Various Small Fires OC pulls back the Orange Curtain in Tustin
According to Esther Kim Varet, founder of Various Small Fires, it is hard to tell how many people will show up to an art exhibition opening.
'When you have your first show and a gallery opens for the first time, you don't know what's going to happen. Five people could show up or 500 people can show up,' said Varet. 'Fortunately, we had the latter.'
Varet has extensive experience when it comes to opening art spaces. She began Various Small Fires as an informal artist project space in 2012, before opening the first permanent VSF in Hollywood in 2015. Locations in Seoul, South Korea and Dallas, Texas have since followed.
'We are an international gallery. We have always built communities where ever we build,' said Varet. 'They are always community safe spaces for every kind of person, including undocumented individuals and people of the LGBTQ+ community.' VSF founder/owner Esther Kim Varet poses with Heidi Zuckerman, chief executive at the OCMA, at VSF OC's opening.
In April, Varet brought Various Small Fires to Orange County, opening VSF OC in a converted space at 119 N. Prospect Ave in Tustin. The grand opening featured an art activation for children with many local art leaders, like chief executive at the Orange County Museum of Art Heidi Zuckerman, in attendance. Collectors, artists and families from nearby residential neighborhoods rounded out the opening audience.
The inaugural exhibition, 'The Orange Curtain' features the work of Southern California contemporary artists Edwin Arzeta, Jackie Castillo and Marcel Alcalá.
'They are all artists who were born and raised in Orange County but have an increasing national and international presence,' said Varet.
Curated by Varet and on view now through May 31, the exhibition examines the political and cultural connotations of 'the orange curtain,' and the perception of the divide between Orange County and the greater Southern California area, particularly Los Angeles. The show is also a commitment to the diverse communities Varet supports as a candidate in the 2026 election for California's 40th U.S. Congressional district.
'I was important for me start with an exhibition and commit to a show schedule that would highlight the cultural legacy of Orange County over the last 30 years and the cultural influence of Orange County over the last 40 years, that we might not always as a community remember about ourselves,' said Varet. The work of Edwin Arzeta, Jackie Castillo and Marcel Alcalá on display at the newest gallery space from Various Small Fires, VSF OC.
Castillo, for example, is an up-and-coming artist with her first institutional solo exhibition, 'Through the Descent, Like the Return' currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Born in city of Orange, Castillo's work shines a light on the unseen labor of immigrants using industrial materials associated with the working class. In pieces like 'Of the garden just risen from darkness' and 'And once more I remember,' photographs of beautifully landscaped doorways and staircases are depicted on cement blocks. The lonely entry ways are a juxtaposition of the beautification of everyday life and the unnoticed work that goes into making it so.
'She forces us to think about the unseen labor of all these sites we experience everyday,' said Varet. 'It is critical to push the narrative that unseen labor is foundational.'
The work of Santa Ana-born Marcel Alcalá incorporates his Mexican American heritage and queer identity into paintings rich with symbolism. In 'First Strike' two roosters fight violently against a clouded violet sky, while a small yellow chick in the foreground looks on.
'There are a lot of images of multiplicity. In the cockfight, there are a lot of layers in that, two entries fighting against each other, there is always this push and pull between forces,' Varet notes.
'Their Coronation' features a man in full make up and an elaborate quinceañera-style dress riding in the back of convertible, eyes piercing the viewer.
'Marcel talks a lot about different transitional states, a butterfly as a symbol of metamorphosis... the female form, the male form, cut flowers, these things come up in his work often,' said Varet. Marcel Alcalá, Their Coronation, (2023.) Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles
Edwin Arzeta, also from the city of Orange, draws layered cakes, confections that are in many ways studies of pattern. Rows of ribbon, primly tied bows and white daisies line a checkered cake in 'Luceros de la Primavera,' a title that translates to 'Stars of Spring.' All the cakes emulate a warm glow, not just from the rows of burning birthday candles but from the layers of the cake themselves. Each piece references the evolution of celebrations within Arzeta's own community.
