Category: Past

Performances
Thursday, July 20, 2017 at 8pm
Friday, July 21, 2017 at 8pm
Saturday, July 22, 2017 at 2pm

Exhibition was on View
Thursday – Sunday
12 – 6pm

The Ring was the latest in a series of performed sculptural works by Iván Navarro and Courtney Smith. Since 2014, the two artists have collaborated to produce participatory performance-events in the form of guided interactions that occur within a constructed arena. The Ring was a formal design for a social ritual of cooperation and exchange, exploring cyclical systems of giving, receiving and reciprocating as well as providing, acquiring and distributing. Through the ceremonial alternation of roles and the transfer of symbolic objects, individual value is subsumed by the sum of collective action.

Each performance counted on the committed participation of at least 24 to 40 guests. Participants were asked only to interact naturally with each other and the group as a whole, while following a directed sequence of coordinated exchanges during short, timed intervals. The duration of the piece was 26 minutes, which included three eight-minute segments and two one-minute interludes.

On view post-performance were the sculptural elements that remained from The Ring: a constructed arena of concentric squares, geometrically subdivided into a series of separate compartments that was previously occupied individually by the participants. Directly above the center point of the concentric squares hung a fluorescent chandelier, as the only source of light within the ring.

ABOUT IVÁN NAVARRO AND COURTNEY SMITH: Iván Navarro was born in 1972 in Santiago, Chile, where he grew up during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Navarro’s experiences under the regime continues to fuel his examination of sound and electric energy as symbols and tools of power. He is known internationally for his socio-politically charged sculptures of neon, fluorescent and incandescent light. Drawing on social issues and political events, notably the aftermath of Pinochet’s reign and the scars of other dictatorships in Latin America, Navarro creates light works that reflect on the trauma of recent history. Often constructing works that are shaped like chairs, doors, or billboard signs, Navarro repurposes familiar materials to comment on past events, from an ‘electrical chair’ that references the Chilean governments use of electricity as a form of torture, to a table that features a swastika made out of red flowers. Navarro has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Frost Art Museum in Miami and the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah. He has also been included in notable group exhibitions, at such institutions as the Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem, El Museo del Barrio in New York, and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá, Colombia. In 2009, Navarro represented Chile at the Venice Biennale.

Courtney Smith is an artist working in sculpture and performance. Raised in Paris in the 1970s and early 1980s, she went on to study in the United States, graduating from Yale University in 1988 with BA in Comparative Literature and Art. Shortly after graduating, she moved to Rio de Janeiro where she lived uninterruptedly for eleven years. In Brazil, she studied at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage and established herself as an artist active in the Brazilian context of the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2000 she transferred her base to New York and began exhibiting internationally, maintaining a studio in Brooklyn and also in Rio. In 2004 she met her partner, artist Iván Navarro, with whom she joined forces personally and professionally. Smith has exhibited her work throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America. Her work has been shown in institutions such as the Museu de Arte Moderna-São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna-Rio de Janeiro, Museo de Bellas Artes-Buenos Aires, Museo de Bellas Artes-Santiago de Chile, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Culturgest in Lisbon, PS1-MoMA, El Museo del Barrio , the Chelsea Art Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. 2014 marked a rupture with her professional past and a reformulation of her artistic project by recasting its fundamental objective and its field of operation. Having reached a point where she felt no longer willing or able to make work as finished objects for exhibition, she began to make sculpture for the sole purpose of being momentarily activated in the context of delimited, guided social interactions: “functions” which she creates in collaboration with Navarro.

In 2014, after years of isolated collaborations, Smith and Navarro formed a specific category of conjoint work in sculpture and performance, which Smith now pursues exclusively. Since 2014 Smith and Navarro’s performances have taken place in a variety of contexts, such as workshops, unoccupied buildings or public spaces, either as independent initiatives or commissioned by institutions. Smith and Navarro spent the year of 2015 living and working in Santiago de Chile, returning to their Brooklyn base in 2016.

Special thanks to Central City Association, NOW Art LA, and The Garey Building.

SUPPORT FOR THIS EXHIBITION IS PROVIDED BY:

THE OFFIELD FAMILY FOUNDATION
PASADENA ARTS ALLIANCE
LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS
LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARTS COMMISSION
LAND ARTIST SPONSOR HELAINE BLATT
LAND NOMADIC COUNCIL

The works commissioned for LAND are a stepping stone in the greater evolution of Manley’s Elegy for Whatever paintings: a series of works that continue his meditations on our times. The media has increasingly filled the artist with an overwhelming sense of anxiety; the Elegy paintings allow Manley to process disturbing international events and to find a personal form of conflict resolution. Manley uses very little brushwork in these pieces. Visible instead are “puncture dashes” that came out of that aforementioned anxiety–the slashes are notations that Manley used to remind himself of areas that he wanted to revisit. The paintings are an opportunity to reflect on previous iterations studying concepts of pre-textural forms of communication, and the history of text in painting and figurative movement. Manley’s vertical application of paint echoes Japanese 19th century Edo woodblock prints whose often “impossible” perspectives suggest a mental exercise or frame of mind worth emulating.

Dashiell Manley’s (b.1983, Fontana, CA) work has been featured in exhibitions in São Paulo, Sydney, Torino, Vienna, Austin, and New York. His work is in the public collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles). In 2016, Jessica Silverman Gallery published a catalogue featuring Manley’s “New York Times Paintings.” Manley has a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles. He is represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York and Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

1399 Factory Place
Los Angeles, CA 90013
June 16 – 17, 2017

About the Performance

In 1939, at the onset of WWII, thirty-one year-old French composer Olivier Messiaen was drafted into the French Army, and was eventually captured and imprisoned as a POW in Stalag VIII A, at Görlitz, Germany. It was here, on January 15, 1941, in the camp’s theater barrack and amidst bitter cold, that Messiaen’s composition, Quartet for the End of Time (Quatour pour la fin du Temps), first premiered to an audience of prisoners and German prison guards. Prior to his capture, Messiaen had begun to compose what would become one part of Quartet in 1940 while stationed in Verdun. There, he also met and befriended cellist Etienne Pasquier and clarinetist Henri Akoka, who were to become fellow prisoners at Stalag VIII A, and who, along with a fourth POW, violinist Eugène Jean Le Boulaire, comprised the quartet of musicians who first performed Quartet for the End of Time.

