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Florencia Pita
Alice Jul 19 - Aug 30, 2007
LA><ART is pleased to present the launch of its A + D project series with a site-specific installation by Argentinean Los Angeles based emerging designer and architect Florencia Pita. Alice inaugurates the initiative!s commitment to developing innovative projects in the fields of both architecture and design. As an emerging woman architect in Los Angeles, Pita’s project for LA><ART addresses the provocations and intersections of digital technology, material experimentation, femininity, and ornament. For Alice, Pita has produced an inverted and fictional landscape that transforms the space of the gallery into a fantastical environment in which figured forms are subject to experiments of conversion via color and surface.
LA><ART’s programs are made possible with the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation, Graham Foundation, Eileen Harris, Campari, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Danielson Foundation, Susanne Vielmetter, BJB Enterprises, Eve Steele and Peter Gelles, Uber.com and LA><ART founding members and patrons.
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Press Release | download PDF
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT BETTINA KOREK,
310-962-0399, LAXARTPRESS@LAXART.ORG
2640 SOUTH LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD
LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90034
WWW.LAXART.ORG
LA><ART PRESENTS LOS ANGELES DEBUT OF CHARLES GAINES! GREENHOUSE, LAUNCH OF LA><ART A + D PROJECTS WITH ARCHITECT/DESIGNER FLORENCIA PITA, AND NEWLY COMMISSIONED WINDOW INSTALLATION BY JEFF WILLIAMS
Charles Gaines: Greenhouse
July 19 through August 30, 2007 Opening reception July 19, 7-9pm
July 19, 6pm Campari and LA><ART Present Campari Talks: Malik Gaines in Conversation
with Charles Gaines Please RSVP to 310.943.9236 Must be 21 and over to attend
LA><ART is pleased to present the Los Angeles debut of Charles Gaines’ Greenhouse, a sculptural enclosure placed within the gallery that shifts lighting and atmospheric conditions according to computer generated air pollutant measurements collected from the Los Angeles basin. While the structure itself suggests a sealed atmospheric space, its contents consist of photographic renderings of sky and earth, processed haze, and artificial lighting to further the artist’s exploration of the tensions between systems of representation and social phenomena.
A nearby computer converts local air pollutant measurements into voltage that then controls the intensity of four colored lights and a fog machine placed within the simulated greenhouse. Linked to a website that records the Los Angeles basin’s air quality, the computer takes readings at set intervals to change the amount of voltage fed to each light and the dispersal of atmospheric haze. Much like the Air Quality Index, which uses color indicators to give visual form to deadly pollutants, the shifting lights in Gaines! Greenhouse provide a vibrant analog of the otherwise disordered conditions of physical, environmental space.
Currently faculty in the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, Charles Gaines lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1967. Recognized both nationally and internationally as an artist and theorist, recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and the Brigitte March Gallery in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2006, the collaborative project with Edgar Arceneaux entitled “Snake River” was exhibited at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater gallery, after traveling from the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz, Austria. Gaines is currently a participant in the 52nd International Venice Biennale.
Florencia Pita: Alice
July 19 through August 30, 2007
August 11, 1pm Florencia Pita A + D Talk
LA><ART A + D PROJECT
LA><ART is pleased to present the launch of its A + D project series with a site-specific installation by Argentinean Los Angeles based emerging designer and architect Florencia Pita. Alice inaugurates the initiative!s commitment to developing innovative projects in the fields of both architecture and design.
As an emerging woman architect in Los Angeles, Pita’s project for LA><ART addresses the provocations and intersections of digital technology, material experimentation, femininity, and ornament. For Alice, Pita has produced an inverted and fictional landscape that transforms the space of the gallery into a fantastical environment in which figured forms are subject to experiments of conversion via color and surface. This intervention addresses aesthetic experience, decoration, nostalgia, and memory, while relying on advanced digital experimentation. Working with found images taken from two publications of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Pita will produce a series of panels incorporating translations of figural forms. Rather than refer to the pictorial representations in both the 1865 and 1907 publications, Pita employs synthetic materials, manufactured color, and intricate pattern to evoke the space and mood of Carroll’s original text and its accompanying images, while subverting the masculinist discourse of digital architecture.
Currently faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-arc), Florencia Pita received her master’s degree in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University!s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 2001. Having practiced as a licensed architect since 1998, Pita has received numerous awards and ovations in her field. Her work has been exhibited in venues such as the Schindler House in West Hollywood, MAK Gallery in Vienna, Austria, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s Pacific Design Center, and was featured in the 2004 Venice Biennale!s 9th International Architecture Exhibition, “Metamorph.” Later this year she will be included in the exhibition “Louis Sullivan and Current Digital Ornament Design” at the Chicago Art Institute, as well as present her second solo exhibition at Spazio Expositivo d’ Santa Verdiana in Florence, Italy.
LA><ART WINDOW
Jeff Williams: Thickly Settled Curated by Aram Moshayedi
July 19 through August 30, 2007
For LA><ART’s ongoing series of window projects, Jeff Williams has adapted a site-specific installation from his recent series “Thickly Settled.” In this inception, the domestic objects that have preoccupied Williams! practice to date are positioned in relationship to the window’s function as an intermediary between exterior and interior spaces. Mini blinds consumed by a synthetic and theatrical dust are here positioned in the window’s sill. The accumulation of dust renders the mini blinds absent, while a general sense of their form remains intact. Suggesting ruin, domesticity, and the unfamiliarity of both, Thickly Settled here occupies an ominous presence in both day and night.
Jeff Williams currently lives and works in Houston, Texas, where he is an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Fine Art, Houston Core Program. He received his MFA from Syracuse University in 2002 and has since exhibited throughout the United States in solo and group exhibitions. In 2006, he was selected to participate in the juried exhibition New American Talent 21 at Arthouse in Austin, Texas.
About LA><ART
Responding to Los Angeles’ 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.
LA><ART’s programs are made possible with the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation, Graham Foundation, Campari, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Danielson Foundation, Susanne Vielmetter, BJB Enterprises, Eve Steele and Peter Gelles, Uber.com and LA><ART founding members and patrons.
Forthcoming exhibitions: September 15 – October 27 Michael Queenland: Museum and
Francesca DiMattio: Unhinged
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. 
Press Coverage | download all Press (.zip file)
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