For the Tsimshian [people], the primal mediating force between the non-material and the concrete was represented by the figure of the Raven…The raven was seen either on the beach, in the liminal space between land and sea, or in the sky, aloft or perched on a branch, between earth and heaven. The spirit behind the raven was associated with these transitory aspects of the universe.

Allan Jensen, A Structural Approach to the Tsimshian Raven Myths: Levi-Strauss on the Beach 

A group project with the artists who have been a part of FOYER-LA since the beginning, plus one friend-fellow artist they have selected to participate in MUDROOM. FOYER- LA is donating a percentage of sales to Grief & Hope to help LA's Artists & Art Workers rebuild.

“Four photographs, one of which is a double.

I began each of these works some years ago and returned to them during our pandemic. I used that time and space to finish them, making each into what you see today.

I consider these artworks ‘singular’ as they are not part of a larger body of work, or conceptual scheme. They each stand (or fall) on their own and do their thing. ‘Something is happening’ as one says.

I thank you for taking the time to look.”

—Patrick Lakey, 2024

In Conversation with Helia Pouyanfar about her project Breathing House:

CW: What do you think about the word/idea of displacement? Does your place of origin define who you are- and being displaced from that place- your original home- how do you incorporate that loss with who you are now?

HP: One might define displacement as a rupture in time and place that distinctly marks a before, an after, and a here and a there. I think of displacement as an ongoing event—a constant occurrence where the body is deeply and poetically disoriented from all senses of placement in the world. I am not entirely certain if this disorientation can ever orient itself again, but I question whether that should truly be the goal.

FOYER-LA’s current project, IS IT SAFE, explores the paradox of safety and its co-dependency with fear. Somehow ‘Security’ becomes more about the degree of personal insulation rather than about personal safety. The artists in the project: Ida Applebroog, Jonathon Hexner, Jesse Robinson, Gabriela Salazar, Connie Walsh, look at the desire for safety while simultaneously the futility in it, exposing the underbelly of uncomfortability. 

The idea of an opening, a space in-between, that both distances and draws close, permeates FOYER-LA’s current project STRANGE SENSATION. Time appears to be altered and distilled in this new terrain. The artists’ processes involve acts of everyday observations from their environment and the natural world. Sometimes the result is mystical and otherworldly. Sometimes the translation reaches a simplification of line, form and color. Much of the work, recognizable as landscapes, or as Chase Wilson’s work is described as “an interrupted type of figuration”, emphasizes the “magic” of the normal world as it presents itself to us…

Foyer LA is pleased to present Here in the Desert, photographs and model/sculptures from Michael Ashkin. The work in this exhibition grew out of Ashkin’s lifelong fascination with the New Jersey Meadowlands. Between 1993 and 2000, Ashkin wandered the area and began thinking of the Meadowlands as a site of “found gardens” where hidden struggles within our landscape revealed themselves. With this in mind, he photographed the Meadowlands and built sculptural landscape models using this source material…

In FOYER-LA’s current project, the beginning of something smaller, Jon Seaton and Courtney Duncan mine the depths of humility with their tactile forms made of steel, cinder cones, sand, scoria, acid, iron oxide grounded in an earthy physicality. Seaton and Duncan share a keen sense and respect for materiality. Space itself is utilized as a material; in Seaton’s monoprint drawings and fabricated steel sculptures, it is often hidden, inaccessible, implied and in Duncan’s sculptures space becomes porous and loosely contained as she deconstructs the implied functionality of the vessel…

In FOYER-LA’s current project Proliferation, Ana Maria Devis works within the entanglement of decay and growth. A Bogotá-based artist, Devis utilizes weaving and intricate drawing to generate imaginary realms inspired by natural patterns. Devis sees, and I would even suggest feels, potentiality in all things- the debris of wood, used makeup wipes, the spaces between words and language, fallen hair, shed skins, a conversation…

Selvedge is a self-finished edge constructed in such a way that the threads will not unravel. FOYER-LA’s current project, SELVEDGE, borrows and broadens the term, exploring where an edge exists–the essence of freedom begins. These constructed edges have a relative and shifting nature with the potential to merge with others’ edges. The work of the artists in SELVEDGE, Daniel Babior, Leslie Brack, Gary Cannone, Salomon Huerta, Helia Pouyanfar, Lucy Puls, Jody Rhone, Katayoun Vaziri, explore the malleable state of freedom as,…

In the project, spaces of ongoing negotiations, Walsh juxtaposes a series of photographic pairings of interior architectural details with her amorphous sculptures made of rug-hooked canvas, beeswax, and yarn. The hollow spherical sculptures contorted under the weight of the wax and yarn and obfuscated their interior spaces. The tension between images…

A cube can be unfolded in 11 possible ways. Forms of unfolded cubes, made of orange fabric, are laid out on the floor and folded along their diagonal axis. While the imagined cubes relate to the architecture of the exhibition space the un––folded forms suggest a landscape mode…

In FOYER-LA’s current project, LINEAGE, Eliza Chaikin Kenan enters into a cross-generational dialogue with work her late father, the pioneering computer artist George Merrill Chaikin, created before she was born. In a new series of twenty fabric paintings, Eliza Chaikin Kenan explores how space is demarcated through the manipulation of color, line, and placement…