Messiaen, a devout Catholic, was less interested in “the end of time” as an apocalyptic overlay than as a temporal one; he found inspiration for the work in a passage from Revelation referencing the collapsing of time into eternity (“There will be no more Time”). But the oppressive conditions within which the work was conceived and presented—set against the backdrop of wartime conditions in Nazi Germany—contribute to the work’s broader narrative and reception.

It is because of this context that multidisciplinary artist Susan Silton felt compelled to present Quartet, to which she began listening soon after the 2016 US Presidential election. Citing the alarming connections between past and present conditions, especially vis-à-vis the current targeting in this country of individuals on the basis of religion, race, and/or gender, Silton has referred to the work’s “sense of urgency as well as its mournful acceptance—the coexistence of resistance and resignation, anger and calm.” Silton’s staging of the work was sited in the heart of downtown Los Angeles’ thriving art district—an area that has itself been a contested site with respect to issues of displacement, gentrification, and invisibility. The artist addressed some of these latter issues in her work, A Sublime Madness in the Soul (2015), an operatic work presented through the windows of her then-studio on Anderson Street, which was visually and audibly experienced from the now dismantled 6th Street Bridge.

As part of the performance of Quartet, Silton invited LA-based choreographer Flora Wiegmann to create a spare score for four dancers, and chose to stage the work with an all-female cast of musicians and performers, in stark contrast to by and for whom it was first performed.

“Music serves for us as a conduit to the ineffable,” Olivier Messiaen once said. In this unsettling time of political and social uncertainty, Silton’s presentation of Quartet for the End of Time suggests the power of music to capture nature, social/political upheaval, the breadth of humanity, and the significance of reframing artistic works from the past in order to reflect on the present. In such times, music can perhaps elicit, identify, or explain the full range of human emotions when words alone seem to fail.

About Susan Silton
Susan Silton resides in Los Angeles. Her multi-disciplinary projects engage multiple aesthetic strategies to mine the complexities of subjectivity and subject positions, often through poetic combinations of humor, discomfort, subterfuge and unabashed beauty. Silton’s work takes form in performative and participatory-based projects, photography, video, installation, text/audio works, and print-based projects, and presents in diverse contexts such as public sites, social network platforms, and traditional galleries and institutions. Her work has been exhibited/presented nationally and internationally at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; LA><ART, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum; ICA/ Philadelphia; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, among others. Projects include the commissioned installation, In everything there is the trace at USC Fisher Museum, the book project, Who’s in a Name? (both 2013), and the site-specific opera, A Sublime Madness in the Soul (composed by Juliana Snapper, 2015), which presented through the windows of the artist’s then-studio in downtown Los Angeles. In November, 2015, Silton’s Whistling Project was included in SITE Santa Fe’s year-long series of exhibitions, SITE 20 Years/20 Shows, which included a commissioned performance by Silton’s women’s whistling group, The Crowing Hens. She has received fellowships and awards from the Getty/California Community Foundation, Art Matters, Center for Cultural Innovation, Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Los Angeles, The MacDowell Colony, Banff Centre for the Arts, Durfee Foundation, The Shifting Foundation, and most recently, Fellows of Contemporary Art (FOCA). Silton’s work has been featured in numerous publications including Artforum, Art21, KCET’s Artbound, Art in America, X-TRA, ArtLies, Flash Art, and Cabinet.

Olivier Messiaen’s QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME
Directed by: Susan Silton
Choreography by: Flora Wiegmann
Costumes: Shpetim Zero
Lighting and Technical Production: Studio Sereno

Musicians:
Shalini Vijayan, violin
Michiko Ogawa, clarinet
Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, cello
Vicki Ray, piano

Dancers:
Deborah Cohen
Norianna Galindo-Ramirez
Kianna Peppers
Flora Wiegmann

And with Cristina Frias

This project was supported in part by a 2017 Fellows of Contemporary Art FOCAFellowship, granted to mid-career artists in recognition of their significant contributions to the California art scene.

Support for EXCHANGE VALUE is Provided by:

PASADENA ARTS ALLIANCE
LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS
LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARTS COMMISSION
LAND ARTIST SPONSOR HELAINE BLATT
LAND NOMADIC COUNCIL

On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller was a group exhibition of sculpture, painting, photography, video, and performance centered on the themes present in the work of under-recognized avant-garde filmmaker Marjorie Keller (1950-1994), co-curated by Los Angeles-based artists Alika Cooper and Anna Mayer. Cooper and Mayer sought to establish the significance of Keller’s contributions to visual culture, and to make visible states of being that are difficult to articulate or are deliberately avoided by mainstream culture. The exhibition considered Keller’s insistence on occupying a position not easily consumed by a singular ideological agenda. Her films were significant in the way they make clear the primacy of bodily engagement as a place from which to critique the status quo. Cooper and Mayer chose contemporary and historical works that explore the material aspects of vision and the act of envisioning, along with artists who have created commissioned site-specific works, responding directly to these themes within the context of the Gamble House. Included works range from figurative/representational painting and film to process-based sculptural works and performances that register the presence and absence of bodies and objects. In honor of Keller’s complex relationship to the feminism of her time, On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller presented artworks from multiple perspectives and stances.

The exhibition explored links between motifs and strategies emerging from Keller’s films, as well as the themes present in her work. Participating artists included renowned international practitioners from Keller’s generation, as well as younger artists, along with a selection of Keller’s work. Artists included Chantal Akerman, Shiva Aliabadi, Vanessa Beecroft, Ashley Carter, Alika Cooper, Cheryl Donegan, VALIE EXPORT, Naomi Fisher, Nan Goldin, Trulee Grace Hall, Donna Huanca, Kartemquin Films, Marjorie Keller, Josh Mannis, Anna Mayer, Paul Pescador, Vincent Ramos, Carolee Schneemann, and Jennifer West.

