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Glenn Kaino
Safe/Vanish Sep 23 - Oct 30, 2010
LA><ART is pleased to present the most ambitious project of its 5 year anniversary program—a solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Glenn Kaino. Kaino’s exhibition, Safe |Vanish, presents an in-progress look into the artist’s studio as he develops new magic and conceptual pieces that expose, interrogate, and reformulate the meaning-value of art in a theoretical environment outside the singular commodity of the object.
Presented with generous support from
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Press Release | download PDF
LA><ART PRESENTS GLENN KAINO: SAFE |VANISH
LA><ART Galleries One and Two September 23-October 30, 2010
Los Angeles, CA, September 23, 2010 - LA><ART is pleased to present the most ambitious project of its 5 year anniversary program—a solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Glenn Kaino. Kaino’s exhibition, Safe |Vanish, presents an in-progress look into the artist’s studio as he develops new magic and conceptual pieces that expose, interrogate, and reformulate the meaning-value of art in a theoretical environment outside the singular commodity of the object. Kaino’s exhibition operates as a node of a multifaceted and networked multi-year project that extends beyond the duration of the exhibition itself. Immersing himself in the study of magic over the past two years, Kaino’s inquiry unveils the restructuring of the social contract between art and audience, generating new conceptual strategies that bridge contemporary systems of art production and exhibition with the mythical and mysterious dimensions of magic. For Kaino, this interdisciplinary process unveils new potentialities of conceptualism in contemporary art—providing new structures of analysis that function from the point of contact between criticality and wonder.
In Gallery One, Kaino presents a series of site-specific works that formally construct slippages between artistic practices and magic. A taxidermic goat, echoing Rauschenberg’s seminal experimentations, is juxtaposed to a sculptural portrait of magician Ricky Jay made with playing cards. A series of wand sculptures that pay homage to important historical figures of conceptual art is brought into dialogue with an optical illusion installation that takes the form of a magician’s table. A wall text piece assembled with newspapers that announce eccentric historical events responds to a new lightbox sculpture depicting Baldessarini the conceptual magician. Mobilizing formal tactics through the lexicons of magic, Kaino blurs both theoretical and methodological approaches to conceptual art—giving way to a complex and layered environment where the critical apparatus of art history is charged with multiple points of access for new audiences and for new compositions of meaning.
Extending from this series of works, Gallery 2 features a safe that houses secrets Kaino has been collecting over the past months. The secrets – ranging from the trite to the personal, from the corporate to the criminal, from the artistic to the magical, represent another facet of Kaino’s project—his interest in the archiving of conceptual power; the brokering of and the power of secrets. The gesture of collecting recorded secrets in tapes and then archiving them in the safe furthers Kaino’s deconstruction of the process through which the value of art is generated. In this work, mundane objects are fueled with value through ephemeral recordings—putting forth a poetic meditation of what art is in the context of a market-driven economy and what art has the potential to be.
This exhibition marks a significant shift in the trajectory of Kaino’s practice and encompasses a new dimension of his considerations of the role of the artist in our current landscape of contemporary art. This exhibition is accompanied by an upcoming publication that will feature newly commissioned essays as well as documentation of this phase of Kaino’s ongoing project.
About the Artist
Glenn Kaino received a BFA from UC Irvine and an MFA from UC San Diego; he currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Kaino’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at various institutions. He has had solo exhibitions at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; ArtPace, San Antonio; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, Altria, New York< NY; Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; and The Project, New York, NY. His work has also been included in group shows at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Asia Society, New York, NY; The International Film Festival Rotterdam; and the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, CA. In 2004, Kaino was included in the Whitney Biennial of American Art. Recently, Kaino completed a public monument for the city of Pittsburgh, commissioned by the Heinz Endowment Initiative in the Arts, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the city.
About LA><ART
Celebrating its 5th Anniversary in 2010, LAXART is the leading independent nonprofit contemporary art space in Los Angeles, committed to the production of experimental exhibitions and public art initiatives. Responding to Los Angeles' cultural climate, LAXART produces and presents new work for all audiences and offers the public access to the next generation of artists and curators. LAXART supports challenging work, reflecting the diversity of the city and stimulates conversations on contemporary art in Los Angeles, fostering dynamic relationships between art, artists and their audiences. LAXART has produced and commissioned over 100 projects in five years.
LAXART’s programs are made possible with the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Danielson Foundation; the G.L. Waldorf Family Fund; City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Glenn Kaino: Safe | Vanish is made possible with generous support from the James Irvine Foundation. The exhibition is supported by LAXART’s Producers Council; Stefan Simchowitz; Esthella Provas and Lauren Taschen; LAXART Collectors Circle; Linda and Jerry Janger; Catharine and Jeffrey Soros; Jake and Ruth Bloom; Gil Friesen; Ben Bourgeois; and Deutsche Bank. The exhibition is made possible with additional support from Pasadena Art Alliance; Benchmark Scenery; Cirrus Editions Ltd.; Maryam and Josh Lieberman; Karyn Kohl and Phil Lord, Eighth Veil; Eve Steele and Peter Gelles. Special thanks to our publication partner Paper Chase. 
Press Coverage | download all Press (.zip file)
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