Lover’s Eye

Alex Anderson • Dotty Attie • Luke Edward Hall • Tony Feher • Terri Friedman • Sergio Miguel • Cara Nahaul • Fay Ray • Karen Seapker • Betty Tompkins

July 7 – August 19, 2023

Los Angeles

Lover’s Eye

Sargent’s Daughters is pleased to present Lover’s Eye, featuring works by ten artists all in the format of miniatures.

Lover’s eyes were tokens of affection exchanged between intimates in Georgian England, which, as their name suggests, featured a close-up portrait of the eye of the giver.  Radically cropped and often ornately bejeweled, they were a discreet way of keeping the gaze of one’s beloved close at hand. Today, lover’s eyes remain mysterious; due to their private nature and limited imagery, they are often a challenge for art historians to identify.

These historical portraits serve as a point of departure for the exhibition.  Although the works on view vary widely in material, style, and content, they all address themselves to some object of affection, be it human, idea, or affective experience.  These small-scaled artworks condense memories and emotions into talismans, touchstones, amulets, or keepsakes. As minute objects intended for intimate viewing, they have the capacity to transform the relationship between artist and viewer into something akin to lover and beloved.

  • Alex Anderson (b. 1990, Seattle, WA) uses the delicate medium of ceramics as his main vehicle to explore the intersections of the sublime experiences that make up both the man-made and natural worlds, as well as deeper, more complicated issues of race and cultural representation. His artworks combine a dexterity in the medium with a confluence of baroque imagery and compositions, Japanese pop art references, and current contemporary fashion and design trends in order to probe the depths of reality, illusion and identity.

    Anderson received his Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and Chinese from Swarthmore College and his Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Anderson previously studied at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in Jingdezhen, China and was awarded a Fulbright Grant in affiliation with the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he continued his studies in ceramic art. His work has been exhibited internationally, and across the United States, including at the Orange County Museum of Art (Costa Mesa, CA), Museum of Art and Design (New York, NY), The Long Beach Museum of Art (Long Beach, CA), the American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA), Human Resources (Los Angeles, CA), Deli Gallery (New York, NY), Gavlak Gallery (Los Angeles, CA; Palm Beach, FL), and Jeffery Deitch Gallery (New York, NY), amongst others. His work has been reviewed by Artsy, Artforum, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Cultured, the Los Angeles Times, amongst others. He is represented by Sargent’s Daughters.

  • For over five decades Dotty Attie (b. 1938, Pennsauken, NJ) has rigorously engaged the grid as a formal and conceptual tool. Her cadenced rows of 6 x 6-inch canvases employ strategies of minimalism, appropriation, and feminism by decontextualizing and sequencing canonical Old Master paintings, Modern photographs, and Hollywood promotional imagery. Attie then bookends or interviews bold-faced text panels that annotate her evocative images with sardonic narration. Populated with heroes, villains and everyone in between, Attie’s witty tales of crime and punishment imbue even the most neutral images with eroticism, violence and psychological imbalance. Attie was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey and lives and works in New York City. She received a BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art (1959), a Beckmann Fellowship at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School, New York (1960) and attended the Art Students League, New York (1967). She is one of the founding members of A.I.R. Gallery, the first all-female cooperative artist’s gallery, founded in 1972. At A.I.R. Gallery, where she held seven solo exhibitions from 1972–1986, Attie exhibited works executed exclusively in graphite. Attie has been represented by P·P·O·W since 1988. Attie was awarded a Creative Artists Public Service grant in 1976-1977 from the New York State Council and National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1976 and 1983. In 2013, Attie was inducted into the National Academy of Design. Attie has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1972. Her work is in the collections of Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; The Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Whitney Museum, New York, NY; and the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; among others. In 2008, Attie was included in Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection, curated by Mauro Reily and Nicole Caruth, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY. In 2012, Attie was featured in This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, curated by Helen Molesworth, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

  • Luke Edward Hall is an English artist and designer. Luke’s philosophy is shaped by his love of storytelling and fantasy. His colourful work is often inspired by history, filtered through a lens of irreverent romanticism.

    Luke established his studio in the autumn of 2015 and since then has continuously split his time working on a broad range of projects and across multiple disciplines. He exhibits his drawings, paintings and ceramics internationally with Athens-based gallery The Breeder, and works as an interior designer, creating and art directing hotels, bars and restaurants. In 2020 Luke’s first large project opened in Paris: a thirty-eight-bedroom hotel and bistro in the city’s 10th arrondissement.

    Luke is the Creative Director of Chateau Orlando, a new genderless fashion and homewares brand, which he co-founded in 2022. Chateau Orlando is based between Milan and London, and manufactures it collections in the Veneto region of Italy.

    Luke collaborates with a variety of companies and historic institutions, often creating limited edition collections of clothing, homewares and accessories. He produces porcelain and home fragrance ranges with Ginori 1735, a collection of interior fabrics with Rubelli, and furniture with The Lacquer Company. His previous clients include Burberry, Lanvin, Svenskt Tenn, Diptyque, Christie’s, Royal Academy of Arts, and the V&A.