The exhibition was presented at the historic Gamble House in Pasadena, CA, an outstanding example of American Arts and Crafts style architecture. The house and furnishings were designed by architects Charles and Henry Greene in 1908 for David and Mary Gamble of the Procter & Gamble Company, which is a landmarked historic site for the public, owned by the City of Pasadena and operated by the University of Southern California. The domestic setting and exploratory nature of navigating throughout the house to discover the works in the exhibition framed the significance of the familial and the familiar in Keller’s work.

The exhibition was on view October 8 – December 11, 2016, at the Gamble House with exhibition specific tours on Saturday and Sunday. LAND presented various programs throughout the run of the show, including a screening and performances.

Support for this exhibition was provided by MATCHESFASHION.COM, the global luxury-shopping destination for men and women, bringing together a modern edit of over 400 established and emerging designers. Experience MATCHESFASHION.COM online, in its London stores, and at No.23, its private-shopping townhouse. With over 25 years in luxury fashion,  MATCHESFASHION.COM delivers to over 140 countries and offers 24/7 advice through MyStylist, its dedicated fashion-concierge team.

Product donation for this exhibition was provided by B&O Play. Firmly grounded in decades of design excellence, craftsmanship and product innovation from Bang & Olufsen, B&O PLAY interprets the same values for a new type of contemporary products aimed at design-conscious urbanites with an active lifestyle. The B&O PLAY portfolio is made up of products, that are intuitive to use and easy to integrate into your daily life – at home or on the move.

VIDEO WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION:

Select videos that were part of the exhibition are viewable at the links below.

Trulee Hall, Side By Side By Suggestion

Josh Mannis, Temple of Fashion Featuring Joe Deutch

Cheryl Donegan, I Still Want to Drown

PAST PROGRAMS

Paul Pescador: The Visitors
Performance and screening as part of
On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller
Thursday, November 3, 2016
7:30pm
The Gamble House:
4 Westmoreland Place
Pasadena, CA 91103

As part of LAND’s exhibition, On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller, artist Paul Pescador presented an associated performance and screening. The Visitors is a short film shot inside Pasadena’s historic Gamble House. In the film, hand-drawn and stop-motion animation illustrate personal narrative, telling the story of two young brothers visiting their aunt’s house for a long weekend. These boys constantly find themselves getting in trouble as they wander through the Gamble House and the surrounding neighborhood.

Intimate Observer: Home-Movie Family Portrayals by Marjorie Keller
Closing Reception & Film Screening as part of
On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller
Saturday, December 10, 2016
4:00 – 8:30pm
The Gamble House:
4 Westmoreland Place
Pasadena, CA 91103

LAND and Los Angeles Filmforum presented Intimate Observer: Home-Movie Family Portrayals by Marjorie Keller. Curated by Steve Anker, CalArts Film/Video Faculty and co-curator of Film at REDCAT, six exceedingly rare prints were screened in conjunction with the exhibition.

In her brief life, Marjorie Keller (1950-1994) made nearly thirty films in her own distinctive cinematic voice. From her earliest efforts in the late 1960s, Marjorie was attracted to film’s potential to portray the complexity of private events and personal relationships, mostly in response to family life. With an introduction by Steve Anker, this rare screening presented several of her films as they were originally intended, as 8mm or 16mm prints (blown-up from 8mm camera material). Films include:

She/va (1973, Regular 8mm, Color, Silent, 3 min.)

By 2’s and 3’s: Women (1976, Regular 8mm, Color, Silent, 7 min.)

Part IV: Green Hill (1972,  Regular 8mm on 16mm, color, Silent, 3 min.)

Misconception (1977, Super-8mm on 16mm, Color, Sound, 42 min.)

Ancient Parts and Foreign Parts (1979, 16mm, Color, Silent, 6 min.)

The Fallen World (1983, 16mm, Color/B&W, Sound, 9 min.)

This program was co-presented with Los Angeles Filmforum under the generous supervision of LA Filmforum Director Adam Hyman. Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation.  Steve Anker, former dean of the School of Film/Video, has also served as director of the San Francisco Cinematheque and as artistic director of the Foundation for Art in Cinema. He holds an MFA in Filmmaking and Film History from Columbia University and served for many years as professor of film at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Arcana: Books on the Arts
8675 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
July 10, 2016

Please join LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) in celebrating the launch of Bettina Hubby’s new artist publication, Thanks for the Mammaries, on Sunday, July 10, 2016 from 4-6pm at Arcana: Books on the Arts (8675 Washington Blvd. Culver City, CA 90232). The book documents the various iterations of Hubby’s ongoing project, Thanks for the Mammaries, the Facebook feed, which was installed at the LAND HQ from October through November of 2015. 

In 2014, Hubby announced her Breast Cancer diagnosis on Facebook and asked her friends and community to submit “boob-related imagery.” People showered Hubby with images, videos, and verbiage that helped her heal and inspired her to pay it forward. Touched by the uplifting effect of this communal support, Hubby sent out a call to artists to submit works for an exhibition. The exhibitions and online Facebook feed displayed the outpouring of support that resulted from Hubby’s call to action, selections of which are documented in the publication. Hubby writes, “What continues to bring me the most satisfaction is the feedback regarding my approach, in that it has been positively impacting and inspiring people who have (and even many who have not) faced illness in their lives, or in their loved ones’ lives. This is why I wanted to release this as a book to a wider audience. This book is dedicated to the medicinal power of boobishness.”

