Irrational Exhibits 6: Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Deborah Oliver 323.388.7777 Laurie Steelink 310.264.4678

Track 16 Gallery and Deborah Oliver present IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS 6
Curated by Deborah Oliver

Saturday, November 3, 2007, 8:00 PM

17 Artists, One Night Only Admission $12
RSVP: 310.264.4678
Pre-payment by credit card accepted

4 October, 2007, Santa Monica—Returning to Track 16 Gallery for the sixth straight year is Irrational Exhibits, the experimental performance /installation show produced and curated by Deborah Oliver.

Irrational Exhibits is a one night only, once a year event that showcases the latest works and evolving forms of performance art and installation.

This year, a daring crop of artists will explore and confront the dangerous and disturbing landscape of the 21st century: an environment in which one treads the shifting terrain of catastrophe with delusions of safety, and where human relationships are subject to technological intervention and desensitizing media overload.

Through interactive installations, visceral performances, and kinetic media, the artists will examine the tenuous balance of power in personal, social, political and cultural environments. The audience will be free to roam, participate and engage with a wide variety of works that range from eccentrically playful game referencing works to those that portray events of unnerving pathos.

Artists:

Gabriela Arreola, Benjamin Bellas & Justin Cooper, Brian Black & Ryan Bulis, Anne Bray & Deborah Oliver & Janice Gomez, Amanda Browder & Stuart Keeler, David Burns, Kent Anderson Butler & Andrew Buehler, Mariel Carranza, Kristina Faragher & Curt LeMieux, Tim Folland, Dave Ghilarducci, Cathalijne Kapteyn & Anastasia Yumeko Hill & Sean Best, Noelle Mason, Helia Rabie, Eusebio Travis Sevilla, Steve Shoffner, and Elizabeth Watkins.

For more information on the artists and event, please visit our web site at

www.track16 .com.
IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS 6: PERFORMERS

LIVE ART:

Dave Ghilarducci: Trebuchet Mache 3
The trebuchet was the most feared of all medieval weapons, when it was used, it caused great destruction. In this performance, a trebuchet operator catapults compressed paper pulp in various colors at the canvas. Over the course of the performance the pulp builds up on the canvas creating various patterns.

Brian Black and Ryan Bulis: Brian and Ryan Reveal Themselves with Their Dirty Balls
Brian and Ryan will throw graphite-covered basketballs at prints that cover the entire wall. As they bombard the prints with graphite-ball marks, images of the artists will come into focus.

Amanda Browder and Stuart Keeler: Happy Beautiful Face
Happy Beautiful Face is a socially based performance project that focuses on the utopian dreams of the “everyday American.” The intent is to create a space of happiness and discomfort; glory and smugness; opulence and disgust.

Tripod with Cathalijne Kapteyn, Anastasia Yumeko Hill and Sean Best: Spill Spill is based on the idea of a data spill, which is commonly used to describe the accidental loss, theft or leaking of information within communication systems that are inadequately secured.

Steve Shoffner: Looking Glass #13
Looking Glass #13 is an interactive video installation. The interactive element of piece reveals itself when the viewer realizes subtle coincidences. Looking Glass #13 sets up an illusion for its audience to negotiate the validity of real time and real space.

Anne Bray, Deborah Oliver and Janice Gomez: Top heavy seesaw Suggesting art’s ability to recreate balance, the performer teeters on a floor-based mobile, holds her ground, loses it and re-establishes stasis over and over, while distracting images project through the room and rich music exudes from its core.

Mariel Carranza:Merry-Go-Round
What will appear as fun ends up being a test of the physical endurance of the artist, who will be spinning continuously on a merry-go-round challenging the audience to perceive this merry-go-round as a symbol of different metaphorical equations.

David Burns (Matias Viegener and Austin Young): PATRIOTIC, 2005 PATRIOTIC is a meditation on intimacy, dependency and control using the exchange of food as a symbolic exchange of love, one that carries with it all the potential of abusive control.

Benjamin Bellas & Justin Cooper: Hey Coop, isn’t this where the exposition comes in?
A performance that explores the limits of the body and mind, action and memory

utilizing the classic narrative screenwriting structure involving “The Setup,” “The Confrontation,” and “The Resolution.”

Gabriela Arreola: Sad Girl
This performance is a physical embodiment of childhood memories. Arreola grew up in Bell Gardens, CA, during a time when cholos and police on the streets were commonplace. Instead of facing her childhood fear of the cholo culture as she had previously in other performances, in this piece she becomes it.

Kent Anderson Butler and Andrew Buehler: Hallowed Journey
One man binds another man in a straightjacket and rope, and then blindfolds him. He later carries the man and sets him in a red wagon taking him on a Hallowed Journey.

VIDEO ART:

Noelle Mason: Bob and Weave
Bob and Weave is a durational performance for video. The video is shot to reference a “first person shooter” video game. Bob and Weave frustrates the viewers sense of power by positioning the camera directly behind the head of one of the participants in the game.

Tim Folland: THUNDERCRUSH
THUNDER CRUSH is the third piece in the “Paintor” video series. It examines the nature of art making and intertwines it with themes of risk, devotion, hardship, and creativity.

Eusebio Travis Sevilla: searching for Jan Ader’s stick
This video is a shot for shot re-performance of an untitled video by Bas Jan Ader. This is an investigation on how time, location, and performer alter the meaning of a work.

Helia Rabie: nest(1:28)
This video pieces consists of a static shot video of the artist making out with a hummingbird nest.

Elizabeth Watkins: Untitled (I Want You)
Untitled (I Want You) creates an interactive playground in the space between viewer and viewed to investigate the relationships that dictate the way information’s various forms are absorbed and interpreted.

Kristina Faragher and Curt LeMieux: Flowers for McGillycuddy and 107 for Baby Doe from the Twelve for the Underground series of digital videos: a series created by visual artists Kristina Faragher and Curt LeMieux.