FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Deborah Oliver 323.388.7777 Laurie Steelink 310.264.4678
Track 16 Gallery and Deborah Oliver present IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS 5
Curated by Deborah Oliver
Saturday, October 21, 2006, 8:00 PM
19 Artists, One Night Only Admission $12, Students w/ I.D. $10 RSVP: 310.264.4678
Track 16 Gallery is pleased to present the fifth anniversary edition of IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS curated by Deborah Oliver. We invite you to witness 19 different works in the multi-mediated genre of Performance Installation or Time Based Live Art. Performed simultaneously and live during the course of one evening, some of the most exciting new Los Angeles artists mix with well-established and international names to make this gallery experience diverse, eclectic and dynamic.
Performance Installations by: Brian Black and Ryan Bulis, Seann Brackin, Gul Cagin/ Erdem Helvacioglu, Mariel Carranza, Doran George, Dave Ghilarducci, Janice Gomez, Joe Hernandez, Stephanie Hutin and Florencio Zavala, Andres Janacua, Noelle Mason, Ingram Ober, Carrie Paterson, Ed Pelissier, Nancy Popp, Marisol Rendón, Steve Shoffner, Matt Wardell, HK Zamani / Ami Motevalli.
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About the artists and their work:
Brian Black and Ryan Bulis: “Brian Shoots, Ryan Shoots Back”
In a series of sport-centered performances, Brian and Ryan infuse competition into their collaborative work. For this performance, they will have mobile basketball hoops attached to their backs as they face-off in a one-on-one competition to score the most baskets. As each point is scored, a referee photographs the action and attaches these photos to the warm up jackets. These photo-covered jackets document the event and serve as trophies.
Seann Brackin: “The Spit Piece”
Artist statement: The Spit Piece is about spit. The Spit Piece is about marking, about ritual, and about being alive.
Gul Cagin/Erdem Helvacioglu: “burusukmurusukbayathayat”
Cagin’s piece is based on the simple act of getting dressed. By wrapping the body with 50 yards of fabric, humanly features are slowly erased to the point to where the body is reduced to a “thing.”
Mariel Carranza: “Cage no. 3 (Fear)”
Carranza’s work deals with the primal fear instinct that conditions the mind to limit the body’s resistance.
Doran George: “Fossils of Human Loss”
A bridal dinner is the scene for a contemplation of the geographic and cultural displacement of violence implicit in Western arrangements of domestic safety. This is an effigy of the domestic, in its context of contemporary global crisis: a catastrophic fantasy of distance. This work will be performed with Alexa Hunter.
Dave Ghilarducci: “Sport or Activity?”
Ghilarducci has created an absurdist, pastoral-landscape, domino stadium. Within this setting, officials hurriedly arrange cow silhouette dominoes and await the entrance of the highly skilled master cow-tipper. The cow-tipper assesses the layout, selects the ideal trigger cow to start the chain reaction.
Janice Gomez: “Part Two”
Gomez creates a tension between art and life by using space to challenge her observers to experience that which is usually taboo and untouchable. Her work resonates in the in- between of observation and creation, so that those who observe are also part of the creation. Her work transcends the limits of three-dimensions, and engages the viewer in a fourth – where time and space and ideas are not confined, but are experienced.
Joe Hernandez and Movement: “Invisibo”
This performance references the invisible bonds that exist and are formed when humans contact objects, environments, energy, animals, and other people. Through Kirlian photography, an essence can be seen in the form of an aura that is emitted from all humans. In Hernandez’s piece, these invisible connections and bonds are represented by static electricity that connects and binds the audience and performers to balloons. The connections will materialize as the balloons react when the audience and performers interact within this highly charged zone. Movement is a performance group formed in 1999 its principle members are Chad Alpert and Vero Alvarez.
Stephanie Hutin and Florencio Zavala / Big Skills: “Group Film 001”
Thirteen people were asked to participate in this exquisite corpse animated film, but under certain conditions: they had twenty-four hours for completion, and were allowed to see only the last two frames of what the person before them had created. Half of the participants had never animated and half had; the theme was “hair and punching.” Two dropped out, and one talented composer created the score in less than twenty-four hours. The film is documentation of a performance. Score by Corey Fogel. Big Skills is the product of Hutin and Zavala’s ongoing collaboration that began at the University of Florida’s School of Art and Art History in 1999.
Andres Janacua: “We will walk with you hand in hand”
As the public prepares to enter the gallery space; they are confronted into making a political, yet ambiguous decision. Regardless of their decision, they are forced to align
themselves with an unforeseen, unknown ally. As they have grown confident with their decision, and are to exit the exhibition space, their initial allegiance has been undermined and reversed by the structure of the installation and subsequent architecture.
