Koji Takey and Franco Defrancesca in One Poor Show at William Turner Gallery

written by Eugene Al Pann, Los Angeles

Usually William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica displays fairly good art. Not the best but with a distinct sense of pop art. The place is great, well maintained for that rat hole called Bergamot Station. All the time when I visit LA this gallery is a venue that I like to go.

For whatever reason, this time I found two ridiculous shows at this gallery:

Koji Takey – “Resonance” a mixed media of Japanese craftsmanship with absolutely no artistic resonance. The artist obviously tried so hard to bring French artist Braque into 3D. But this, to me is a quick fix.

Here what the gallery thinks about his work:

“Koji Takei works reference synthetic cubism in the most literal of senses.  In cubist artworks, the objects are broken up, analyzed and re-assembled in abstracted form.  These pieces, sculpted meticulously from objects of our everyday life, allude to the deconstructed instruments that often were referenced by Picasso and Braque in their first phase of explorations into cubism.

As much as Takei’s pieces are Cubist in nature there is also an unmistakable Asian influence in the working method of the Japanese native.  A quiet solidarity and respect for the individual parts set the pieces apart from the noisy commentary that Cubism often invokes.  Takei’s pieces are minimal in nature, but powerful in presence and seem to reference the interlocking sculptures by fellow Japanese-American, the late Isamu Noguchi. 

Koji Takei is a sculptor living and working in Los Angeles, California.  He has taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA, Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and is currently a faculty member at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and Academy of Art University in San Francisco.  His art has been the subject of recent exhibitions at Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.”

Actually, being a professor does not necessary mean someone is making good art. In Koji’s case he is just a guy that copies ideas crafting them into a gimmick. 

 Franco Defrancesca – “Sylphs and Strands”,  is a fashionable epoxy stage of  vibrant minimal effort in composition and technique.

About this artist, the gallery does not even know what to say! Check this statement out:

“A native of Toronto, Franco graduated from the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD) in 1990 and returned to the University of Guelph in 2004-05 to further his studies after 12 years working in communication design and the renovation industry. As a multidisciplinary artist since 2004, Franco has been exhibiting art and art projects ranging from sculpture/installation, photography, digital art, and sound art exploring narratives and representations that materialize notions of media, technology, art history, and pop culture.

With his recent “Plasma Gel”, series of digital/mixed media “picture objects”, Franco explores digital media as a mode of abstract image production in the creation of an art object. Investigating the links between art and memory, history and technology, the Plasma Gels series use digital imaging as a means to navigate the territory between photography and painting, mixing references to photography, painting and display technology.
Visualizing ephemeral and elusive environments that allude to a non-delineated, but deep pictorial space, these works recall the colour-field and the elemental geometry of mid to late twentieth century post painterly abstraction, minimalism and op-art. Franco’s work has exhibited in Canada and the United States and is included in various private and corporate collections throughout North America.”

Combined both shows are just a sign that the gallery is struggling to attract more LA people offering to the public exactly what it deserves– nothing!