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Scoli Acosta
Bountiful Jan 19 - Mar 1, 2008
LA><ART is pleased to present two site specific gallery installations and a public billboard project by Los Angeles based artist Scoli Acosta, marking his Los Angeles solo debut. Comprising a new body of sculpture, painting, and site-specific detail, Acosta’s projects at LA><ART present fractured reiterations of architectural motifs that sprawl throughout both exhibition spaces. In the installations consuming both exhibition spaces, Acosta has recycled a range of discarded materials in an attempt to outline their formal qualities to pose questions around the intersections of object making, decoration, performance, humor and poetry.
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Press Release | download PDF
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 SCOLI ACOSTA’S LOS ANGELES SOLO DEBUT AND A NEW PUBLIC BILLBOARD PROJECT ON LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD
Scoli Acosta, Cornerstone, 2008, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART; and Bountiful, 2008, stretched vinyl on billboard, 12.3 x 24.6 feet, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART
January 19 through March 1, 2008 Opening reception January 19, 7-9pm
January 19, 6pm Walk-through with artist Scoli Acosta and LACMA curator Rita Gonzalez
LA><ART is pleased to present two site specific gallery installations and a public billboard project by Los Angeles based artist Scoli Acosta, marking his Los Angeles solo debut. Comprising a new body of sculpture, painting, and site-specific detail, Acosta’s projects at LA><ART present fractured reiterations of architectural motifs that sprawl throughout both exhibition spaces. Reflecting a highly personalized iconography, Acosta’s projects employ a near obsessional approach to the transformation of common objects and found materials. Recycling such discarded items as elegant brick fragments, polished driftwood and abandoned domestic furniture, Acosta’s approach is one that relies upon the appropriation of found forms already toiled over by natural processes.
In Bountiful, the motif of brick with mortar appears throughout much of the installation in LA><ART’s gallery two. The artist has dutifully crafted an array of sculpture made from segments of red brick walls washed ashore on local beaches. Using the forms and palette of these collected pedestrian architectural fragments, Acosta has reworked the brick in multiple ways, having carved small planter pots, and used the dust from this process to create floral relief sculpture. The motifs that recur in Bountiful allude to Greek classicism and mythology, as evidenced by Acosta’s repetitive iconography that include lyrical and genial cornucopia, perverse portrait busts and corrupted columns. These motifs are updated by the reiterated presence of a blue solar panel grid that has been similarly recast as ornament onto everyday detritus.
In the installations consuming both exhibition spaces, Acosta has recycled a range of discarded materials in an attempt to outline their formal qualities to pose questions around the intersections of object making, decoration, performance, humor and poetry. Surrounded by an array of visual signifiers, a sculptural lily chandelier and upside-down igloo made from shoeboxes and tinfoil occupy the gallery’s mainspace. The underlying structure is ecological in scope, referencing BuckminsterFuller’s geodesic dome produced for Expo 1967 in Montreal. Reiterated electrical outlets and decoratively arranged cords serve as elements described by the artist as “visible mechanics.” The installation coalesces around a work entitled Rising Night, Lily White, which uses American pastoral landscape painter Maxfield Parrish’s seminal work entitled Daybreak (1922) as a point of departure. Resonant within the Depression era, Daybreak has since been misinterpreted in such films as Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973). By reappropriating this signifier of American economic plight, Acosta here plays with this tradition of misquotation, inscribing the painting’s imagery onto collaged paper bags and revisiting this moment in American cultural pastiche.
Scoli Acosta has studied fine art at the Kansas City Art Institute (1994) and the Ultimate Akademie in Colonge, Germany (1997). Recent solo exhibitions include ...Day was to Fall as Night was to Break..., Daniel Reich Gallery, New York (2006) and Big Well, LISTE 2005, Basel, Switzerland. His work has been included in such group exhibitions as the 2007 Montreal Biennial, Montreal, Canada, and the 2006 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach. Later this year, his work will be included in the upcoming exhibition entitled Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and he will have his solo debut in Paris at Galerie Laurent Godin.
LA><ART Public Art Initiatives
Scoli Acosta, Bountiful, 2008, stretched vinyl on billboard, 12.3 x 24.6 feet, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART, Los Angeles
As part of LA><ART Public Art Initiatives, a public billboard, facing north on La Cienega Boulevard between Venice and Washington Boulevards, accompanies this project.
LA><ART Public Program: Exhibition walk-through with Scoli Acosta and Rita Gonzalez
January 19, 6pm Artist Scoli Acosta and LACMA curator of American Art Rita Gonzalez lead an exhibition walk-through of Bountiful, followed by an opening reception for the artist. Special thanks to Rita Gonzalez and Malik Gaines.
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 for the Visual Arts, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Danielson Foundation, Campari, Eileen Harris Norton, Ruth and Jacob Bloom, ForYourArt, Uber.com, and LA><ART board, founding members and patrons.
Upcoming: March 15 – April 26, 2008 Guyton/Walker and Anna Sew Hoy: Pow!
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. 
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