FOUR SIGHT: How Tod George Lychkoff, Miguel Osuna, Robert Reynolds, and Gronk MadeTheir Marks on the Historic Core
Tod George Lychkoff, Miguel Osuna, Robert Reynolds, and Gronk in DTLA
To be awake is to be exposed to an endless stream of possibilities. —Frank O’Hara
The Historic Core neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles has changed many times in the course of the past several decades, as the landmark brick and Beaux Art architecture of its dense urban landscape has hosted successive generations of influx and flight, downturns and resurgences, dangers and delights, writers, filmmakers, chefs, those in need of adventure, and often simply those in need—but all the time there have been artists, artists, artists.
For this intuitive assembly of four such artists—Tod George Lychkoff, Miguel Osuna, Robert Reynolds, and Gronk—fellow DTLA lifer maven Tom Gilmore opens a sentimental favorite among his historic vintage properties for a lively, discursive group show celebrating these “cornerstone artists of Historic Downtown.”
Although their practices, art historical profiles, and signature techniques diverge across expressive theatrical portraiture, material experimentation, visual languages of architecture and the invisible forces of nature, narrative symbolism, and meditative mysteriousness, the one thing they do share is a long-standing, seemingly unconditional love of DTLA–and the ability to draw direct inspiration and vital energy from the volatile, sharp-tongued poetry of living here. “Part of the weight of their work, to me, is due to the geography from which it grows,” says Gilmore. “Their distilled visions during the time and of the place we share here in Downtown LA, propose alternate theses on our common lives and perspectives.”
Tod Lychkoff was born in Downtown Los Angeles, and has lived and worked here for the last 37 years. As the twists and turns of his nearly abstract, mixed media, collage-rich paintings play out and reveal their layered surprises, polychromatic palettes, boundaries laid and organically subverted, they evoke the hurly-burly currents of life in the neighborhood. Lychkoff’s gift is to bring a sense of delicate balance to the non-stop press of humanity.
Miguel Osuna has been painting and drawing for decades—but it was architecture he studied in Mexico before moving to Los Angeles more than 25 years ago. His understanding of space and motion is both mystical and measured, but his perennial interest is in pattern, the body and mind in relationship to the mechanical world, and the search for mercurial serenity among life’s tumult. He is best known for engineering elegant, classical abstract sweeps in paintings that are both inviting and elusive.
Robert Reynolds is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist with an omnivorous open- mindedness when it comes to problem-solving his alchemical assemblage of unconventional materials, historical puns, and dark humor. From critique to celebration, irony to earnest heartbreak, Reynolds is always looking to open channels of communication through the chaos, booking for common ground but unafraid to provoke and confront in the name of knowledge.
Gronk Nicandro’s long and storied career has unfolded from sketchbook sessions in neighborhood cafes to stage designs of internationally acclaimed avant-garde opera, from the art history canon as part of Asco to his legendary open studio parties off Spring St. With eclectic inspirations from street art and stained glass to campy movies and charismatic Chicanismo, theatrical drama to densely wrought abstract expressionism, his paintings continue to reflect the muscular, gothic, seductive carnival of life in this rich pageant.
—Shana Nys Dambrot
Downtown LA, 2024
