Realms at Giant Robot 2 Los Angeles April 16, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Group art show opening

Realms: New work by Yellena James, Ako Castuera, and Elsa Mora

April 16 - May 11, 2011
Reception: Saturday, April 16, 6:30 - 10:00 p.m.

GR2
2062 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
gr2.net
(310) 445-9276

Giant Robot is proud to host Realms, a group art show featuring new work by Yellena James, Ako Castuera, and Elsa Mora.

Yellena James grew up and attended art school in Sarajevo. At the age of 18, she moved to the U.S. where she continued to study art and design. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Preferring pens, inks, markers, and acrylics, she combines complex abstract forms into dazzling images that take on lives of their own. Her colorful arrangements of organic shapes and tangled lines are at once floral and alien, organic and sci-fi. Each intimate world she creates seems to posses its own ethos and its own special ability to radiate emotion. For this show, she is creating around 30 pieces, including some collage, and pen and ink on vintage paper.

Ako Castuera is a painter, sculptor, and textile artist. For Realms, she has turned her focus to work on paper with a variety of media, primarily using watercolor and gouache. The works continue her ongoing interest in land, the life within it, and the life it sustains. "Suburban tracts sprawl over hills and are at once picturesque, parasitic, and fragile. They coexist with dinosaur like animal forms that suggest prehistoric life," she says. "Dinosaurs have always inspired awe and fed fantasies of the past. Their extinction forces contemplation of the future, of what's in store for the land, animals, and humans all." Ako studied at CCA, and is based in Los Angeles where she works as a writer/storyboard artist on the animated television show, Adventure Time.

Elsa Mora is an award-winning multimedia artist currently living in Los Angeles. She graduated from The Professional School of Visual Arts in Cuba in 1990 and taught art for two years before deciding to become a full-time artist. Today, she is a highly regarded paper cutter whose impossibly detailed pieces challenge the distinctions between sculpture and illustration--in addition to humanity and nature--and all of her work is made one cut at a time by hand. For the show, she is preparing about 10 or 15 pieces, mostly paper cuts and also a few drawings that contemplate the idea of re-visiting childhood as an adult.