ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Sagamihara, Japan into a military family, John David O’Brien works as an artist, writer and curator, living between Los Angeles and Umbria, Italia. With an MFA in studio art from the University of Southern California, an AA.BB. degree from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, a Magistero degree from the Istituto Statale D’Arte di Urbino, and was qualified as a Master Printer by the Calcografia Nazionale (National Etching Institute) in Rome, Italy. He works in both studio and public art exhibiting locally and internationally and was the recipient of California Community Foundation Fellowship in 2012, the City of Los Angeles Artists Grant in 1998 and a Fulbright Research Grant to Italy in 1994. He has also been art event organizing and curating since 1989. This work has ranged from curating exhibitions at a local and international level, to being on the exhibition committee for area non-profit organizations, to directing long term project spaces that create venues for new and experimental art forms. His reviews, essays and profiles have been published regularly in magazines and art journals including Artillery Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, Tema Celeste, Art in America, Art Scene, World Art, Visions, Daily American/International Herald Tribune and La Repubblica, Rome, Italy. Critical texts have been published in the books Landscapes for Art (isc Press) and Testi Tessili (F.lli Palombi, Ed.) among others.
STATEMENT
I make art objects, but I am most interested in making an art world. So individually I create artwork, I write and I also work in a larger community creating exhibition spaces, curatorial projects and public art.
My personal creative evolution is grounded in abstraction. This is rooted in my experience of life as part of a military family in constant travel, regularly enchanted and disoriented by the new worlds enveloping me. I begin with the objects, images and environments around me; but transform them formally and materially. Real world elements are my sources; misunderstandings, memory and projections are my operative processes. I believe the driving force for my work originally was a need to decipher the things around me and to put them into a context where their normal meaning was acknowledged but other more idiosyncratic, personal levels of meanings were established. Over time, I have explored how a multiplicity of viewpoints and mutable end functions co-exist In the visual arts.
To these same ends, I have also set up a number of traditional and non-traditional exhibition formats and spaces, formulated curatorial projects that showcase a broader art world. Working in public art and through my published writings are the other ways of extending my practice: I come out of the studio and work to make art into a vital and significant activity in the world at large and, in particular, Los Angeles.