Diamond Black Hearted Boy and Friends Rock Like the Spice

Chino Amobi, polymath extraordinaire. The artist who's work is currently hanging in Like the Spice's main gallery is also an established electronic musician, Diamond Black Hearted Boy. He performed at the gallery on Friday night in conjunction with the opening of To Whom is May Concern. Not only did Chino bring his glitchy, sample-filled music (as well as a killer outfit), but he brought his musician friends as well. Electro duo FOLLOWER, beat-master Ghetto Caviar, and eloquent hip hop artist Devin Kkenny gave explosive performances in turn. Surrounded by Amobi's neon artworks, show-goers rocked out to the equally electric music. The gallery became a full-fledged crucible for young cutting edge artists working in both visual and auditory media, and an awesome party.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: New Show Opens at Like The Spice!!

Artists, artist's friends, and art appreciators made their way to our gallery Friday night for the opening of To Whom is May Concern, a celebration of art and the workers who enable art to be shown to the public. Curated by Like the Spice's very own Olivia Cohen, To Whom it May Concern is a show featuring the work of five up-and-coming young artists, artists who happen to be or have been assistants at Like the Spice. The show represents a dual move of giving credit to these tireless art workers as well as acknowledging their merit as artists in their own right. Attendees checked out the work of these five creators, mingled, and drank the champagne of beers. While differing greatly in style and form, the work of these artists cohered into an interesting and cohesive show. The gallery buzzed with the energy of the people who came to see it and of the artworks themselves.

The artists/former LTS assistants are Roxanne Yamins, Spencer Anderson, Nicole Eta Demby, Rosemary Gonzalez, and Raymond Hu. Roxanne's oil portraits an landscapes consider the visual elements in her field of view; her pieces are meant to simplify, clarify, and display examples of the beauty that surround her. Whether these pieces isolate architectural elements or focus on a beautiful figure, Ms. Yamins brings forth the beauty in the daily phenomena that exist within structures and spatial configurations.

Spencer's work employs an overreaching cultural turpitude as inspiration. Set within a facsimile of the American landscape. To use the rhythmic wildness of mark making and sickening groupings of common aerosol and craft paint, this work is "an extended exercise of goofing around and killing time." On a path set towards total sublimation, ultimately unattainable and pathetic.

Nicole is interested in how sculptures and images emote and convey ideas. Using mixed media (found objects, wax, fabric, drawing, video) she explores the uncanny, the bodily, the philosophical, and art's capacity to express content relating to these themes. These investigations result in a myriad of diverse forms including video and performance, altered mundane objects, amorphous wax hybrid creations, and architectural drawings.

Rosemary's "As Is" comes to us from a new direction: a colorful, bold yet simple place. Similar in color and segmentation to her small-scale animations, Rosemary's newest work takes on a weight and architectural definition.

What Raymond does with graphite and ink is study. Whether it is a jagged geometric design or intensely realistic representation of a figure or form, Raymond's works produce memories of places, images, an people that could be your own, or anybody's. It's hard to tell....

To Whom it May Concern is up at Like the Spice until the first week of December.