LA><ART

LAXART is pleased to present White Snake! a video by frequent collaborating artists John Knuth and Andy Featherston. At the onset of the video we are confronted with a dramatic close-up view of the eyes and tongue of an albino California king snake. In just under three minutes, the video draws the scale shift from full-frame red eye to a thin, distant white snake uncoiling and floating in negative space – in daytime the plane of the billboard, at night the space of the sky. The video is a study of motion in montage and manipulated beauty. Building up layers of simultaneous affect, the video is at once beautiful and startling, calming and jarring. White Snake! plays with the aesthetics of the attention-grabbing imagery of the media that saturates The Sunset Strip. Knuth and Featherston are interested in the albino California king snake as a subject in part because these snakes are specially bread for aesthetics. They are native to the Southern California basin and are valued for their morph variations – prized to breeders and collectors. Boasting colors that do not exist in nature, the animals are selectively bred to highlight and accentuate their recessive genes. Precisely because of their specialized color variations, these animals would have no chance of survival in their native habitat. They are living aesthetic objects that cannot exist without the providence of man.   

About the Artists 
John Knuth received an MFA from USC and a BFA from the University of Minnesota. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Brand New Gallery (Milan, Italy), Marie Kirkegaard Gallery (Copenhagen, Denmark), Human Recourses (Los Angeles, CA,), Andrew Rafacz Gallery (Chicago, IL), and The Armory Center for the Arts (Los Angeles, CA). Knuth lives and works in Los Angeles, California. 

Andy Featherston is an artist who makes videos, photographs, and music. Featherston received an MFA in Art from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA and a BFA from Bethel University in St. Paul, MN.  Featherston has recently produced videos for fashion designer Rosetta Getty, LACMA, and MOCATV. 

This video billboard project has been made possible with the generous support of the City of West Hollywood. 

About LAXART 
Founded in 2005, LAXART is Los Angeles’ leading independent contemporary art space supporting artistic and curatorial freedom. The organization is committed to producing newly commissioned works of art, to present experimental exhibitions, public art initiatives, and publications with emerging, mid-career and established local, national and international artists. LAXART's programs are produced with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; The J. Paul Getty Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Pasadena Art Alliance; and The Stratton-Petit Foundation.