Noelle Mason: “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
Artist’s statement: I have become increasingly interested in the artificial means by which we extend our ability to see. A flashlight is a simple but powerful tool. Its effects are two-fold, to illuminate the subject of its gaze, and to obscure the identity of its user, giving her both the powers of x-ray vision and invisibility. The Mag-lite brand flashlights used by the LAPD have an added feature, its’ durable aluminum alloy shaft doubles as a “nightstick.” In “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night” Mag-lites are used to construct familiar constellations in the gallery recontextualizing the “nightstick” from weapon to beacon. The flashlights in the installation also serve to backlight a LAPD officer and K-9 dog. The Officer and dog initially signify authority through attire and presence, but the viewers’ powerful gaze, and conceptual shift to officer and dog as ready-made undermine this authority.
Ingram Ober: “The Red Century”
Ingram has had an on going interest in the way in which the consumption of energy and natural resources relates to personal, local, global, and spiritual hierarchies. In this work he hopes to draw into question some of these systems by synthesizing three disparate images into one creative act. Riding a rickshaw-type tricycle with an oil well pumping red dye mounted on the back, Ingram will mechanize the production of large-scale Zen paintings by repeatedly riding in circles on large format canvases. As the performance continues Ingram will eventually isolate himself from the audience within an enclosure made from the paintings.
Ed Pelissier: “Effexor”
Artist’s statement: For years I lived with the fear that people were watching me when I wasn’t looking. The worst times were/are when walking in front of a group of people or when eating lunch at work. I was eventually diagnosed as being Bi-Polar. Effexor is a simple work, which describes a symptom of my illness and is named for the main medication that has reduced these fears.
Carrie Paterson: “Several Attempts to Make the Image of the Moon and Mars By Landing on Them”
The U.S. space program is an arm of the military, and by extension, foreign policy. This performance is a surprise attack on the discourse and policy that figures “space,” “heavenly bodies,” and “woman,” together as deeply mysterious, and in need of paternalistic controls. Recent plans imposed by George W. Bush to send Americans to Mars (God of War) via the Moon, especially deserve this body-based critique in light of the Pax Americana’s current neo-colonial offensives.
Nancy Popp: “Honeymoon 2”
Honeymoon 2, inspired by George Brecht’s Drip Music and the artist’s previous work Honeymoon, addresses conundrums of confinement and commitment, along with the
paradoxes of traditional receptive feminine roles that often prevail, despite resistance to gender conformity.
Marisol Rendón: “Things I never got to tell you”
Dressed as Raggedy Anne, Marisol Rendón sits at the end of a long table, and opposite her sits a life sized Raggedy Anne doll, a surrogate for her recently departed sister. As she sits and writes messages to her sister, the doll, actuated by Marisol’s pen by way of strings and pulleys, bobs and moves as if eating. With this performance Marisol wishes to communicate how the loss off a loved one can indelibly connect our future to our past, our reality to our imagination, and our hopes and dreams to our melancholic reminiscence. She wishes to bridge the gap left by all of the things that go unsaid.
Steve Shoffner: “Looking Glass #11”
This work is the most recent project within the Looking Glass series in which Shoffner explores the interactions between people and things in spaces where expectations and perceptions are askew. With the use of closed-circuit video cameras, false walls, and his own physical interaction, he sets up illusions for the viewer to negotiate the validity of what is actual, and what is virtual. He aims to reenact scenarios where technology leaves us confused and disconnected. Shoffner is drawn to produce these mind provoking scenarios to exemplify the humor he finds in our dependency on technology. Like all of the Looking Glass series, he provides us with an experience of odd interaction and realization of the strange things that are around us.
Matt Wardell: “Civil War Reenactment”
“Civil War Reenactment” is a durational sculpture in twenty-seven parts; each part corresponding to the major battles of the American Civil War. Powered by music-box mechanisms wound by the artist, two groups of overturned plastic cups (bluish and grayish) lurch every few moments until the last mechanism winds down. The songs are ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ and the Confederate battle song, ‘Dixie.’ Each cup represents 1000 Confederate or Union soldiers and is configured along historical battle lines. The work speaks of war and the American mythos in terms of the futile, the inane, the absurd, and the persistent.
HK Zamani / Ami Motevalli: “1972”
For the first time since 1948, a chess player from outside the Soviet Union achieved the right to play a match for the World Chess Championship title. The opening ceremony in Reykjavik was scheduled for July 1, 1972 for a match between Spassky and Fischer. On September 1, the match was over. Fischer’s victory ended 24 years of Soviet domination of the World Chess Title. This performance will be a recreation of the 21st game that ended the match.