'I love his work because it feels really celebratory in a time when we are not celebrating all the time,' said Varet.
Based on the encouraging turn out of VSF OC's opening exhibition, Varet is confident the new space can enhance the local community the way VSF has in all of its locations. She also believes the show can push back on the notion of Orange County as a limited place, lacking in diversity and confined to suburb issues compared to L.A.
'That orange curtain is more of an illusion than we realize. The orange curtain isn't a divide anymore, it's artifice,' said Varet. 'The artists here are testament to that.'
VSF OC is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 119 N. Prospect Ave. in Tustin.
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Los Angeles Times
08-05-2025
- Los Angeles Times
Artist installs an ICA L.A. homage to construction crews — with her dad's help
Jackie Castillo was walking through her Mid-Wilshire neighborhood when she heard ceramic crashing against metal. She looked up to see orange terracotta tiles sailing down, one after the other, from the roof of a 1920s Spanish Revival home. The tiles whirled, twisting and turning like helicopter seeds or bird wings, before hitting the metal dumpster below. Castillo captured their descent on film, compelled by each tile's momentary transformation into something vivid and alive just before its demise. Eight years later, she has channeled that memory into 'Through the Descent, Like the Return,' an installation on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles through August: Four groups of five steel reinforcing bars either ascend from the concrete floor or descend from the ceiling of ICA's first-floor gallery. On each bar, five reclaimed terracotta tiles are arranged at various levels and angles, recreating the twists and turns from the film stills. To stand in the middle and view them in the round is to see how ruin and repair, falling and rising, are inexorably bound. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Castillo was born and raised in a working-class community in Santa Ana. She first discovered photography in a darkroom at Orange Coast College before completing her degree at UCLA. 'Taking photos is about reacting to the world and framing it, while developing them is a slow and tactile process,' she says. 'It was my language, and I couldn't stop once I understood that.' Although photography is at the heart of her practice, she frequently merges filmic images with sculpture and installation, as exemplified by her show at the ICA as well as her recent USC master's degree thesis presentation, which included mixed-media sculptures like 'Between No Space of Mine and No Space of Yours,' a monochromatic photo of an abandoned lot printed on uneven stacks of cement pavers. 'From my first studio visit with Jackie, I was struck by the clarity and sensitivity she brought to her photography,' says ICA senior curator Amanda Sroka. 'She's both formally advancing her medium and adding a very human dimension to the larger arts landscape we find ourselves in.' For Sroka, it was important to offer Castillo creative support and the opportunity to broaden the context for her commentary on land development and labor — especially given socioeconomic changes in the museum's Arts District neighborhood. 'In poignant and poetic ways, she reveals what's erased and gives voice to what's silenced,' Sroka says. Jackie sought the support of her father, Roberto, who immigrated to the United States from Guadalajara in his 20s, with the conception and creation of the lilting terracotta and rebar sculpture. While her work has long centered on the visible and invisible labor of immigrant communities, especially as it pertains to the material and cultural history of urban environments, she still felt a disconnect between her life in Orange County and her artistic practice in Los Angeles, where she has lived for a decade. 'Making art has often felt like a very solitary pursuit, or questioning, and completely separate from seeing my family,' Jackie explains on the sunny afternoon we met at the ICA. 'For this exhibition, I wanted to find a means to unite the two and spend more time with them along the way.' Although Roberto's electrical engineering degree didn't transfer to the United States, Jackie grew up watching him build whatever the family needed. Roberto helped her determine the exact height and angle of each tile and to fabricate a means of securing them in place along the steel stake. 'I learned so much from our conversations about everything from aesthetics to mathematics,' Jackie says. 'We think of artists as looking this one way, but given the space and the resources, it's amazing what working-class people can do.' The individual tiles and reinforcement bars create a striking impression of an enthralling and vertiginous centrifugal motion. 