Hubby’s new limited edition, B(*)(*)B DOOB, produced by Klowden Mann, will also be released at the event. The serial edition, What will she DOOB next?, consists of eight Hubby-centric self-portrait figurines created using DOOB-3D printing technology. The first in the series will be a portrait of Hubby that directly relates to Thanks for the Mammaries. These figures will be offered as a subscription, published quarterly, or sold individually. For further details, please contact Klowden Mann at Deb@KlowdenMann.com.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Bettina Hubby (b. 1968 in New York) received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her practice is wide-ranging, encompassing curatorial and project-based work as well as more traditional media such as collage, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and photography. Hubby’s projects engage diverse communities and often exist in settings that challenge the conventions of exhibition spaces, celebrating collaboration and resisting easy categorization. Her work and projects have been presented at Klowden Mann (2013); Paris Photo LA (2015); The Grinstein Artist Invitational, Rosamund Felsen Gallery (chosen by Ed Ruscha) (2014); Dig the Dig, Santa Monica Museum of Art (2013); The Eagle Rock Rock and Eagle Shop (2012); Home Show, California Arts Foundation, Santa Barbara (2011); and Forming Storming Norming and Performing, Circus Gallery (2008), among many others. She was featured in Wallpaper* as one of the top creative talents in Los Angeles (2015), ArtForum’s Best of 2014 (2014), has been featured on NPR (2013), and her work has been written about in LA Weekly (2014), New York Magazine (2014), Los Angeles Times (2013), Artslant (2013), the Huffington Post (2014), and many others.

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LAND commissioned Guadalajara-based artist Jose Dávila to create Sense of Place, a multi-site, large-scale, public sculpture exhibition migrating through, and integrating into, the diverse urban landscape of Los Angeles to draw a portrait of the city’s many experiences, geographies and histories. Sense of Place was derived from Davila’s Joint Effort sculpture series which expands the concepts of balance and equilibrium using basic construction materials such as concrete blocks and stones.

In continuation of this exploration, Sense of Place consists of a eight foot square cube sculpture comprised of 40 unique concrete conjunctional forms. Initially installed in West Hollywood Park in September 2017, over the course of nine months the sculpture will slowly disassemble its various pieces, migrating to far reaching locales of the city such as landmarks, significant architectural sites, community hubs, shopping malls, bus stops, etc., taking on different functional forms at each location. In this sense the pieces become a social platform promoting interaction with the public, who will ultimately decide on the final function of the artwork.

Sense of Place is built in six layers and will transition in three movements in November, January and March, positioning the modular pieces in their temporary surroundings for a period of two to six months, after which the piece will reassemble in May 2018. As part of the third movement in March 2018, the sculpture pieces migrated to the John Sowden House (Los Feliz), the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre (Downtown), Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Hollywood), the Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles (Downtown), Lewis MacAdams Park (Frogtown), Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center (Silverlake), and Grand Park (Downtown) as part of the Our L.A. Voices – Spring Arts Festival. First movement sites include Inner City Arts (Downtown), Brand Library & Art Center (Glendale), Plummer Park (West Hollywood), MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Fitzpatrick-Leland House (Hollywood Hills), and the Santa Monica Pier (Santa Monica). Second movement sites include Marciano Art Foundation (Mid-Wilshire), UCLA Lab School (Westwood), a private craftsman residence (Echo Park), Beverly Hills City Hall (Beverly Hills), and Los Angeles Union Station (Downtown). In its final iteration, the sculpture will return to its original whole cube re-installed at West Hollywood Park holding its travel histories in its reunited form.

Sense of Place is Dávila’s largest public undertaking to date and his first major exhibition in Los Angeles. A post-exhibition catalogue will document the various stages of transformation and include 20 thematic essays by different Mexican and Los Angeles-based authors.  The research and implementation of this project was supported in large part through grants from the Getty Foundation.

ANCHOR SITE
WEST HOLLYWOOD PARK
647 N San Vicente Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Metro Bus 704 Santa Monica/San Vicente

FIRST MOVEMENT SITES

INNER CITY ARTS
720 Kohler St.
Los Angeles, CA 90021
Metro Bus 60 7th/Ceres
Viewable from the street

BRAND LIBRARY AND ART CENTER
1601 W Mountain St.
Glendale, CA 91201
Metro Bus 92 Glenoaks/Sonora

MAK CENTER FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Viewable by Appointment
Email info@nomadicdivision.org

PLUMMER PARK
7377 Santa Monica Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90046
Metro Bus 704 Santa Monica/Gardner

SANTA MONICA PIER
200 Santa Monica Pier
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Metro Downtown Santa Monica Station

SECOND MOVEMENT SITES

MARCIANO ART FOUNDATION
4357 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Metro Wilshire/Western Station
Temporarily closed February – March 2018

LOS ANGELES UNION STATION
800 N Alameda St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Metro Union Station

UCLA LAB SCHOOL
330 Charles E Young Dr N.
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Metro Bus 2/302 Hilgard/Wyton
Viewable by Appointment
Email info@nomadicdivision.org

ECHO PARK RESIDENCE
1046 W Kensington Rd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Metro Bus 704 Sunset/Echo Park
Viewable from the Street

BEVERLY HILLS CITY HALL
455 N Rexford Dr.
Beverly Hills CA 90210
Metro Bus 704 to Santa Monica/Canon

THIRD MOVEMENT SITES

BOB BAKER MARIONETTE THEATER
1345 W 1st St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Metro Bus 17 3rd/Lucas

HOLLYWOOD FOREVER
6000 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90038
Metro Bus 704 Santa Monica/Vine
8:30am – 5pm

GRAND PARK
200 N Grand Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Metro Civic Center/Grand Park Station
On View April 23 – April 29, 2018

JOHN SOWDEN HOUSE
5121 Franklin Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Metro Hollywood/Western Station
Viewable from the Street

LEWIS MACADAMS PARK
2944 Gleneden St.
Los Angeles, CA 90039
Metro Bus 96 Riverside/Gilroy

ACE HOTEL DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES
929 S Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90015
Metro Bus 78 Grand/8th St.

