Villa Aurora Events Archive
September 2025
Villa Aurora X O-Town House Exhibition "Whispering Bells"
O-Town House

Info
In January of 2025, the Palisades Fire came within feet of Villa Aurora. Miraculously, the house survived, allowing us to continue our work promoting intercultural exchange and fostering dialogue in arts and culture.
Located at the former home of Jewish-German writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta, Villa Aurora is dedicated to preserving the legacy of artists and intellectuals who found refuge from Nazi persecution in Los Angeles. For the past 30 years, Villa Aurora has been an artist residence, a place where exile and expression meet, where history and contemporary events converge. During the process of rebuilding, we are working with local partners to present our artists’ work within the city.
At O-Town House, Villa Aurora has found a temporary home away from home. A magical residency place located in the Granada Buildings, built in 1927 Spanish Revival Style echoing Villa Aurora’s architecture on the other side of Wilshire Boulevard. In addition to that we have found a kindred spirit and true inspiration in the founder and curator of O-Town House: Scott Cameron Weaver.
This group exhibition at O-Town House gallery is our kickoff anniversary show with works of artists spanning the many years of our residency program. At the same time, it is the beginning of an annual exhibition series that will promote future fellows’ works in Los Angeles.
The exhibition’s title Whispering Bells lends its name from the drought-tolerant flower species known as fire followers. The dry, bell-shaped flowers play a rustling song when caught in the wind. Its seeds are triggered by burnt material to start a new life cycle.
Whispering Bells offers a glimpse into the rich artistic legacy created by almost 500 resident artists since 1995 with works by Villa Aurora alumni Achim Mohné (2000), Klaus Pockrandt (2016), Sarah Szczesny (2021), Joram Schön (2024) and Fern Liberty Kallenbach Campbell (2024).
Together with O-Town House, this anniversary show celebrates old friends and new partners: international alliances showcasing our role as transatlantic bridge-builders and local connections anchoring our resident artists in Los Angeles.
Whispering Bells is curated by Friedel Schmoranzer and Scott Cameron Weaver. The exhibition is funded by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, with generous support from our long-standing partner, the Art Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt.
About the Artists

Achim Mohné's interdisciplinary, media-artistic research into the extension of photography and its paradigmatic change through digitality is constantly evolving with new media and their apparatuses. In multimedia installations, sculptures, performances, sound and video works, interactive 3D visualizations with augmented reality or in VR game engines, as well as sculptural translations between digital and real space, works in public space and publications, he calls for a critical distance to the authenticity of the post-photographic image. His complex interventions address media-immanent issues of surveillance, manipulability, artificial intelligence, and virtuality, and examine our interaction with the world in terms of pressing social, technological, geopolitical, ecological, or cultural issues, with a particular focus on nature and environmentalism.

Klaus Pockrandt focusses on graphics, typography, exhibition and illustration as a freelance designer of visual communication, artist and teacher.
Co-founder and partner of the design studio atelier42 / visual communication furák, girod, pockrandt gbr
He holds a guest professorship for creative and artistic basics and drawing at the Department of Design Burg Giebichenstein art academy Halle.

Sarah Szczeny’s method of dissecting, distorting and separating images, such as cartoon film elements, characterizes her collage, painting and video work.
She examines the conditions of painting by stretching the medium’s boundaries through experimental interventions – for example by using gif and loop techniques as well as sound effects -, a multidimensionality is created that gives the painting character of movement and thus locates it in the tradition of cartoons. In this process of animation of collages, which is so essential for her work, Szczesny combines formal studies and citations of pop culture and art history.

Joram Schön, born and raised in Berlin-Moabit, is an artist and filmmaker. He studied fine arts at UdK Berlin in the class of Thomas Zipp. He has participated in several group, duo, and solo exhibitions in Germany and abroad. In his drawings he combines nature and urban observations. He preserves urban change in his critical questions about topographies and architecture. He is currently doing his master's degree at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KMH), combining the mediums of drawing and filmmaking to realize autobiographical short stories.

Fern Liberty Kallenbach Campbell, born in New York, grew up in Berlin, and lives and works in Halle (Saale). She studied communication design at Burg Giebichenstein and completed her bachelor's degree in 2021 with a focus on illustration in the class of Prof. Georg Barber. In 2023 she completed her diploma in textile art in the class of Prof. Caroline Achaintre. Fern processes her personal and digital reality in the form of tapestries. Here, the boundaries between good and evil become blurred, as well as the boundaries between self-medication and addiction, chaos and harmony. The dining table is a recurring element in her works.
Visit + Location
O-TOWN HOUSE
672 S. Lafayette Park Place, Suite 44 / 43
Los Angeles, CA 90057
T: +1 213 263 9428
home@o-townhouse.art
Hours:
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 12 - 6 pm and by appointment
Please contact us if you would like to come by at another time!
Street parking available and at Wii Spa with car wash included.
Access to the building at the gate by using the call-box to call O-Town House from its menu (Dial: 044). Take the stairs immediately to the left.
The gallery is accessible by elevator. If you need assistance please let us know.