'The exact sequencing of each stack corresponds to a fall captured in a film still,' she says. 'They're not arbitrary or merely aesthetic, but tied to a specific moment in time linked to a specific person's body in an act of labor.' By exposing the industrial rebar responsible for a building's structural integrity, Jackie also draws attention to the workers responsible for the building's construction, maintenance and repair. Beneath the facade of every home, school, business and community center lie layers of material meaning and memory that bear forth records of the minds and hands that envisioned and assembled them. The innumerable lives lived within their walls and the storms weathered from without leave lasting marks. On the salvaged tiles alone, you can find salt efflorescence, water stains, fretting, lichen, smears of soot, scratches and gashes. Though the evidence may be imperceptible to the untrained eye, they also hold the memory of the earth from which they were formed and the traditional methods of molding and firing clay. That history is what gets lost when old materials are tossed in dumpsters and replaced with newly fabricated products. Photographs incorporated into the installation recreate this layering effect. On the right side wall, an image of twin rebar pillars jutting up toward a brilliant cerulean sky is interrupted by the trace of hardly discernible letters and numbers. 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Los Angeles Times
07-05-2025
- Los Angeles Times
Various Small Fires OC pulls back the Orange Curtain in Tustin
According to Esther Kim Varet, founder of Various Small Fires, it is hard to tell how many people will show up to an art exhibition opening. 'When you have your first show and a gallery opens for the first time, you don't know what's going to happen. Five people could show up or 500 people can show up,' said Varet. 'Fortunately, we had the latter.' Varet has extensive experience when it comes to opening art spaces. She began Various Small Fires as an informal artist project space in 2012, before opening the first permanent VSF in Hollywood in 2015. Locations in Seoul, South Korea and Dallas, Texas have since followed. 'We are an international gallery. We have always built communities where ever we build,' said Varet. 'They are always community safe spaces for every kind of person, including undocumented individuals and people of the LGBTQ+ community.' VSF founder/owner Esther Kim Varet poses with Heidi Zuckerman, chief executive at the OCMA, at VSF OC's opening. In April, Varet brought Various Small Fires to Orange County, opening VSF OC in a converted space at 119 N. Prospect Ave in Tustin. The grand opening featured an art activation for children with many local art leaders, like chief executive at the Orange County Museum of Art Heidi Zuckerman, in attendance. Collectors, artists and families from nearby residential neighborhoods rounded out the opening audience. The inaugural exhibition, 'The Orange Curtain' features the work of Southern California contemporary artists Edwin Arzeta, Jackie Castillo and Marcel Alcalá. 'They are all artists who were born and raised in Orange County but have an increasing national and international presence,' said Varet. Curated by Varet and on view now through May 31, the exhibition examines the political and cultural connotations of 'the orange curtain,' and the perception of the divide between Orange County and the greater Southern California area, particularly Los Angeles. The show is also a commitment to the diverse communities Varet supports as a candidate in the 2026 election for California's 40th U.S. Congressional district. 'I was important for me start with an exhibition and commit to a show schedule that would highlight the cultural legacy of Orange County over the last 30 years and the cultural influence of Orange County over the last 40 years, that we might not always as a community remember about ourselves,' said Varet. The work of Edwin Arzeta, Jackie Castillo and Marcel Alcalá on display at the newest gallery space from Various Small Fires, VSF OC. Castillo, for example, is an up-and-coming artist with her first institutional solo exhibition, 'Through the Descent, Like the Return' currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Born in city of Orange, Castillo's work shines a light on the unseen labor of immigrants using industrial materials associated with the working class. In pieces like 'Of the garden just risen from darkness' and 'And once more I remember,' photographs of beautifully landscaped doorways and staircases are depicted on cement blocks. The lonely entry ways are a juxtaposition of the beautification of everyday life and the unnoticed work that goes into making it so. 