Malibu’s legendary coastline and canyons have been embellished by 24 sculptures for the summer.
The sculptures were put in place in three different locations in Malibu on July 1 and will remain on view through Wednesday, August 31.
“Malibu is really the ultimate gallery…it’s the perfect setting to show the marriage of art and nature,” said exhibition curator Carl Schlosberg, a Los Angeles dealer known for displaying art in unusual locations.
“The idea is to enrich the minds and boost the spirits of those who come in contact with them,” Schlosberg went on to say. “Art has more meaning when you experience it in your daily life.”
The 24 works range from whimsical to powerful. A 15-foot steel knife, fork and spoon stand in the park in the Cross Creek Shopping Center. A turned and twisted heavy-gauge steel sculpture presides in an open field, while several stainless-steel kinetic forms are moved by breezes in the Malibu Racquet Club garden.
“I’ve always been in love with sculpture and with Malibu,” Schlosberg said, “so I’m thrilled for this opportunity to bring the two together.”
Six of the seven sculptors with works in the free-form exhibition have spent most or all of their lives in Southern California.
Native Angeleno Ed Benavente, who has worked in steel since 1990, made the 14-foot red “hammerhead” sculpture near the sandbox at the Malibu Country Mart a decade ago.
Ken Bortolazzo grew up in Santa Barbara and makes both small, intimate works and large monumental sculptures.
Los Angeles native Marlene Louchheim has studios in Los Angeles and Hawaii. She works in burlap, bronze, aluminum and copper. Earlier this year, she had a 25-year retrospective at the Walter Marks Museum on the campus of the College of the Desert in Palm Desert.
Born in Michigan, Gwynn Murrill grew up in California. Her principal subjects are animals and her renderings of them are cool, smooth and simplified. Recently, one of her large sculptures was placed in the sculpture garden of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and four eight-foot-high bronze hawks have been placed on a 26-story savings-and-loan building in downtown Los Angeles.
Bret Price graduated from Pomona College in Claremont and continued his studies at the Otis Art Institute and the California Institute of the Arts. His works, of bent and twisted steel, are in many public collections, including the Pepsico Sculpture Garden in New York and the Orange County Museum of Art in California.
Edoardo Villa was born in Italy. After his release as a prisoner of war during World War II, he remained in South Africa. On five occasions, Villa was chosen to represent South Africa at the Venice Biennale. His large bronze works seem to be abstract, yet are basically figurative in concept.
Working in stone, Lew Watanabe has created water sculpture and weeping water walls, as well as monoliths and benches. He has done public works in the city of Sierra Madre, where he has lived and worked for decades, as well as in Descanso Gardens in La Canada-Flintridge and in the garden of the Frederick Weisman Museum on the Pepperdine campus in Malibu.For information about private tours of the exhibition, contact Carl Schlosberg at (310) 556-5430 or csfinearts@aol.com.
