COREY HELFORD GALLERY
presents
Camille Rose Garcia
"Phantasmacabre"
Opening Reception Saturday, July 16 from 7-11pm
(On View July 16 - August 20, 2016)
 
"Revenge of Lolita Phantasma" Acrylic and glitter on wood panel, 96" x 72"
Los Angeles (June 13, 2016) - On Saturday, July 16th , Corey Helford Gallery will proudly unveil new works from internationally recognized Los Angeles artist and pop surrealist pioneer Camille Rose Garcia . Garcia' s newest series of gothic-psychedelic nature paintings, titled "Phantasmacabre," will be her first solo show in Los Angeles since 2011 and debut the biggest paintings of her career. In addition, this will be Garcia's first show with CHG.
 
Influenced by the surrealist and deeply symbolic films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jungian archetypes, and fairy tales, "Phantasmacabre" depicts a lush and layered symbolic world that explores the realm of memories and dreams.
 
Mother nature dominates, with fecund, tangly gardens overtaking painful subconscious memes. Candy colors, repeating patterns, and psychedelic symmetry form an underlying organic structure for the paintings. Figurative fragments from children's books and fairy tales form a deeply personal narrative dominated by various feminine archetypes and villains. The beautiful and the macabre negotiate a delicate balance of creation and destruction.
 
"House of Psyche" acrylic and glitter on wood panel, 96" x 72"
 
Of her new work, Garcia says: "I'm trying to capture an emotional and psychological landscape where dreams and memory combine to form a personal symbolic language, both unique and universal. I'm interested in the feeling of something beautiful and frightening existing at the same time.  Something painful and pleasurable all at once."
 
Ghosts and witches, snakes and skulls frame acid-colored fever-dream scenes of wounded goddesses slayed open, fecund gardens growing from their wounds. Vibrant strange gardens populated with insects and dream imagery portray a psychedelic dance between life and death.
 
"Sooo Good" acrylic and watercolor on paper, 48" x 30"
 
She adds, "Most of my work had been about the painful intersection of nature and culture, the rampant destructive nature of the modern world. At times I feel a certain helplessness about the state of the world, and I retreat into beauty, into color, into music. This is the language of the universe, in all of its repeating patterns. This series of paintings is the most personal, but also universal. It is no longer about culture, but of trying to tap into a deeper symbolic language beyond words."
 
 
About Camille Rose Garcia:
Camille Rose Garcia was born in 1970 in Los Angeles, California. The child of a Mexican activist filmmaker father and a muralist/painter mother, she apprenticed at age 14 working on murals with her mother while growing up in the generic suburbs of Orange County, visiting Disneyland and going to punk shows with the other disenchanted youth of that era.
 
Garcia's layered, broken narrative paintings of wasteland fairy tales are influenced by William Burroughs' cut-up writings and surrealist film, as well as vintage Disney and Fleischer cartoons, acting as critical commentaries on the failures of capitalist utopias, blending nostalgic pop culture references with a satirical slant on modern society.
 
Her work has been displayed internationally and featured in numerous magazines including Juxtapoz (her work has twice graced the cover), Rolling Stone, and Modern Painter, and is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Resnick Collection, and the San Jose Museum of Art, which held a retrospective of her work, entitled "Tragic Kingdom," accompanied by a catalog of the same name. Garcia's recent book, The Illustrated Alice in Wonderland (published by Harper Collins,) was a New York Times Bestseller.
 
Garcia recently moved to the Pacific Northwest after 38 years in Los Angeles.

About Corey Helford Gallery:
Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) was established in 2006 by Jan Corey Helford and her husband, television producer and creator, Bruce Helford (Anger Management, The Drew Carey Show, George Lopez, The Oblongs). CHG represents a diverse collection of Contemporary artists influenced by today's pop culture, encompassing the genres of New Figurative, Pop Surreal, Graffiti and Street Art. Artists include Josh Agle (Shag), Ron English, D*Face, Camille Rose Garcia, Chloe Early, Eine, Natalia Fabia, Hush, Liz McGrath, Richard J. Oliver, Herakut, Kukula, Sylvia Ji, Eric Joyner, Brandi Milne, Korin Faught, Mary Jane Ansell, Martin Wittfooth, Lori Nelson, Hannah Yata, Camilla d'Errico, Hikari Shimoda and more. Renowned for its notable exhibitions, the gallery has presented "Charity By Numbers," which was co-curated by Gary Baseman and featured an unprecedented lineup of artists including Mark Ryden, Marion Peck, Shepard Fairey, Todd and Kathy Schorr, Camille Rose Garcia, and Michael Hussar, as well as "La Noche de la Fusion," an epic Carnivalesque festival and solo exhibition for Pervasive artist Gary Baseman. In 2010, Corey Helford Gallery partnered with Bristol's City Museum & Art Gallery for the transatlantic collaboration "Art From The New World," a world-class United Kingdom museum exhibition showcasing work by a formidable group of 49 of the finest emerging and noted American artists.
 
After 9 years in Culver City, the gallery re-located in December 2015 to a robust 12,000 sq. ft. building in Downtown Los Angeles (571 South Anderson St.) where it continues to benefit the trend-setting exhibitions it hosts within the heart of the city's art community. The new location looms seven times larger than the original. Moreover, it boasts three separate galleries, each of which house individual artist and group exhibitions. The main gallery takes up 4,500 sq. ft., offering total immersion for attendees. CHG presents new exhibitions approximately every four weeks. For more info and an upcoming exhibition schedule, visit coreyhelfordgallery.com and connect on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram
 
COREY HELFORD GALLERY
571 S. Anderson St. (Enter on Willow St)
Los Angeles, CA 90033
Tel. 310.287.2340
Open Tuesday-Saturday, 12 Noon to 6pm
 
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