'She forces us to think about the unseen labor of all these sites we experience everyday,' said Varet. 'It is critical to push the narrative that unseen labor is foundational.' The work of Santa Ana-born Marcel Alcalá incorporates his Mexican American heritage and queer identity into paintings rich with symbolism. In 'First Strike' two roosters fight violently against a clouded violet sky, while a small yellow chick in the foreground looks on. 'There are a lot of images of multiplicity. In the cockfight, there are a lot of layers in that, two entries fighting against each other, there is always this push and pull between forces,' Varet notes. 'Their Coronation' features a man in full make up and an elaborate quinceañera-style dress riding in the back of convertible, eyes piercing the viewer. 'Marcel talks a lot about different transitional states, a butterfly as a symbol of metamorphosis... the female form, the male form, cut flowers, these things come up in his work often,' said Varet. Marcel Alcalá, Their Coronation, (2023.) Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles Edwin Arzeta, also from the city of Orange, draws layered cakes, confections that are in many ways studies of pattern. Rows of ribbon, primly tied bows and white daisies line a checkered cake in 'Luceros de la Primavera,' a title that translates to 'Stars of Spring.' All the cakes emulate a warm glow, not just from the rows of burning birthday candles but from the layers of the cake themselves. Each piece references the evolution of celebrations within Arzeta's own community. 'I love his work because it feels really celebratory in a time when we are not celebrating all the time,' said Varet. Based on the encouraging turn out of VSF OC's opening exhibition, Varet is confident the new space can enhance the local community the way VSF has in all of its locations. She also believes the show can push back on the notion of Orange County as a limited place, lacking in diversity and confined to suburb issues compared to L.A. 'That orange curtain is more of an illusion than we realize. The orange curtain isn't a divide anymore, it's artifice,' said Varet. 'The artists here are testament to that.' VSF OC is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 119 N. Prospect Ave. in Tustin.
New York Times
03-12-2024
- New York Times
A Los Angeles Gallery Brings Bold Art, and Vision, to Miami Beach
'I've been asking myself, 'What's the point of art?'' said Esther Kim Varet in a video interview, the day after the United States presidential election. The day before, not long after she had returned from canvassing for the Kamala Harris campaign in Michigan, Kim Varet, a busy gallery owner, had admitted she was nervous about how close the race looked. After the election had been called for Donald J. Trump, she let slip that even she wasn't necessarily thinking about art — or its function in society. Kim Varet's politics are particularly evident at Various Small Fires, the contemporary art gallery she founded and operates. Based in Hollywood, south of the Los Angeles hills, Various Small Fires focuses on championing artistic voices that Kim Varet feels have been traditionally overlooked by galleries — such as those of Asian, Indigenous, Black and Latino descent. She opened the gallery in 2012, in an industry historically dominated by white male gatekeepers (such as those running the galleries atop Art Land's tracker of top contemporary galleries). Now, as she enters her 40s, Kim Varet is preparing to return to Art Basel Miami Beach, a testament to her gallery's growing reputation. 'I just want to push conversations forward,' she said, of the gallery's mission. Kim Varet's sense of drive has deep roots. 'I'm a first-generation Korean American,' she explained, recounting how her grandparents escaped North Korea, and her parents, raised in South Korea, immigrated to Texas, where they became involved with the Southern Baptist Church. 'I was taught to stick with my own' and to be suspicious of others, Kim Varet said of her upbringing in the conservative church. She reflected that growing up under such strict conditions 'can give you this thing where you want to break every barrier, power structure, and fight like hell for what's morally right.' It's a personal history that underscores Kim Varet's stance on art and galleries in a nation that is increasingly polarized and shifting toward conservatism. Right now, 'with so much outspoken intolerance for others, this work of bridging disparate world views is needed more than ever,' Kim Varet said, adding, 'That's the point, isn't it?' Underdog mentality Various Small Fires has become a destination in Los Angeles for these types of dialogues because of the panels it hosts — on topics that include sustainable agriculture and stopping hate against Asians — and the artists Kim Varet shows. 