Shaping Gravity: Abstract Art Beyond the Picture Plane at the Forest Lawn Museum

A new show at the Forest Lawn Museum (a space perched within the grounds of the Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale) takes on the age-old genre of abstraction — or specifically how seven artists are taking the genre into the experimental terrains of sculpture, augmented reality, and video. While the exhibition does include a handful of paintings (the more traditional terrain of abstraction), such as Rema Gholoum’s ephemeral paintings of diffusely layered color, many of the works included take a sculpture approach. Molly Larkey’s geometric columns riff on geometric abstraction while Sarah Ipolotto’s abstract wooden sculptures bring microscopic and alien forms to a larger-than-life scale. One of Shane Guffogg’s ribbony paintings has been augmented with AR, and through a downloaded app, an animation of his sinewy forms squiggle off the canvas to enter dimensional space. Elsewhere Jen Stark’s Digital Paint is a colorful interactive video projection that viewers of the show can augment via sensor-equipped paint rollers that change the pattern on the projection. Together, the exhibition explores how abstract forms exist in contemporary practices in a variety of innovative ways.

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Photo: Jen Stark, 4 x 4 x 4, 2021. Powder coated aluminum, chrome plated aluminum spacers,aluminum threaded rods, stainless steel, magnets, 60 x 60 x 12 inches. Courtesy of Wilding Cran Gallery.