SILVERLAKE INDEPENDENT JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER
1110 Bates Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
Metro Bus 302 Sunset / Bates
Viewable by Appointment
Email info@nomadicdivision.org

La escultura de concreto de seis toneladas estará abierta al público diariamente del amanecer al atardecer en el parque hasta noviembre de 2017, fecha en que comenzará a desmontarse en 40 piezas de individuales para luego migrar así por toda la ciudad y ser reinstalada en aproximadamente 20 sitios distintos. La programación para celebrar la migración de la escultura se anunciará a lo largo de la exposición.

LAND encargó al artista con sede en Guadalajara, José Dávila, la creación de Sense of Place, una escultura pública a gran escala que se traslada a través e integrada en el  diverso paisaje de Los Ángeles para trazar un retrato de las múltiples experiencias, geografías e historias que vive la ciudad. Sense of Place se derivó de la serie escultórica Joint Effort (Esfuerzo Conjunto) en que Dávila expande los conceptos de equilibrio y balance utilizando materiales básicos de construcción tales como bloques de concreto y piedras en estado natural.

Como continuación de esta exploración, Sense of Place consiste en una escultura cúbica de 8x8x8 ft compuesta de 40 piezas únicas de concreto. Inicialmente instalada en West Hollywood Park, en el transcurso de nueve meses la escultura se desmontará lentamente en sus diversas piezas, que serán trasladadas a lugares tan distintos de la ciudad como hitos, importantes sitios arquitectónicos, centros comunitarios, centros comerciales, paradas de autobús, etc., tomando así cada una de sus formas funciones distintas en cada lugar. En este sentido, las piezas se convierten en una plataforma social que promueve la interacción con el público, quien finalmente decidirá sobre la función última de la obra de arte.

Sense of Place está construida en seis capas y transitará en tres movimientos en noviembre, enero y marzo, colocando las piezas modulares en su entorno temporal por un período de dos a seis meses. Después de este periodo la pieza se volverá a montar en mayo de 2018. Para el primer movimiento en noviembre de este año, una tercer parte de las piezas que conforman el cubo migrarán a la biblioteca y centro de arte Brand (Glendale), parque Plummer(West Hollywood), Grand Central Market (Centro de Los Ángeles), Fitzpatrick Leland House (en el Centro MAK de Arte y Arquitectura Hollywood Hills), y al muelle de Santa Mónica. Como parte del segundo movimiento de Sense of Place, en enero 2018 piezas de la escultura migrarán a la Marciano Art Foundation (Mid-Wilshire), UCLA Lab School (Westwood), al frente de una residencia privada (Echo Park), a Beverly Hills City Hall (Beverly Hills), y a Los Angeles Union Station (Downtown). Los sitios para el segundo y tercer movimiento serán anunciados en los próximos meses.

En su iteración final, la escultura volverá a reinstalarse en el parque de West Hollywood en su forma cúbica original conteniendo así sus historias de viaje unificadas. Sense of Place es el mayor proyecto público de Dávila hasta la fecha y su primera gran exposición en Los Angeles.

LAND presentará diversos programas públicos a lo largo de la exposición, incluyendo proyecciones, mesas redondas y performances, todas creadas en colaboración con los sitios que acogerán a las esculturas e inspiradas por la comunidad circundante. Un catálogo post-exposición documentará las diversas etapas de la transformación e incluirá 20 ensayos temáticos de diferentes autores mexicanos e internacionales basados ​​en Los Ángeles.

ACERCA DE JOSE DÁVILA (1974)
El artista basado en Guadalajara crea esculturas, instalaciones, collages y obras fotográficas que utilizan la reproducción, el homenaje y la imitación como un medio para explorar y desmantelar los legados del arte y la arquitectura de vanguardia del siglo XX. Artista autodidacta con un gran interés por la cultura occidental y la historia del arte, Dávila juega con elementos de estos intereses en su práctica artística. Utilizando diferentes estrategias de reproducción, la obra de Dávila hace referencia a artistas y arquitectos que van desde Luis Barragán y Mathias Goeritz hasta Donald Judd, y explora cómo el movimiento modernista ha sido traducido, apropiado y reinventado en el discurso actual del arte contemporáneo. El interés de Dávila por el uso de materiales cotidianos y de construcción para crear esculturas e instalaciones evoca un sentido de familiaridad para el espectador. Más recientemente, Dávila ha mostrado un interés particular por la ocupación del espacio público a través de gestos de práctica social y estructuras que aluden a la evolución de los paisajes urbanos.

PREVIOUS PROGRAMMING

CLOSING RECEPTION
Saturday, July 21, 2018
5-7 pm
Anchor Site
West Hollywood Park
647 N San Vicente Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Free shaved ice was provided by Slusheeland

SECOND MOVEMENT RECEPTION
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
7-9pm
MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Viewers were able to meet the artist and view the sculptures installed in a historic modernist house.
Sponsored by Sierra Nevada Brewery and Firestone Walker Brewery

FIRST MOVEMENT RECEPTION
Thursday, November 9, 2017
4-5:30pm
Viewers were able to meet the artist  and view the newly installed individual sculptures at the tip of the Santa Monica Pier during sunset with free carnival popcorn.

6-8pm
Reception at
O+O Sicilian Kitchen & Bar
1705 Ocean Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90401

OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday, September 16, 2017
2-5pm
West Hollywood Park
Viewers were able to meet the artist and view the newly unveiled sculpture in its assembled form.
Free ice cream was provided by Carmela Ice Cream Co.

ABOUT JOSE DÁVILA: Guadalajara-based artist Jose Dávila (b. 1974) creates sculptures, installations, collages, and photographic works that use reproduction, homage, and imitation as a means to explore and dismantle the legacies of twentieth century avant-garde art and architecture. A self-taught artist with a heightened interest in Western culture and art history, Dávila plays with elements of modernist architecture and art in his artistic practice. Using different reproduction strategies, Dávila’s work references artists and architects ranging from Luis Barragán and Mathias Goeritz to Donald Judd, and explores how the modernist movement has been translated, appropriated, and reinvented in the current discourse of contemporary art. Dávila’s interest in Modernist architecture and use of everyday materials to create sculptures and installations evokes a sense of familiarity for the viewer. Most recently, Dávila has shown a particular interest in the occupation of space through gestures of social practice inspired by public structures which allude to the evolution of urban landscapes.