'I'm drawn to people who have historically been the underdog,' she said. 'I want to elevate vulnerable voices.' This curatorial approach has led to the discovery and career revivals of artists like Jessie Homer French, a self-taught artist in her 80s known for her folksy paintings addressing ecology and the environment; Diedrick Brackens, whose woven tapestries examine being Black and queer; Dyani White Hawk, a Minneapolis-based Lakota artist who blends abstract painting with her tribe's traditions of abstraction, and Newton Harrison, a founder of the eco-art movement, who died in 2022. Challenging barriers Various Small Fires started as a series of artist conversations at Kim Varet's Venice Beach home in 2012. The success of her homespun endeavor eventually led to the opening of the approximately 5,000-square-foot Hollywood gallery in 2015. The space features an outdoor sculpture garden. In the last five years, Kim Varet has opened outposts in Seoul and Dallas. The expansion is fitting for a gallery called Various Small Fires, a name that comes from Edward Ruscha's photo book, printed in 1970, titled 'Various Small Fires and Milk,' which features images of small flames emitted by matches, stoves and the like. According to Kim Varet, her galleries are analogous to prescribed burns — the little fires necessary to maintain a healthy environment. 'In a way I'm tracing my own biography and I'm going back and I'm helping present ideas that directly challenge the barriers I felt there,' Kim Varet said, of founding the outposts in Seoul and Dallas. For instance, she said, a 2023 exhibition of Madeline Donahue's work about motherhood and women's bodies 'felt different' when shown in Texas, a state that enacted a near-total ban on abortion. While being fertile for cross-cultural dialogue, the locations are also strategic. Dallas is one of the nation's hottest collector markets, while the move to Korea predated Frieze's inaugural fair there. Moving into Asia, Kim Varet said, was an easy choice. 'American artists are very curious about exhibiting in Asia, but are not always sure how to access it,' she said, adding that, at the same time, there is 'high interest in Western artists in Korea specifically.' Joel Lubin, managing director and head of the motion picture group CAA, is an avid art collector and indicative of a strand of Kim Varet's collector base. He first encountered the gallerist at a fair a decade ago where he said that he quickly sensed her vision. 'She wasn't all about the West Coast prism, or the L.A. scene; she was looking beyond it,' Mr. Lubin recalled in a phone interview. Making waves At this year's Art Basel Miami Beach, running Friday through Sunday, the gallery will present a booth focused on the theme of abstraction, highlighting different approaches, and challenging its cited origins as a 20th-century construct. Kim Varet noted that the presentation will feature six artists, two of whom are making their Art Basel Miami Beach debuts. One of the first-timers is A'Driane Nieves, 42, who said that she has been painting for 15 years after a therapist recommended she pick up a brush as a form of therapy. Nieves, who is forthcoming about having autism and A.D.H.D., contributed 'A New Code' (2024), a painting that depicts solid blue and yellow boxes interrupted by hundreds of frenzied colorful brush strokes. 'The squares represent binary thinking, you know, the boxes we put ourselves and others in, the norms we are conditioned to accept,' Nieves said in a phone interview. The frenzied lines interrupt the clear lines and colors, showing, she theorized, how marginalized people 'have found ways to thrive outside of the bonds and constraints of normative society, despite the retribution that comes with doing so.' Sarah Rosalena, an artist and scholar in her 40s, is also making her Miami debut. One of her works in the show is 'Gradient Wave' (2024), a basket sculpture created using a 3-D printer that mimics an ancient coiling technique. She explained in her artist statement that the work is an exploration of the displacement and devaluation of craft and female labor in our contemporary technology-fueled economy. 'My work is done by hand and by machine; in a way I'm straddling the ancient and the futuristic,' Rosalena, a member of the Indigenous Wixárika people, said in a phone interview. For Kim Varet, both artists confront conflicting tensions. On abstraction alone, she said 'they offer a feminine retelling which is obviously so different to what you get taught in a lot of art schools.' These are the type of conversations that excite Kim Varet. After all, it is what draws her to her job, to her artists and to the locations she has chosen for Various Small Fires. 'I cannot function without tension,' she said, at the end of the post-election conversation. 'What a time to say that.'
