and Jennifer Gunlock together was meant by Tufenkian and O’Brien to be a homage to their artistic bandwidth, individually and collectively. Multifaceted places these artists, varied in their practices and creative expressions, within the same space without attempting to reconcile their differences. This exhibition was conceptualized as an experiment in pluralism, celebrating the manifold dimensions of the world which we share together. 

There was a time in which competing views and artistic ideals were pitted one against the other. Was a more abstract worldview more significant than a more figurative worldview? Was a color laden expansion more noteworthy than a monochromatic reduction? As a viewer, we can decide which of these positions best represents the world around us as we perceive it, however, those same personal decisions are often revised historically on a regular basis. In this thread lies the richness and infinite mutability of the visual arts as a tool for deciphering the world around us through its translation into color and form. 

Having grown up in an art world firmly rooted in the Italian tradition before rerooting in California’s artistic landscape, John David O’Brien was never able to reconcile the differences that existed between these two worlds. Rejecting any singular resolution to this dilemma, O’Brien has chosen to accept that these separate trends were equally aspirational in their reach, and therefore equal in value. O’Brien’s practice references the history of Arte Povera in Italy and fuses it with West Coast Assemblage art. Multifaceted celebrates the plentitude of ways in which art is meant to explore the extent, the bounty, and the depth of our art world.