Angels Gate Cultural Center presents new art exhibition ‘Portals'

Located at Angels Gate Cultural Center overlooking the Port of Los Angeles, ‘Portals’ is supported by the Port of Los Angeles Community Investment Program and the Pasadena Art Alliance. The exhibition reflects on the transformative nature of passageways with the Port of Los Angeles as a relevant foil. It contemplates ideas of boundaries, entrance and egress, progress, and travel into the unknown.“Portals – doorways and interdimensional gateways – have been a point of fascination for as long as humans have been telling stories. The work that the artists create in Portals explores gateways as facilitators of human growth and inspires change within us,” shares Stephanie Sherwood, Curator of the exhibition.

Portals showcases several mixed media works including tapestries, drawing, neon sculpture, resin and site-specific installation among others, by nine contemporary artists. The exhibition gives the viewers a chance to look experimentally at the artist's works that speak to the nature of these life-altering gateways.

Owing to the covid surge, the Angels Gate Cultural Center’s new art exhibition Portals will be open for limited capacity walk-in visitors from 20 January – 26 March, 2022. A virtual artist conversation will take place on 17 February. AGCC is also postponing all physical events including the opening reception. All visitors would be required to follow proper covid protocols, including proof of covid vaccination in order to enter the gallery during open hours. The exhibition is curated by Stephanie Sherwood and includes works by Erin Harmon, Erika Lizée, Elana Mann, Yevgeniya Mikhailik, Alicia Piller, Esther Ruiz, Howard Schwartzberg, Svetlana Shigroff, and Adam Rabinowitz featured in an auxiliary site at Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles.

Both metaphorical and physical doorways consistently reappear in our social consciousness as significant elements in popular cultural narratives and mythology. Portals welcome change in our world and facilitate growth.

AGCC has hosted over 50 artist studios in addition to a variety of programs to engage the diverse communities of the Los Angeles Harbor region, including arts education in local schools, community classes, cultural events, and exhibitions of contemporary art. It emerged from a group of San Pedro artists in the 1970s that created art studios and exhibition space within the WWII era army barracks of Angels Gate Park near the Port of Los Angeles.