ABOUT PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles taking place from September 2017 through January 2018. Led by the Getty, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a collaboration of arts institutions across Southern California. Through a series of thematically linked exhibitions and programs, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA highlights different aspects of Latin American and Latino art from the ancient world to the present day. With topics such as luxury arts in the pre-Columbian Americas, 20th century Afro- Brazilian art, alternative spaces in Mexico City, and boundary-crossing practices of Latino artists, exhibitions range from monographic studies of individual artists to broad surveys that cut across numerous countries. Supported by more than $16 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA involves more than 70 cultural institutions from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, and from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

SELECTED PRESS

Jill Moniz, LAND / Various Locations Jose Dávila: Sense of Place, Fabrik, January 21, 2018

Carolina Miranda, Datebook: A performance art fest, a film composed from still images, an artist paints his father’s gun, Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2018

WeHo Celebrates L.A.’s Latino Heritage with Exhibits, Dance and Films WeHoville,October 27, 2017

Wendy Gilmartin, Architecture’s Border Crossings, KCET, October 3, 2017

Jordan Riefe, ‘Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA’ Begins With a Bang at Getty Center Celebration, The Hollywood Reporter, September 17, 2017

Jori Finkel, What to see at Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, The Art Newspaper, September 16, 2017

Julia Halperin, Artist Jose Dávila Plans a Portrait of LA by Sending Out Blank Sculptures–And Waiting for the Graffiti to Arrive, artnet News, September 14, 2017

Maximiliano Durón and Alex Greenberger, See What the Top 200 Collectors Bought in the Past Year, ARTNews,September 11, 2017

Gerardo Lammers, Guadalajara Artist Jose Dávila Moves Around LA, Artillery, September 5, 2017

Andrea Toro, Jose Dávila: Tension, Compression, Balance Metal Magazine, September 2017

Katy Diamond Hamer, Jose Dávila’s Monumental Concrete Sculptures Journey Through L.A., Galerie Magazine, August 30, 2017

LEAD SUPPORT FOR THIS EXHIBITION IS PROVIDED THROUGH GRANTS BY
THE GETTY FOUNDATION

MAJOR SUPPORT FOR THIS EXHIBITION IS PROVIDED BY
GRUPO NAPRESA
THE OFFIELD FAMILY FOUNDATION

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THIS EXHIBITION IS PROVIDED BY
ANGELES ART FUND
VIA ART FUND
THE CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD
LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARTS COMMISSION
ARTIST SPONSOR BARBARA BELZBERG
ARTIST SPONSOR MAURICE MARCIANO
ARTIST SPONSOR BRENDA R. POTTER
LAND NOMADIC COUNCIL

Special Thanks to the Kickstarter Contributors
Ann Soh Woods, Antonia Skelton, Ava Bromberg, Cecilia Dan, Christine Y Kim, Daniel Sharp, Danielle Brazell, Debra Scacco, Douglas Armour, E. M. Landaw, Erin Fussell, Esperanza Sanchez, Felix E. Klee, Heather Bhandari, John Geresi, Kelsey Lee Offield, Kim Allen-Niesen, Laura Hyatt, Lauren Phillips, Laurie Ziegler, Lori DeWolfe, Mark Fluent, Mark Sandelson, Meshal Alshammari, Mike Wu, Ned Freed, Patricia Ortiz Monasterio, Paul Savage, Regina Mamou, Robert Galstian, Sarah Odenkirk, Shane Brennan, Sherri Andrews, Soraya Haas, Sue de Beer, Virginia Joy Simmons, Zoe Crosher

THIS PROJECT IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

THIS PROJECT IS PRESENTED WITH THE SUPPORT OF

This project  is presented with the support of City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts program. For more information, please visit www.weho.org/arts or follow via social media @WeHoArts.

Downtown Los Angeles
2017 – 2018

Exchange Value is a multi-site group exhibition comprised of installations, performances, and interactive events that will activate and link various locations and communities throughout Downtown Los Angeles. The exhibition considers concepts of value and exchange: the ways in which objects and experiences are assigned value, how value is denoted/connoted, and the social transaction of beliefs, cultures, and commodities. Exchange Value uses site-specific projects – presented over time and space – as a vehicle to navigate the current evolution of Downtown LA, while exploring broader social concepts such as social justice, value of culture, displacement, local and national politics, gentrification, and more.

Artists participating in Exchange Value are Iván Navarro/Courtney Smith, Alison O’Daniel, and Susan Silton.

Susan Silton
June 16 & 17, 2017

Quartet for the End of Time

Ivan Navarro & Courtney Smith
July 20-22, 2018

The Ring

Alison O’Daniel
November 18, 2018

The Sea, The Stars, A Landscape

Support for EXCHANGE VALUE is Provided by:

THE OFFIELD FAMILY FOUNDATION
PASADENA ARTS ALLIANCE
LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS
LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARTS COMMISSION
LAND ARTIST SPONSOR HELAINE BLATT
LAND NOMADIC COUNCIL

1019 E. 4th Place
Los Angeles, CA 90013
February 12 – 14, 2016
Public Preview: Friday
6 – 9pm
Saturday and Sunday
12 – 7pm

The general gist is: Over 150 artists will be given a table or space or wall to sell their stuff. It’s all based on a real flea market, where need, greed, and expression all come together!

Food and drink available from Funky Chef Cafe, Paninissimo, Shreebs Coffee, Sno Con Amor, The Greasy Wiener, Soup Bazaar and more. Cocktails courtesy of Material Vodka.

