LA><ART

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT MELISSA GOLDBERG

323-951-9790, LAXARTPRESS@LAXART.ORG

2640 SOUTH LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD                 

LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90034 WWW.LAXART.ORG

LA><ART PRESENTS TWO NEW SOLO PROJECTS BY LOS ANGELES-BASED ARTISTS DREW HEITZLER AND CHRIS OLIVERIA AND A PUBLIC BILLBOARD BY NEW YORK-BASED COLLABORATIVE CARABALLO-FARMAN

Drew Heitzler, Lilith (for Fools, Addicts, Woodworkers, Hustlers) [still], 2009, appropriated video with sound, infinite loop, courtesy of the artist; LA><ART, Los Angeles; and Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles; and Chris Oliveria, Untitled, 2009, laser-cut vinyl, 6 feet (diameter), courtesy of the artist and LA><ART, Los Angeles

Drew Heitzler: Untitled (Baldwin Hills)

May 16 through June 20, 2009

LA><ART is pleased to present a new video installation by artist and filmmaker Drew Heitzler. The third chapter in a trilogy of works that address Los Angeles’ cultural history and urban landscape through the lenses of Hollywood cinema and the Los Angeles oil industry, Lilith (for Fools, Addicts, Woodworkers, Hustlers) hinges upon footage appropriated from the1964 film Lilith. Heitzler’s re-edit of the popular film allows for the emergence of new narrative arcs, repositioning Peter Fonda—in his first major motion-picture role—as the film’s central protagonist. The two previous projects from this series have focused on roles performed by Dennis Hopper in Night Tide (1961) and Jack Nicholson in The Wild Ride (1960), where their respective relationships to Los Angeles within the context of each film are explored through a process of revision. Resembling early Soviet cinema that pieced together new stories from the discarded fragments of found stock footage, Heitzler’s process relies on the conventions of editing to reposition the relationship that characters have to the city and its histories.

Lilith (for Fools, Addicts, Woodworkers, Hustlers) focuses on the figure of Stephen Evshevsky, played by Fonda, as he moves in and out of a series of deflated exchanges. Removing the dramatic tensions, dialogue, and linearity of the original film’s narrative, Heitzler’s re-edit imagines the psychosexual unease that underlies what is visible. An extended scene of rushing water alludes to the Baldwin Hills reservoir collapse of 1963—a disaster that resulted from the over-drilling of oil in this neighborhood. Within the context of a broader project, Lilith (for Fools, Addicts, Woodworkers, Hustlers) highlights the intersections of the movie industry and the clandestine Los Angeles oil industry, wherein the obscured histories of catastrophe, menace, and social decay are brought to the surface.

Drew Heitzler currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from Hunter College in 2000. Recent solo exhibitions include Untitled at Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles (2008) and Ladera Heights at Angstrom Gallery, Los Angeles (2007). His work has been included in such group exhibitions as 88:88 at The Project in New York (2007), Subway Sessions at PS1 Contemporary Arts Center in Queens, New York (2006), In Practice at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, New York and recently in the 2008 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Drew Heitzler: Untitled (Baldwin Hills) is made possible with the generous support of LA><ART’s Curators Council, an anonymous donor, and Lisa Schiff.

LA><ART PROJECT SPACEChris Oliveria: A Garden for Losing One’s Head

LA><ART is also pleased to present Chris Oliveria’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, entitled A Garden for Losing One’s Head. Comprised of a series of recent paintings, the artist has revealed that within the exhibition, “The shadow is what is almost known. It contains the individual and the collective; all and none of these things. Amorphous, restless, and hidden.” Bearing resemblance to cinematic and nocturnal effects of light and darkness, Oliveria’s figurative paintings situate the physical body in a clouded landscape, in a state between visibility and invisibility. Accompanying the exhibition is an interview with psychologist Dori Peck, in which Oliveria and his work undergo psychoanalytic analysis.

Los Angeles-based artist Chris Oliveria received his MFA from the California College of the Arts and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Selected solo and group exhibitions have taken place in venues such as Chez Valentin, Paris; Galleria Wunderk in Valencia, Spain; the San Jose Museum of Art; Kavi Gupta, Chicago; Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, San Francisco; the Wooster Art Museum, Ohio; the Luggage Store, San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and the Museum Of New Art, Detroit. He has attended residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts; Creative Growth, Oakland; and Centro de Actividades Investiagiones Artisticas, Barcelona Spain.

LA><ART PUBLIC BILLBOARD Part of LA><ART Public Art Initiatives with ForYourArt

(LAPD – LA Public Domain)

caraballo-farman: Regarding the Horror

A billboard project by New York-based artist collaborative caraballo-farman will be mounted concurrently throughout the month of May. Facing north on La Cienega Boulevard between Venice and Washington Boulevards, this project will serve as the first public iteration of an ongoing series of works entitled Regarding the Horror. Focused on the responses generated by scenes of terror, the digital manipulation of images appropriated from popular press coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq serves as the basis of their photographic project. Two isolated figures occupy an evacuated space. Their context has been digitally removed by the artists to reposition the subject’s relationship to the spectacle of violence. Responding to the incessant circulation of images focused on the intimacies of individual suffering, the translation of this series into a billboard examines the spectacularization of mourning within the public sphere.

caraballo-farman is a two-person collaborative working in video, installation and photography. Their work has been included in such national and international exhibitions as the Havana Biennial, Cuba and the Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador; the Tate Modern, UK; Berlinale, Germany, World Wide Video Festival and Impakt, Netherlands; the Banff Center for the Arts, Canada; Buenos Aires International Art Biennial, Argentina; Artists Space, New York; and PS1 Contemporary Arts Center in Queens, New York.

caraballo-farman would like to thank Ram Devineni and Rattapallax for making this project possible.

About LA><ART

Responding to Los Angelesʼ cultural climate, LA><ART questions given contexts for the exhibition of contemporary art, architecture and design. With a renewed vision for the potential of independent art spaces, LA><ART provides a center for interdisciplinary discussion and interaction and for the production and exhibition of new exploratory work. LA><ART offers a space for provocation, dialogue and confrontation by practices on the ground in LA and abroad. LA><ART is a hub for artists based on flexibility, transition, spontaneity and change. The space responds to an urgency and obligation to provide an accessible exhibition space for contemporary artists, architects and designers.

LAPD – LA Public Domain features artistic and curatorial collaborations and interventions in experimental contexts.

LA><ARTʼs programs are made possible with the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Peter Norton Family Foundation, the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, Danielson Foundation, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Campari, Eileen Harris Norton, Lisa Schiff, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, ForYourArt, Rattapallax, and the LA><ART Board of Directors, Producers Council, Curators Council, founding members, and patrons.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

Upcoming: July 18 – August 29, 2009: Didier Faustino: Dangerous Liaisons and Nicole Miller: The Conductor

LA><ART is located at 2640 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034 T.310.559.0166 F.310.559.0167 office@laxart.org www.laxart.org

LA><ART is open Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm.