FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT ELIZABETH REINA OR DEIRDRE MAHER
BLUE MEDIUM // ELIZABETH@BLUEMDIUM.COM / DEIRDRE@BLUMEDIUM.COM
TEL: +1 (212) 675.1800
William Cordova: untitled (chincanas)
April 3-May 8, 2010
Opening reception: April 3, 6-9pm
LA><ART is pleased to present a new project by William Cordova. Cordova is an interdisciplinary artist who engages specific reclaimed materials and minimalist forms to investigate research processes, the archive, history, and the urban landscape. Cordovaʼs project at LA><ART, untitled (chincanas), marks the most recent installment of a broader ongoing project that focuses on both language and landscape. In this project Cordova is invested in the dialectic of public and private spaces and the ways in which urban architectural constructions affect psychological narratives.
In the context of LA><ARTʼs main gallery, Cordova will exhibit untitled (the echo in nocolas guillen landrianʼs bolex), a suite of 100 drawings. Cordova conceives of these paper and collage works as “ephemeral monuments to a places, a people, and a moment forgotten or overlooked.” This ones 4U (paʼ nosotros) represents a sculptural video installation operating as a post-Third Cinema experiment. This installation conjures tenets that filmmakers such as Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino originated in 1969. Cordova is interested in the concept of exhibiting film covertly, relative to taking a risk in the realm of viewership. Cordovaʼs makeshift construction for screening the video exposes the front and rear of the apparatus, creating a continuous perspective. Through its massive scale and echoing audio the artist aims to create a foreign scenario for spectatorship.
William Cordova was born in Lima, Peru, in 1971. He received his MFA from Yale University in 2004 and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. Recently his work was included in such exhibitions as “NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith,” The Menil Collection, Houston, TX; “Street Level,” The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; the 2008 Core Artists in Residence Exhibition, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX; the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and solo exhibitions at Three Walls, Chicago, IL (2008); Arndt & Partner, Zürich, Switzerland (2007); and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY (2006). Cordova is currently an Artist-in-Resident at Project Row Houses, Houston, TX. He is based in Miami, New York, and Lima, Peru.
LA><ART PROJECT SPACE
Sherin Guirguis: Qasr El-Shoaq
LA><ART is also pleased to present a new site-specific sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Sherin Guirguis. Guirguisʼ work references various contradictory elements, both formal and social. Having been raised in Cairo and now living in Los Angeles, Guirguisʼ project investigates the frictions between the contemporary and the traditional, the reductive and the ornamental. In LA><ARTʼs Project Space, Guirguisʼ Qasr El-Shoaq, inspired in part by a pair of Bedouin earrings, engages both formal and social concerns by juxtaposing the reductive Western language of minimalist aesthetics with that of Eastern Arabic ornamentation. Titled after the second novel in Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, Guirguis' sculpture pairs architectural references of a specific Egyptian locale with the functional logic of one of its components--the mashrabeya. These wooden screens used for windows, while operating as a passageway between interior and exterior spaces, also delineate and distinctly separate these two domains. Like the mashrabeyas, Guirguisʼ sculpture bifurcates the space of the gallery, generating a threshold between the public and the private, the flat and the 3-dimensional. Materially bold yet fragilely kinetic, Qasr El-Shoaq expands Guirguisʼ navigation between two distinct worlds by giving shape to culturally divergent and opposing elements; bringing formal and informal dichotomies in contact with viewers and with each other.
Sherin Guirguis was born in Luxor, Egypt in 1974. She received her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997 and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2001. Her work has been exhibited at Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica; BANK, Los Angeles; Project Flower Shop, Brooklyn and POST, Los Angeles. Selected Group shows include Quickening, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tuscan; The Dreams Stuff is Made Of, ArtFrankfurt, Germany and Las Vegas Diaspora, curated by Dave Hickey at the Las Vegas Art Museum. Her work has been reviewed in the LA Times, Flash Art, Artforum and Artweek, among other publications. In addition to her own work, Guirguis has also curated several exhibitions featuring emerging artists in California. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
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.
L.A.P.D. – 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; the James Irvine Foundation; Danielson Foundation; the G.L. Waldorf Family Fund; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation; Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon LLP.; Eileen Harris Norton; Eve Steele and Peter Gelles; Joy Simmons; Benchmark Scenery, Inc.; Sima Familant; the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs; 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: May 22-June 26, 2010: Mike Hernandez (Gallery One) and Colter Jacobsen curated by LA><ART Adjunct Curator Malik Gaines (Gallery Two)
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.