Artists Include:

Adriana Caras – Aili Schmeltz – Alex Becerra – Alexandra Grant – Alika Cooper – Alison O’Daniel & Scoli Acosta – Amanda Joy – Amanda Mcgough – Amanda Ross-Ho & Erik Frydenborg – Ana Prvacki – Andrea Zittel – Anna Mayer – Anna Sew Hoy – Ardeshir Tabrizi – Ariel Herwitz & Haynes Riley – Artist Curated Projects – Bailey Lawless – Bari Ziperstein – Bert Rodriguez – Bettina Hubby – Big City Forum – Brendan Fowler – Brittany Mojo & Chris Miller – Bryce Polaski – Carl Pomposelli – Carter Mull – Chandler Mcwilliams – Charles Irvin – Christine Wang – Cole Sterberg – Dane Johnson & Matt Nichols – Daniel Ingroff – Dave Muller – Dave Sayre – David Hendren – David Quadrini – Dean Spunt – Dwyer Kilcollin – Dylan Mira – Eden Batki – Edgar Bryan – Egyptian Art & Antiques – Eric Wesley – Erlea Maneros Zabala – Ethan Rafal – Fay Ray – Friendswithyou – Glenn Kaino – Grant Levy-Doolittle & Michael Dopp – Gregory Michael Hernandez – Guava Lou – Hadley Holliday – Harmony Murphy Gallery – Hayley Barker – High Desert Test Sites – James Franco – James Georgopoulos – James White – Jasmin Shokrian – Jason Bailer Losh – Jason Roberts Dobrin – Jay Stuckey – Jen Stark – Jennifer Boysen – Joe Sola – John Kilduff – John Monn – Jon Pylypchuk – Josh Peters – JPW3 – Julia Leonard – Julian Hoeber – Julie Machado – Karl Haendel & Emily Mast – Kate Costello & Jedediah Caesar – Katie Grinnan – Keith Rocka Knittel – Kelly Lamb – Last Projects – Laurel Doody – Lisa Solberg – Liz Craft & Pentti Monkkonen – Luis Salgado – Luke Haeger – Mama Gallery – Marie Allen – Mario Ybarra Jr. – Mark Verabioff – Martine Syms – Matt Greene – Matt Merkel Hess & David Zuttermeister – Matthew Clifford Green – Max Maslansky – Meghan Gordon – Melanie Nakaue – Meredith Danluck – Michael Genovese – Michele O’marah – Monique Van Genderen – Ohr – Olga Koumoundouros – Park View – Paul Pascal Theriault – Paul Pescador – Pearl C. Hsiung & Yair Sarmiento – Peter Sebeckis – Rachel Mason – Rachelle Sawatsky – Ramdasha Bikceem – Richard Heller Gallery – Rives Granade – Rob Reynolds – Robert Russell – Ry Rocklen – Sam Gordon – Samantha Thomas – Sarah Rara – Sean Brian Mcdonald – Stephen Neidich – Suzanne Wright – Taylor Tschider – Terry Chatkupt – Tessie Salcido Whitmore – Tomory Dodge – Tracy Wilkinson – Tuesday Yates & Steve Hanson – Vacancy – Vanessa Kowalski – Vincent Szarek – Xara Thustra – Zachary Helper – Zoe Crosher

Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market is made possible by Hudson Pacific and Creative Space and exhibition supporters Maria Arena Bell, Beth DeWoody, Marcy Miller, Thao Nguyen, and Kelsey Lee Offield.

Special thanks to Guru Printers and Material Vodka.

Video of OHR performing at the opening:

Press Release

 

March 12 – July 17, 2016

Wasteland was a group exhibition curated by LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division)’s Director and Curator, Shamim M. Momin, at two parallel venues in Paris: the Mona Bismarck American Center and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin. The exhibition was on view from March 11 through July 17, 2016. Wasteland featured many of the most exciting contemporary artists based in Los Angeles, including Edgar Arceneaux, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Math Bass, Mark Bradford, Sam Falls, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Jon Pylypchuk, Fay Ray, Ry Rocklen, Amanda Ross-Ho, Analia Saban, Shannon Ebner/Erika Vogt, and Brenna Youngblood. 

This unprecedented collaboration between LAND, the Mona Bismarck American Center, and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac presented a unique opportunity to expand the reach of each institution’s audience, particularly that of LAND with this ambitious exhibition being the organization’s first international endeavor. Furthering the dialogue between two of the most dynamic art cities in the world, LAND and its partners presented curated programming that took place in both Paris and Los Angeles throughout the run of the exhibition.

Drawing on T.S. Eliot’s seminal modernist poem, The Waste Land, as the thematic thread between the 14 participating artists, the exhibition presented a reflexive, complex, multi-dimensional conversation about the poetics of despair, the search for true connection, the tenuous state of morality, and the uncertainty, yet necessity, of the future. The original text was published in 1922, written at a moment of disturbing parallel to the present, one of great disillusionment with the state of the world politically (post WWI) and culturally (the modern urban landscape) and individually (the increasing loss of true communication, connection, and faith).

Beyond the literary referent, the title also evokes other definitions and connotations — whether the old chestnut (long disproven but still present) of Los Angeles as a “cultural wasteland,” or a more literal reading of the word applied to the physical geography of both the city and the natural landscape of Southern California. It additionally calls to mind resonant images of the post-apocalyptic, the post-human, the potential future, largely created through the image magic of Los Angeles’ greatest export, Hollywood.

Diverse in nature and practice, the artists in Wasteland, who are all connected to Los Angeles, work in many different media and modes of presentation — a kind of “expanded practice” in which all aspects of their oeuvre are considered equally important; a performance as much as a sculpture, an interactive installation as much as a painting, a music group as much as a photograph. In keeping with this approach, this exhibition was an opportunity to additionally consider site — both the specific venues, as well as the city of Paris itself — as part of the work presented. In every case, the artist created a newly commissioned work or recombined works to create a conversation with and between the two venues, as well as the two cities.

