Now that the Penthouse at our glittering Beach Club has undergone its stunning refurbishment, the Jonathan Club is thrilled to have made some finishing touches. Recently installed are six brand-new acquisitions by three incredible artists, whose contemplative photographic visions compliment the Club’s invigorating Pacific Ocean setting.
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Gracing the space are three works by visual artist Natalja Kent, and one each from Michael James Hillman and photographer Michael Lundgren. These personal meditations on our sacred relationship to the environment are an ideal thematic and aesthetic match for the light and airy Penthouse. Lundgren, who lives in the Washington State archipelago of the San Juan Islands, bridges the abstract and landscape approaches of Kent and Hillman respectively. The enchanting silvery tones of Inception (2020) record the ephemeral impression of some sentient being on a terrestrial surface. It could be a footprint on a sandy beach, or the displaced sediment of a marine animal dropping anchor on the seafloor. Yet the image’s stimulating ambiguity means it could just as easily depict our moon’s lunar surface. Lundgren describes his work as linking back to the star-gazing of our ancestors, drawing analogy between the perceived “pinpoints of light that form in the mind’s eye a bear, a human, a serpent,” and photography’s ability to reveal “the mysterious side of the rational world.”
At eight feet long, Hillman’s Blackies (2017) offers an awesome focal point for the Club’s visitors. It depicts the titular surf spot in Orange County, Southern California, saturated in light as well as childhood nostalgia, with the artist reminiscing about “riding the waves right off the jetty.” Hillman has described his practice as presenting “windows to moments of sublime happenstance,” and this digital pigment print is no exception. Its immersive scope and transportive scale is almost guaranteed to turn members’ heads and sweep them off to sea.
The Jonathan Club is also thrilled to have purchased three of Kent’s “chromograms” – cameraless photograms produced using color and movement, and whose analog methodology is combined with sculptural elements. Like Hillman – and herself “a dedicated surfer and ocean activist” – the wide open ocean is a huge source of inspiration for Kent. Her abstract pieces are wonderfully evocative of the sun’s rays interacting with rippling bodies of water, as luminous geometries and pink hues play off of larger fields of light and dark blue."
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