Ali Beletic W/S 2023

Ali’s work across multiple mediums has always been founded conceptually in both her nature and survival skills studies as well as her ‘bringing the party and the fun’.  It is here that Ali’s conceptual work led naturally to the crossover that would lead her to explore paintings based on sensuality and dimension - the feeling, the experience and the space they create.  It was here that she derived the process of working with clays, dried plant materials, botanical dyes, and paints made of finely crushed rare minerals and gems, to explore glowing mattes and chalky earthy textures.  This follows in the tradition of her prior sculptural work (almost an artistic take on experimental archeology) which traces primitive technologies, and works with the experiential and the sensual - i.e. hand building mahogany and glass rain catchments, working with fire as a sculptural element, exploring artifact creation using primitive tools and techniques as a means to explore primitivism, lighting up a boulder strewn desert for invitees to walk through, and even building a surfboard from Tule reeds.

“Her directness of emotion communicated through primal, rugged gestures, juxtaposed with an integration of ancient philosophies and material explores the thin line between symbolism, anthropomorphic figuration, gestural abstraction and a modern pop sensibility.  Her confident and rule shattering sensibility pulls on us to be 21st century rebels once again and to seek wildness, experience, and connect with our earthen ancestry and mythos.”

“Beletic’s Neon Primitivism series is a natural extension of the artist’s commitment to primitivist ideology and ‘bringing the party and the fun’.  This new series celebrates the canvas and painting as a form with the power to transfer primitivism, sensuality and emotion to a space in a modern return to Ab Ex style, mixing the ultra mattes of Mexican folk art by sourcing untraditional pigments and incorporating clays, botanical dyes and oils, and pointing to forms that enlight the viewer towards the multiple directions of cave paintings, the new york school, ceremonial body paints, line work, weathered artifacts, Charles Olsen’s Archaic Post Modern and pop art, celebrating the marriage of archaic and contemporary tradition, sensuality and artistic expression.”

Ali’s work was recently featured as part of the inaugural exhibition during LA’s frieze week over at Tappan on Melrose and curator Alexander May of “Vessels” as part of last year’s LA’s Frieze week, and in Vogue’s curatorial next to Judy Chicago, penned by the brilliant Arden Fanning Andrews & guest curator Tamara Johnson. She has works hung next to Le Corbusier, Picasso, Shepard Fairey, Alexander Calder, Barbara Kreuger, Alma Allen, Rick Owens, Pia Camil, Isamu Noguchi and featured in the Vogue and fashion director Eva Chen’s collection, as well as among the collections of sophisticated collectors around the globe.