Los Angeles Location: The Little House, 451 N. La Cienega Blvd

Exhibition On Display: Saturday, July 23rd through Saturday, September 3rd

Following the celebration of Van Noten’s first American flagship store in Los Angeles is the expansion into an 8500-square foot space comprising two houses separated by a vast parking lot, The Big and Little Houses. The Big House encompasses all of Dries Van Noten’s current collections and a curated selection of garments from his archives for purchase. Each house exhibits specialized works by artists, designers, and craftspeople whose work has impressed Dries Van Noten. The Little House features the work of others exclusively.

For this exhibition, the noble fashion house of Dries Van Noten will welcome the multidisciplinary Colombian American artist Lorenza Panero for her latest exhibition, The Garden, at The Little House in Los Angeles. This is a 13-piece presentation utilizing photography, luminography, and spatial sequencing to create an entirely immersive experience. Centered as the focal point for the expo is Ribera Luminosa (Luminous River), a striking floor piece constructed with tempered glass sides supported by steel pegs, illuminated from beneath, guiding visitors on an emotional escapade in which each image contributes to the whole story.

“The Garden is our source as a species, of life and loss, of change and creativity, of inspiration and dreams. My work is based on building emotional spaces that pull from many sources to create an experience through imagery and spatial sequencing that unleashes the memory of the audience, reminding them of our most ancient narrative of origin. The Garden is representative of Nature, of the environment, of the space we inhabit. The Garden is a shelter of safety, where the danger and violence of life cannot penetrate but we know they exist. Building a specific space, with a sequence of encounters of a variety of information on different scales, creates an emotional experience for the viewer. Stepping into the space will be an “immersive” experience in the sense that each element is equally important and essential to the story being told. Each image and each movement contribute to the story, so really it is a whole experience. Nonetheless, each image contains many details, adding to the whole information of the installation.” – Lorenza Panero, 2022.

Through the principal medium of light, constructing and rebuilding what is real and imaginary, Panero developed her own specialized luminography method that creates immediate, personal imagery – decreasing the distance between the artist and the public. Conducted in a photography dark room, images are captured on photographic paper by manipulating, diffracting, and interrupting the flow of light from an enlarger. Then, by the added subtraction of a camera and computer corrections, the images are direct impressions of a sequence of events that only exist as recorded on photographic paper. Therefore by zeroing in on images of realities that are impermanent, contained in time and space unseen, Panero works in a fictional landscape. The result of a lifelong exploration of individuals’ relation to the natural and built environment while generating great tension between abstraction and realism that is integral to her work.