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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT FAY RAY
310-559-0166, FAYRAY@LAXART.ORG
2640 SOUTH LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD
LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90034
WWW.LAXART.ORG
LA><ART PRESENTS THE LOS ANGELES DEBUT OF KAMROOZ ARAM AND THE FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION IN LOS ANGELES BY MEXICO CITY-BASED ARTIST ARTEMIO
Kamrooz Aram, Generation After Generation, Revolution After Revelation, 2010, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART, Los Angeles; Artemio, ChakrAK-47, 2010, ceramic tile, 102 x 121 inches, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART, Los Angeles
Kamrooz Aram: Generation After Generation, Revolution After Revelation
LA><ART is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles by New York-based painter Kamrooz Aram. The suite of ten paintings that will debut for the first time at LA><ART circulate a range of themes—decoration, ritual, politics, spirituality—that the artist has developed in previous bodies of work. Extending Aramʼs interests in a visual and stylistic language that references religious and nationalistic iconography, Generation After Generation, Revolution After Revelation sets up a series of painterly propositions that come together to evoke a ceremonial space. While the paintings vary in texture and gestural application, the largely unfinished canvases seek to dismantle dominant modes of image-making and the general coherence that images and paintings rely upon.
The installation of paintings that make up Generation After Generation, Revolution After Revelation address questions related to the social, political, and cultural relevance of abstraction. Relying on decorative motifs and emblematic iconographies, the works in the exhibition represent distinct approaches to the construction of images through abstraction. Aram approaches the concerns that have remained consistent throughout the history of recent painting by offering a series of proposals for the artistic potentials for both revolution and revelation.
Kamrooz Aram currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2003 and his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2001. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York, Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery in New York, Wilkinson Gallery in London, and Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. He has been included in such notable exhibitions as the 2006 Busan Biennial in Busan, Korea, the 2003 Prague Biennale in Prague, Czech Republic, P.S.1ʼs Greater New York in 2005, as well as Multitudes at Artists Space, New York, in 2001, curated by Lauri Firstenberg and Irene Small.
LA><ART PROJECT SPACE
Artemio: ChakrAK-47
LA><ART is also pleased to present the Los Angeles solo debut of Mexico City-based artist Artemio. Artemioʼs project at LA><ART includes a site-specific exterior talavera tile wall installation at the galleryʼs entryway and a newly commissioned neon sculpture that serves as the central anchor within LA><ARTʼs Project Space. The ornamental patterned design on the tiles, while seemingly abstract and decorative, reveals an intricate assemblage of rifles, guns, knives and other violent weapons that formally contemplate Mexico as an increasingly complex and violent locale. The accompanying neon sculpture in the gallery space echoes the visualornamentation of the exterior tiles to evoke a mandala-like structure that is both aesthetically rich and iconographically loaded. Artemioʼs project coincides with the beginning of Mexicoʼs year-long bicentennial celebrations, while providing a distinct model of rigorous contextual responsiveness. His poetic treatment of Mexicoʼs current tumultuous political condition is reminiscent of a shadowy reality that permeates the intensely visual festivities, thus putting forth a provocative interrogation of a nationalistic climate dependent upon celebratory complacency.
Artemio currently lives and works in Mexico City. He has studied at such institutions as Centro Artesanal Independencia, Mexico City and the Parsons School of Design, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Hollywoodpedia, Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano, Lima, Peru (2008); and Hollywood Remix, Hayward Gallery, London (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Eventos Sociales, Galeria Arte Mexicano, Mexico City (2007); Perdidos en el despacio, OFF-LIMITS, Madrid, Spain (2007); and Prophets of Deceit, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA (2006).
LAND—Los Angeles Nomadic Division—has staged a project at the Pacific Design Center with Artemio to coincide with the artistʼs first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at LA><ART.
LA><ART PUBLIC BILLBOARD and LAPD – LA Public Domain
Shana Lutker
Shana Lutker, Ruin, Los Angeles, 2010, stretched vinyl on billboard, 12.3 x 24.6 feet, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART, Los Angeles
LA><ART WINDOW and ENTRYWAY
Mark Hagen
Mark Hagen, Vapor Parade, 2010, Holographic Double-Axis Diffraction Grating film, 98.5 x 59 inches, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART, Los Angeles; Mark Hagen, Earth Monster, 2010, Mexican Onyx (Onyx Marble) and resin, 48.5 x 24.5 1 inches, courtesy of the artist and LA><ART, Los Angeles
A stone slab of Mexican Onyx that was discarded by the masons hired for the recent Getty Villa renovations has been used by Hagen to fill in the small window space of the gallery. This slab of amber colored marble has been cut thin and shaped to fit the exact dimensions of the window, which visually translates as a piece of stained glass. This stained glass window reveals a cross-section of layers and an authorless, "process-derived" abstraction rather than illustrating a myth or a religious narrative. Playing with the idea of the art historical importance of marble as a medium for figurative sculpture, Hagen has chosen to frame this particular section of the slab in order to emphasize what appears to be the profile view of a head. This gesture speaks to the biological origins of marble, which begin with the sequestering of minerals from the environment by marine organisms to form bones and shells. This process ends after millions of years of deposition and layering of these bones and shells on the sea floor, which through intense heat and pressure crystallize to form marble. Geologyʼs Law of Superposition states that sedimentary layers are deposited in a time sequence with the oldest on the bottom and the youngest on the top. The sideways orientation of the layers in Hagenʼs piece confounds a chronological orientation and impedes the general tendency to see vertical layering as implying a qualitative hierarchy.
On our entrance window Hagen has applied a transparent Double-axis diffraction grating film, which produces color spectrums for every light source. This film reveals the parent colors of white light, which are always there but invisible to the naked eye. The experience of a rainbow is dependent on the triangulation between a viewerʼs position, a light source, and a refracting/reflecting material, and is therefore exclusive to the biological world, existing only in the eyes/minds observing them. Blurring the distinctions between material and immaterial, this installation plays off of the theory of aesthetic subjectivity as espoused by David Hume when he said, “the beauty of things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” In this piece not only does the beauty of the thing exist in the eye of the beholder, but so too does the thing itself.
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; Peter Norton Family Foundation; La Fundación/Colección Jumex; the James Irvine Foundation; Danielson Foundation; the G.L. Waldorf Family Fund; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon LLP.; the Standard, Hollywood; Eve Steele and Peter Gelles; Eileen Harris Norton; Phil and Julie Kamins; Jeff Poe; Stefan Simchowitz; Depart Foundation; Veronica Fernandez; the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs; ForYourArt; an anonymous donor; 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: April 3 – May 8, 2010: William Cordova (Gallery One) and Daniel Pineda (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. 
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