The Brand Library & Art Center announced the return of Art Talks at Brand this spring. This series invites contemporary artists to discuss their work and the issues surrounding it. Each talk will be followed by a moderated Q&A session led by Brand staff member, artist and writer Jennifer Remenchik. The spring series will feature Los Angeles-based artists Roksana Pirouzmand, Shana Hoehn, Miguel Nelson and Nick Aguayo. The series is sponsored by the Brand Associates, it is free and open to the public.

 Thursday, Feb. 13 at 7 p.m. – Roksana Pirouzmand (b. 1990 in Yazd, Iran) is a multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Los Angeles. While performance art is at the core of her practice, her ideas have materialized in mediums such as sculpture, installation and two-dimensional imagery. In her pieces, personal experiences are incorporated into installation systems that suggest the possibility of transformation, deterioration and movement through interactions between the artist and her work. Pirouzmand received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from UCLA. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries in Southern California, New York, Mexico and China.

 Thursday, March 6 at 7 p.m. – Shana Hoehn is a Los Angeles-based artist working in sculpture and drawing. Through her art practice, Hoehn considers modes and conditions of agency, embodiment and transformation. Hoehn’s sculptural work combines traditional and digital fabrication techniques and employs various materials including wood, sawdust, clay and metal. Her work references a long and winding history of women contorting and the bodily destruction involved with transformation. Hoehn received her MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University in sculpture and extended media and earned a BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries across the U.S. and in Mexico, and Hoehn has participated in various international residencies.

Thursday, March 20 at 7 p.m. – Miguel Nelson is a conceptual artist, designer and developer who has created art and experimental social spaces for over 25 years. His interests have included projects as varied as multi-element, immersive art performances to developing urban oases as private event spaces to an ongoing venture dedicated to the re-vitalization of the Desert Island Country Club in Palm Springs. Now he is focused on a large-scale collaborative art project, The Spirit of Rudy Caballero, in which Nelson invites other (credited) contemporary artists to create work under the fictional artist’s name. The Spirit of Rudy Caballero recently presented an exhibition of sketches at LOOT Gallery in Mexico City during Zona Maco and is slated for upcoming presentations at Frieze New York and London.

Thursday, May 1 at 7 p.m. – Nick Aguayo paints compellingly layered abstract works that reveal an inventive approach to the materiality and physicality of paint. Emphasizing the performative aspects of dragging, pressing, brushing and rolling paint onto canvas, Aguayo layers hand-rendered geometric shapes, building his compositions around the tensions between erasure and transparency, accumulation and excavation. Taking cues from collage, Aguayo densely coats his canvases with thick impasto surfaces, textural areas of paint, and materials including marble dust, to create a matte physicality to each composition. He received his BA from the UCLA and his MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His work has been included in group exhibitions and may be found in the collections of The Bronx Museum, Bronx, New York and the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs. 

Brand staff member and program moderator Jennifer Remenchik is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in several institutions and galleries, including No Gallery, VIVO Media Arts Centre, HILDE, basement projects, Industry Lab, and The Contemporary Austin, among others. She is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic and has written for CurateLA, BOMB Magazine and Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles. Remenchik began organizing art talks at Brand Library & Art Center to showcase artists who reflect the diversity of the art scene of the greater Los Angeles area.

Visit BrandLibrary.org/Art-Talks for more information on artists in the Art Talks at Brand as well as links to recordings of past programs.