Los Angeles River: Urban Reclamation by Devon Tsuno
Los Angeles River: Urban Reclamation by Devon Tsuno
SBCC Atkinson Gallery
September 16-December 2, 2016
Artist Devon Tsuno’s native habitat is the Los Angeles River watershed. Even more than streets or buildings, a water catchment defines livable space for plants and animals (including humans), especially here in the arid Southern Californian climate. In the Los Angeles River: Urban Reclamation exhibition, Tsuno, an avid fisherman, shares his embedded perspective from the place where land and water meet rather than an aerial view of the entire watershed. Tsuno often works on a massive scale, creating paintings that are 9 feet tall and installations that cover multiple walls of the gallery, however his images are always tightly cropped. This consistent use of close-ups accentuates Tsuno’s practice of painting through his camera’s lens while creating an immersive immediacy.
While rooted in lifelong observation, Tsuno’s abstract landscapes are synthetic—anomalously colored composites of multiple sites that meld actual places together into a conceptual whole. In a densely layered build-up of acrylic and spray paint, Tsuno superimposes one plant on top of another, tangibly mirroring the cumulative ecology of his hometown watershed in which native and non-native plants vie for position. Even as each new coat of paint supersedes the last, the underlying silhouettes remain palpable, never totally erased. Furthermore, his fluorescent tones simultaneously celebrate the vitality of Southern California 1980’s popular culture and serve as an acrid expression of the toxic and polluted environment.
The 834 square mile Los Angeles River watershed, home to 9 million people, is a fluid ecosystem. Accordingly, Tsuno’s repeated water images flow across every media and surface—sumi ink on handmade paper, spray paint on canvas, and thousands of photocopies stapled to the wall. As the water imagery permeates the architectural space, it becomes impossible to ignore the intrinsic relationship between the constructed and natural environments. Like the watershed, the human ecology of Los Angeles is a dynamic ebb and flow of many indigenous and immigrant cultures. Similarly, Tsuno’s current studio in the converted living room of his childhood home reflects this complex layering.
Now installed in Santa Barbara, this exhibit invites local residents to consider their own relationships to the catchments on the Central Coast, most immediately the Mission Creek and Arroyo Burro watersheds. While there are many shared cultural and ecological characteristics between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, Tsuno’s work underscores the importance of developing an engaged and critical connection to the place in which we live—wherever that may be.
Sarah Cunningham
Atkinson Gallery Director, SBCC
September 2016
While rooted in lifelong observation, Tsuno’s abstract landscapes are synthetic—anomalously colored composites of multiple sites that meld actual places together into a conceptual whole. In a densely layered build-up of acrylic and spray paint, Tsuno superimposes one plant on top of another, tangibly mirroring the cumulative ecology of his hometown watershed in which native and non-native plants vie for position. Even as each new coat of paint supersedes the last, the underlying silhouettes remain palpable, never totally erased. Furthermore, his fluorescent tones simultaneously celebrate the vitality of Southern California 1980’s popular culture and serve as an acrid expression of the toxic and polluted environment.
The 834 square mile Los Angeles River watershed, home to 9 million people, is a fluid ecosystem. Accordingly, Tsuno’s repeated water images flow across every media and surface—sumi ink on handmade paper, spray paint on canvas, and thousands of photocopies stapled to the wall. As the water imagery permeates the architectural space, it becomes impossible to ignore the intrinsic relationship between the constructed and natural environments. Like the watershed, the human ecology of Los Angeles is a dynamic ebb and flow of many indigenous and immigrant cultures. Similarly, Tsuno’s current studio in the converted living room of his childhood home reflects this complex layering.
Now installed in Santa Barbara, this exhibit invites local residents to consider their own relationships to the catchments on the Central Coast, most immediately the Mission Creek and Arroyo Burro watersheds. While there are many shared cultural and ecological characteristics between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, Tsuno’s work underscores the importance of developing an engaged and critical connection to the place in which we live—wherever that may be.
Sarah Cunningham
Atkinson Gallery Director, SBCC
September 2016
Exhibition Catalog
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