Gallery 30 South

The clean, simple lines of mid-century modern design and the cool sounds of West Coast jazz and Bossa Nova Blue Note minimalist record cover artworks of the 1950s – 60s. The Abstract Classicists with their hard-edge painting style using bold lines, organic shapes, and textures. Vintage fashion and photography and classic cars. Pop Art, Constructivism and Suprematism. These are just a few ideas and movements that inspire Graham Moore’s collages.

Growing up in the Southwest, they were inspired early on by the relics of Americana: motels with shattered neon, vacant houses, train cars, and roadside objects. These experiences translate into the work they create today from the banks of the Willamette River. Using cardboard, acrylic, spray paint, and paper, Nonamey has created a body of work varying from sculpture, to painting, to installation art.

These films are still considered exploitation films in the same sense that most 1980s  horror and comedy films from the U.S. can also be categorized as exploitation. They have nudity, violence, and sometimes even torture and bondage, but what separates the Toei films from their lesser  competitors are the victories achieved by the protagonists – often against incredible adversity, and invariably with a social message.

Johnston’s songs have been covered by several hundred artists, including David Bowie and Tom Waits. The late Kurt Cobain mused that Daniel Johnston is the best songwriter in America. In 2006, his life was documented in the award-winning film, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and his painted illustrations were exhibited in the Whitney biennial. Johnston had a lifetime battle with mental illness, and medication prescribed for this condition damaged his liver requiring multiple hospitalizations. He died from a heart attack in his sleep before the morning of September 11, 2019.

Topp uses mixed media with screen printing in overlapping layers on paper and board. Images are hand-pulled with mixed-media application in each print, with predetermined sizes and ink selections for different bodies of work.  In the last few years, Topp’s tattooed Disney Princesses and Sesame Street characters have gone viral to the point that his pieces have been pinned over a million times on Pinterest.

The great reverence that Mendoza has for the past (and an equal infatuation with the lurking shadow of the future) is omnipresent in his alla prima portraits, which pay tribute to his literary heroes. His combination of expressionism and neorealism embodies the era in which many of his subjects thrived. As a perpetual student of history, he draws a line from late modernism through post-contemporary art.

On the weekends, kids flocked from East L.A. and the Valley to Melrose Avenue to buy their Doc Martens and Manic Panic hair dye, and Aronow was everybody’s favorite Goth shopkeeper. In the evenings, Aronow was busy documenting the live music scene of that era, and managed to capture still photos of the most iconic bands of the day over multiple gigs spanning over a decade. For Aronow’s sophomore exhibition, Gallery 30 South is showcasing another assortment of never-before-seen photos from L.A.’s Punk Rock Golden Age.