Edward Cella: Dancing About Architecture

Edward Cella Art + Architecture is more than an art gallery—it’s an exhibition program with a mission. Over the past ten-plus years, first in Santa Barbara and on LA’s Miracle Mile since 2009, the gallery’s expansive activities have explored the ages-old dialogue between fine art and architecture with a sophisticated and nuanced series of exhibitions, artist grants, and public forums. Reflecting the modern taste for interdisciplinary boundary-blurring, specifically the extensive overlapping connections and resonances between painting, drawing and modern architecture, ECAA is not an advocate of any particular aesthetic style. Rather, its focus is on illuminating the character of the creative process—through the lens of Cella’s personal curatorial, scholarly vision.

Abstraction’s natural inhabitation of spatial, structural elements of form, its natural facility for depicting the spaces inside and between objects, makes it a natural idiomatic counterpart to the psychologically compelling quality of architectural renderings; and the history of mutual influence, as well as tension between the practices of artists and builders, is certainly a story worth telling. In terms of what gallery-goers are likely to encounter, ECAA remains essentially a painting and drawing gallery—though there is a hefty presence of “alternative-process” photographers in the program; and despite its predilection for minimalism and abstraction, the work of more than a few fine figurative painters adds considerably to its depth.

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