LA><ART

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT BETTINA KOREK/MELISSA GOLDBERG

323-951-9790, LAXARTPRESS@LAXART.ORG

2640 SOUTH LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD           

LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90034           

WWW.LAXART.ORG

LA><ART PRESENTS THE US PREMIER OF ADRIÀ JULIÀ’S A MEANS OF PASSING THE TIME AND MICHAEL RASHKOW’S LOS ANGELES SOLO DEBUT

Adrià Julià, A Means of Passing the Time (film still), 2007, 16mm single-channel film installation, 6:00 minute loop, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART

November 16, 2007 through January 5, 2008 Opening reception November 16, 7-9pm

LA><ART is pleased to present the United States debut of Adrià Julià’s newly commissioned film A Means of Passing the Time, produced by LA><ART with support from the American Center Foundation. Filmed in collaboration with former USO entertainers, A Means of Passing the Time aesthetically documents the "representation of home" and the static signs and values that help situate oneself geographically and psychosocially.

Centering on a 16mm looped film projection, Julià’s site- specific installation explores the fixity of representation, space, and time through the intersections of film and performance.

The narrative structure of A Means of Passing the Time focuses on the act of mumming—a brand of home entertainment involved with questions of social ethics, wherein neighbors appear unexpectedly and perform in each other’s living room. Former USO entertainer Mark

Gower has described mumming as a symbolic interaction between individuals that manages to reveal the perception of social roles within communities. While USO entertainers and “DoD Overseas Shows” provide, for the United States Military serving abroad, the equivalency of a show from “back home,” foreign military bases come to serve as virtual cities, staging the concept of “home” through such familiar icons as currency, postage, and American retail products. The act of mumming therefore operates within this logic, in which case USO entertainers adopt this discursive strategy to carve out shared geographies and local references between both spectator and spectacle. Mimicking this informal tradition, A Means of Passing The Time is the product of a collaboration between Julià and two former USO performers who visited US military bases around the world to provide entertainment to American troops overseas.

From his home in Chico, California, where much of A Means of Passing the Time was filmed, Gower has described this relationship between performer and audience as follows:

It was December 1996, and only two days before Christmas an unusually strong winter storm had blanketed much of Eastern Europe in snow. Even the American military had grounded most of its planes because of severe weather conditions. Overnight and throughout the day the snow got worse and it is now Christmas Eve. We are snowed inwith the American military, and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are also snowed in, and a magician from Connecticut. We are given our orders; we are told to put on a show!

Suddenly there is an invasion. Out of nowhere they simply appear: a group of six civilians, from back home—from America—dressed in eccentric costumes. The characters push their way in. They begin introducing themselves, shaking hands, talking to service members who have now become audience members. The mess tent is as big as a football field, and tonight it is charged with energy. Some of the characters clearly do not like each other. They have conflicting accounts of how they got on base. One claims to have walked across a nearby minefield; another says he parachuted in. But after several minutes of weaving their collective and confusing stories, an argument erupts. The characters chase each other out, but when they reappear, one stumbles in with a knife in his back, and dies. Somebody calls for a doctor, but instead they bring in a detective, and while no miraculous healing will ensue, the audience will help to restore the balance of justice by helping to solve the crime. This is not mumming, of course; it is a USO sponsored audience-participation “murder mystery” event, but, as we shall see, bears many similarities, in both form and practice, to the logic that informs a mumming event.

Adrià Julià is a Spanish born artist currently living and working in Los Angeles. He was recently selected by Lauri Firstenberg to be included in the 2007 Lyon Biennial. He received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 2003, and his BFA from the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain in 1997. His photographs and films have been exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad, in such recent solo exhibitions as Truc Trang Walls at the University of California, Irvine’s Room Gallery in 2007 and Adrià Julià: La Villa Basque, Vernon, California at Artists Space, New York and the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach in 2006.

Also available is a limited edition photographic print produced by Julià to aid in the production of this project. Please contact editions@laxart.org for more details.

LA><ART GALLERY TWO

Michael Rashkow: Circle Pictures

Michael Rashkow, Steven, 2002-2007, c-print, 24.5 x 30.5 inches; Denization of Gold (London £9000), 2007, assorted glassware, avocado pits, water, toothpicks, bamboo skewers, ebony, soil, and concrete, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART

For Michael Rashkow’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, where he lives and works, LA><ART is pleased to present Circle Pictures, an evolving body of portraits that seek to collapse the distinctions between the subject and object of photographic representation.

Comprised of a suite of eight newly realized photographic portraits, along with additional floor sculptures, Rashkow’s Circle Pictures employs two distinct formal registers to reassert the physical presences of subjects lost by way of their representation. Interrogating the very processes by which photographic images are constructed, Rashkow here revisits one of photography’s basic genres to point to the transformation that occurs when the subjects of this technology become part of a representational system. Made using a device that rotates the camera three hundred and sixty degrees during extended film exposures, this series of portraits provide the residue of physical bodies systematically streaked across the surfaces of their image/other. The terrain of delicate sculpture that inhabits the overall installation further extends this collapse of the divide that separates vision from corporeal experience.

Accentuating the perverse surfaces and textures of glassware, carved wood, and similar items of excess, these accumulations suggest a visual and tactile engagement with both images and objects.

Michael Rashkow graduated from UCLA with an MFA in 2004 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has exhibited in such venues as Wallspace, New York; Ritter/Zamet, London; Hayworth Gallery, Los Angeles; White Box, New York; Riva, New York; High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree.

LA><ART PUBLIC ART INITIATIVES

Brian Bress: Bamboo Room

Brian Bress, Bamboo Room, 2006 – 2007, color photograph on laminated decal, 102 x 121 inches, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART

LA><ART is pleased to present a new public installation by Los Angeles based artist Brian Bress. The third in a series of projects situated at the gallery’s entryway, Bress’ Bamboo Room continues to engage this highly visible and public site.

Brian Bress is a Los Angeles based artist who received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include the project space at Zach Feuer Gallery in New York (2007) and Pardon Me at Angstrom Gallery in Los Angeles (2007). Bress' work has been included in such group exhibitions as Machine Imaginaire at Lisa Boyle Gallery in Chicago (2007), Beyond Image at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena (2007), and Distinctive Messengers at the House of Campari in Los Angeles (2007). In 2008, the artist will participate in California Video, curated by Glenn Phillips at the Getty Museum.

LA><ART WINDOW

Michael Dodge: Complex Course

MINI WRONG GALLERY

Dave Deany

Selected by Ali Subotnick

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, American Center Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Campari, Danielson Foundation, Generalitat de Catalunya, Ministerio de Cultura, Eileen Harris Norton, Ruth and Jacob Bloom, Jenny Chase and Andrew Bernstein, Richard Massey, Daniel Avchen, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, FORyourART.com, Uber.com, Goethe-Institut, and LA><ART board, founding members and patrons.

Upcoming: January 19 – March 1, 2008 Yunhee Min: Measured Room: Revolution and Scoli Acosta: Bountiful

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.