Undiscovered Gallery presents... L'Art pour L'Art

Undiscovered Gallery: Complete in Itself

L’art pour l’art. Many have heard the phrase before and developed their own notions for what it means to create art with no other purpose than for art itself. The concept of autonomy is not an easy one to tame. Each artist has influences, which appear in their work whether they intend it to or not. It’s as if an individual tried to deny the effects that their past experiences had in shaping the person they currently are and how they choose to make their decisions. Autonomy by definition is the independence and freedom from external control or influence, and although we may strive to be self-governing, unconsciously it’s quite possible that we’re trying to achieve the impossible.

In my book, art for art’s sake is the creation of art for the pure pleasure and rapture we, as artists, receive from such self-expression. The Undiscovered Gallery embraces this concept wholeheartedly. With eight artists from the surrounding San Diego and Los Angeles regions, each painter, photographer, and printmaker, has chosen to share their artwork and voice in the self-determining nature that is “complete in itself.

Artist Silfredo La O shares the intrinsic value of his Afro-Cuban and modern dance background and states, “At times I prefer to free myself from the portrayal of objects and instead try to evoke, through the aesthetic sense, the energies of Afro-Cuban deities.  Still at other times I simply choose to record my emotions and feelings of the moment without any conscious self-censorship”. When it comes to abstract art, viewers may have a difficult time interpreting the artist’s message, but the ‘purely visual’ characteristic is one that speaks volumes.

The Undiscovered Gallery takes pride in generating an environment meant for artists in every sense of the word from painters to photographers, singers to dancers, and performers to filmmakers. Our goal consists of demonstrating that the value of art is not in the function it plays, but in its autotelic essence.

Therefore, please join us at our first exhibit Friday, February 24, 2012. On the third floor of Coronado Plaza between the hours of 5:00 and 8:00pm, we’re bringing the community together to undergo an evening of autonomous spheres of activity. Musicians, artists, and art aficionados unite for refreshments on the terrace and most of all to venture on a quest through these gifted artists’ visualizations.

Contact us at (619) 246-4597 or nicole.lian22@gmail.com