Furthering the idea of Los Angeles of a wasteland, the exhibition highlighted a number of techniques, materials, and themes, examples of which include Edgar Arceneaux’s sculptural labrynthe library of crystallized books and scrolls engaging notions of the trajectiory of Art History and African American identity; Lisa Anne Auerbach’s pairings of her political and provocative knitted panels and matching garments; Mark Bradford’s cascading sculptural painting in the staircase at the Mona Bismarck American Center of shreds of paper strips caked with paint and other debris edited from another work, referencing Bradford’s material and artistic waste; and Jon Pylypchuk’s anthropomorphic and otherworldy sculptural figures made of castaway objects such as cigarettes and old tennis rackets.

A catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition, with an overall thematic text by Shamim M. Momin. Los Angeles-based writers, art historians, editors, and curators were selected to contribute one essay specific to each of the fourteen artists on view. The writers include Andrew
Berardini, Carol Cheh, Trinie Dalton, Cesar Garcia, Suzanne Hudson, Laura Hyatt, Jamillah
James, Kristina Kite, Sharon Mizota, Julian Myers-Szupinska, Claire de Dobay Rifelj, and
Kate Wolf.

PAST PUBLIC EVENTS:

Opening Receptions
Mona Bismarck American Center
34 Avenue de New York, 75116 Paris

March 11, 2016
7 – 9pm

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin
69 Avenue du Général Leclerc, 93500 Pantin

March 13, 2016
2 – 6pm

Roundtable Discussion
Mona Bismarck American Center

March 12, 2016
3pm

Lisa Anne Auerbach’s WMEW Live FM Radio Broadcast
LAND HQ: 6775 Santa Monica Blvd. #5 Los Angeles, CA 90038

June 7, 2016
1 – 5pm

Join us in the parking lot of the LAND HQ from 1-5pm on Tuesday, June 7th (CA Presidential Primary Election Day) to tune in to artist Lisa Anne Auerbach’s live broadcast of WMEW as she reads voter information, electoral facts, and constitutional quotes.

A sign with the specific FM channel will be outside of the LAND HQ on June 7th. Channel only audible within approximately 200 feet of the LAND HQ. 

The exhibition will be open every day (except Christmas Eve/Day and New Year’s Eve/Day) from 11am-5pm from December 13, 2015 through January 6, 2016, and by appointment.

LAND HQ
6775 Santa Monica Boulevard #5
Los Angeles, CA 90038
October 1, 2015 – November 6, 2015
Opening Reception, Thursday, October 1, 2015
6 – 8pm

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 from 6-8pm, LAND unveiled its new, larger public headquarters in Hollywood (same strip mall, new unit!) with Los Angeles-based artist Bettina Hubby’s large-scale installation, Thanks for the Mammaries, the Facebook feed, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

The work chronicled the Facebook dialogue surrounding Hubby’s diagnosis of breast cancer and subsequent double mastectomy in 2014. When Hubby learned of her diagnosis, she reached out via Facebook to her friends and community to submit, “boob-related imagery”. The work was a compilation of the more than 100 submissions she received, representative of Hubby’s inherently collaborative artistic practice that utilizes humor to strengthen community bonds.

Alongside the installation, limited-edition artist objects created by Hubby were for sale, with all proceeds benefitting the Cancer Support Community at the Benjamin Center in Los Angeles.

The installation was open for viewing Monday through Friday, 11am-5pm, beginning Monday, October 5, 2015.

Special thanks to Klowden Mann.

Back to The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project

Enjoy an artist road trip playlist as you drive around LA during the Culminating Weekend! And be sure to listen to audio guides to the city provided by several of our artists. 

Drawing Workshop with Mario Ybarra Jr. 

2pm

6820 Santa Monica Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90038. RSVP Required

LAND invited guests to join artist Mario Ybarra Jr. for a drawing workshop in the billboard exhibition, which featured billboards from all ten chapters of The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND SITES

Digital billboard by Eve Fowler at 9039 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Ends June 30.

Mural by Mario Ybarra Jr. at the Andaz West Hollywood, 8401 Sunset Blvd.

Los Angeles Conservancy Art Deco Walking Tour: Saturday, June 27 at 10am

Los Angeles Conservancy Broadway Historic Theater and Commercial District Walking Tour: Saturday, June 27 at 10am

Los Angeles Conservancy Historic Downtown Walking Tour: Saturday, June 27 at 10am

Los Angeles Conservancy Downtown Renaissance Walking Tour: Saturday, June 27 at 10am

Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Skyline Walking Tour: Saturday, June 27 at 2pm

Rock and Roll Billboards on the Sunset Strip at the Skirball Cultural Center, through August 16

California African American Museum

El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument (Olvera Street)

The Autry National Center

Grand Central Market

Tongva Park

Inkwell Beach

Watts Towers

Back to Alter/Abolish/Address

Steel

Common Crossings (Riggs & Dakota) was a triad of steel railroad “frogs” (weighing one ton each), which are traintrack components used as switches to change the direction of trains and allow different tracks to cross each other. Vitale altered them further by installing them upright, as monuments of change, totems to the variable nature of movement and direction. Particularly relevant in the nation’s capital, the works, which were made from the structures symbolic of American industrialism and Westward Expansion, referenced this formidable past, while simultaneously altering the tracks’ function and purpose.

Evoking a body of otherworldly beings, the works stood in a triangulated formation, echoing the shape of the corner on which they were installed.  Presiding over this busy intersection where cars commonly cross through, the sculptures – which themselves allowed for similar intersections in a past era – subtly reflected this history.

Vitale (b. 1973; New York, NY) is a New York-based artist who uses performance to activate her architecturally and industrially referential sculptures, which are often made of found/discarded materials manipulated by processes such as burning, torching, or hammering.

Various programs and activations took place throughout the course of the exhibition in Washington, D.C. in collaboration with Pleasant Plains Workshop.

This work was presented as part of Alter/Abolish/Address: 5 site-specific commissioned projects throughout Washington, D.C. as part of 5×5:2014, a District-wide program of 25 contemporary, temporary public art projects dedicated to exploring new perspectives on the city through the lens of 5 curators, presented by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.