    In March 2019 Luke joined the Financial Times as a weekly columnist in FT Weekend, answering readers’ questions on aesthetics, interior design and stylish living. Luke has authored two books: Greco Disco: The Art & Design of Luke Edward Hall, published by teNeues, and A Kind of Magic: The Kaleidoscopic World of Luke Edward Hall, published by Vendome.

  • Over a career spanning more than 30 years, Tony Feher’s (b. 1956, Albuquerque, NM – d. 2016) unique body of work recast the utilitarian and familiar into sculptures both elegant and ambiguous in their perceived simplicity. His materials often included found items and common detritus, including bottles, containers, and glasses; empty vessels that served their immediate function, and are subsequently discarded. In careful arrangements, Feher foregrounds the aesthetic properties of these objects—color, shape, mass—against their physical disposability. The results are installations both vulnerable and poetic in their presentation, contemplating the endurance of form against the transience of meaning.

    Tony Feher was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1956, and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, with early stops in Florida and Virginia. He received a BA from The University of Texas, and resided in New York City. Feher’s work can be found in important international public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois.

    An in-depth retrospective of Feher’s work was organized by Claudia Schmuckli and presented at the Des Moines Art Center, IA, in 2012. The exhibition traveled to the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, TX; the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY; and Akron Art Museum, OH. A fully illustrated monograph was published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. to accompany the survey.

  • Terri Friedman was born in Colorado, educated in Rhode Island, India, and Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She lives with her family in the Bay Area and are an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts.

  • Sergio Miguel (b. 1992, Mexicali, Mexico) received his B.A. in Art History in 2014 and his M.F.A. in Studio Art from Columbia University in 2021. Solo exhibitions include Army of Angels at Deli Gallery in 2022. Recent group shows include De Por Vida curated by Ken Castaneda at Company Gallery in 2021, and The Fool at 8th House Projects in Mexico City in 2022.

  • Cara Nahaul (b. 1987, London, UK) is an artist living and working in London. She did a BA (Hons) Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths University, London and then an MFA Fine Art at Parsons The New School for Design, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Taymour Grahne Projects (London). Group exhibitions include Alexander Berggruen Gallery (New York), The Hole (New York and Los Angeles).

    She has been selected for the John Moores Painting Prize twice, the inaugural Jerwood Painting Fellowship, nominated for the Contemporary British Painting Prize and completed public commissions for Vital Arts and Hospital Rooms.

  • Los Angeles-based artist Fay Ray (b. 1978, Riverside, CA) explores the fetishization of objects and the construction of female identity through high-contrast, monochrome photomontages and metallic sculpture. For her three-dimensional works, Fay Ray compiles cast aluminum objects, bored volcanic rocks, wire, chain, and natural materials into suspended sculptural masses. Conflating worlds of worship and desire, the works across mediums borrow from the symbolism and composition of traditional religious relics and the visual language of the occult. Ray’s sculptures and collages hint at the presence of a rematerialized body through a mysterious yet systematic organization of abstract form.

    Fay Ray received her MFA from Columbia University and her BFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions include The Soraya Art Gallery, California State University Northridge, Northridge, CA; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Louis B James Gallery, New York, NY; JOAN, Los Angeles, CA; and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Ray’s special projects and installations have been featured at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills and New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; and L.A.N.D. (Los Angeles Nomadic Division). Group exhibitions include Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris; The Mistake Room, Los Angeles and Mexico City; Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, CA; Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; among others. Ray’s works have been reviewed by Artforum, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, New York Magazine, Brooklyn Rail, Riot Material, Wallpaper*, and Issue Magazine.

  • Karen Seapker’s paintings have been featured at museums and galleries in the U.S. and internationally. Her paintings allude to the power of human relationships, our connections to nature, and the passage of time. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. Her work has been exhibited in shows at James Cohan Gallery in NYC and Shanghai, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and California College of the Arts. Her work was included in Crystal Bridges Museum’s survey of contemporary art, State of the Art 2020. Her work is in various private collections as well as the collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Reviews of her work have been in publications including Burnaway, Hyperallergic, and ArtForum. She lives and works in Nashville, TN.

  • Betty Tompkins (b. 1945, Washington, D.C.) is an artist living and working in New York, NY, and Pleasant Mount, PA. Recent solo exhibitions include WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2016); Real Ersatz, FUG, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, New York, NY (2015); Art Basel Feature, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Basel, Switzerland (2014); Paintings & Works on Paper 1972-2013, Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, FL (2014); Woman Words, Dinter Fine Art, Project room #63, New York, NY (2013); Fuck Paintings, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium (2012); among others. Tompkins has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2016); The Shell (LANDSCAPES, PORTRAITS & SHAPES), Almine Rech Gallery, Paris, France (2014); A Drawing Show, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, NY (2014); CORPUS, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland (2014); A Chromatic Loss, Bortolami Gallery, New York, NY (2014); Elles, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2011); among others. Tompkins is represented by P.P.O.W, New York, NY; Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and Palm Beach, FL; and Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium.