Love Looks Like Fire
February 7 & 8, 2019
Ace Hotel Palm Springs
701 E Palm Canyon Dr
Palm Springs
February 14, 2019
Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles
929 S Broadway, Los Angeles
Love Looks Like Fire on Ace Hotel Blog
Artist Janet Levy's sculptures and installations are about the internal pressures, tensions and sexual energy inherent within and making the invisible visible. For Ace Hotel, she makes a two-city presentation titled Love Looks Like Fire, featuring a site specific sculptural installation and an artist book launch showcasing her sculptures, drawings and schemas (designed by Iván Martínez). The dance performances, a time and location based piece inspired by Levy's ideas, is choreographed by Melissa Schade.
Love Looks Like Fire is activated across locations at Ace Hotel & Swim Club, Palm Springs and Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles. Janet Levy was recently an Artist in residence at Ace Hotel London.
Janet Levy is a Los Angeles and Mexico City based sculptor, songwriter and curator. She recently presented her work in a solo exhibition Butterfly Double at the Museo de Geologia, UNAM in Mexico City, some of her other significant projects include Cry Me A River, Prospect.3+ in New Orleans and Inbetween/Entremedio, Kulturpanorama Luzern, Switzerland. She attended the Schule für Gestaltung in Basel in 1996. She has been awarded the FUKA-Fonds Grant from the City of Lucerne and the Arts Council Grant from Swiss Canton of Obwalden. Her work resides in collections worldwide and has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Zurich, New York, Lucerne, New Orleans and Mexico City. In addition to the Ace Hotel Project Love Looks Like Fire she is currently working on a music video for the song she wrote Under The Fallen Veil.
Melissa Schade is an LA-based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. Some of her favorite projects include choreographing for Arcade Fire, Diplo, Big Dipper, Benjamin Booker, Twin Shadow, Cover Girl, Vivienne Westwood, Comedy Central, Bud Light, Fiat, Facebook, ENDHIV, and The Janky Christmas Show starring John C. Reilly. Recently she has been movement directing alongside photographer Ryan Mcginley for Vogue, Italian Vogue, Apple Music, and Abercrombie.
She has also enjoyed dancing for The Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, Acura, Foster the People, Colbie Caillat, Mr. Little Jeans, Big Black Delta, Basement Jaxx, Nina McNeely, Kate Hutter, Mecca Vazie Andrews, and of course Ryan Heffington. Melissa not only works as an assistant for Mr. Heffington, but as a dancer and beloved teacher at his LA-based studio, The Sweat Spot.
Palm Springs
Book Introduction
Looks Like Fire was conceived long ago — however, it was only last year in the presence of volcanic materials in the Museo de Geologia, UNAM, Mexico City, did it become clear that the theme of her work was active volcanoes. Since then, Levy have been on an intensive journey to discover the dynamics of the inner works of an active volcano. Sketching studies at Ace Hotel London’s artist residency and then climbing Stromboli and Etna to feel the energy the volcanoes generate, Levy’s knowledge is expanding: learning about what a hot spot is (a place within the mantle where rocks melt to create magma), the force of magma, that most of all the world’s active volcanoes are located in the Ring of Fire and a Harmonic Tremor is the release of seismic energy. She uses this phenomena of nature to compare emotions and sexuality that are otherwise difficult to reveal. As in her previous bodies of work, Bite Down and the ongoing Butterfly Double, The work is born from the deep desire to make the invisible visible, to show the hidden emotions of tension, pressure and desires. This is only the beginning of the research and studies, some of which are included here.
Book Designer Iván Martínez is a Mexico City based graphic designer, who joined the studio of Carlos Amorales in 2005 and since then he has collaborated with him in animation, installation works, typographic and editorial design. From 2013 to 2015 he studied in the master programme ArtEZ / Werkplaats Typografie. From 2016 to 2017 he worked as a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht/NL). He designed the catalogue «Life in the Folds» by Carlos Amorales for the pavilion of Mexico in the 57th Venice Biennale. For Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland. Iván Martínez developed a new corporate identity. He not only formed a new logo but invented a new graphic system and created a new typeface for the visual appearance.