Screening of L.A. Plays Itself begins at 7pm
Fred Halsted's L.A. Plays Itself (1972) was gay porn's first masterpiece: a sexually explicit, autobiographical, experimental film whose New York screening left even Salvador Dalí repeatedly muttering "new information for me." Halsted, a self-taught filmmaker, shot the film over a period of three years in a now-vanished Los Angeles, a city at once rural and sleazy. Although his cultural notoriety at one point equaled that of Kenneth Anger or Jack Smith, Halsted's star waned in the 1980s with the emergence of a more commercial gay-porn industry. After the death from AIDS of his long-time partner, lover, spouse (and tormentor) Joey Yale in 1986, Halsted committed suicide in 1989.
In Halsted Plays Himself, acclaimed artist and filmmaker William E. Jones documents his quest to capture the elusive public and private personas of Halsted--to zero in on an identity riddled with contradictions. Jones assembles a narrative of a long-gone gay lifestyle and an extinct Hollywood underground, when independent films were still possible, and the boundary between experimental and pornographic was not yet established. The book also depicts what sexual liberation looked like at a volatile point in time--and what it looked like when it collapsed.
About the Author
William E. Jones is an artist and filmmaker who teaches film history at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He has made two feature length experimental films, Massillon (1991) and Finished (1997), several short videos, including The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography (1998), the feature length documentary Is It Really So Strange? (2004), and many video installations. His films and videos were the subject of retrospectives at Tate Modern, London, in 2005, and at Anthology Film Archives, New York, in 2010. He has worked in the adult video industry under the name Hudson Wilcox.
The Trap Door
Jedediah Caesar and Shana Lutker
Exhibition Dates: November 23 – December 8, 2011
Reception with the artists:
Friday, December 2, 2011
8 – 11 pm
Featuring DJs Joey Kotting and Aram Moshayedi
and special guests D3
Human Resources is pleased to present a display of large art-related items that were previously exhibited in other contexts. These objects were constructed and collected by the artists between the years of 2003 and 2010 and have been residing in Los Angeles for a period of time without purpose. The large conglomerations have now been brought to Human Resources and installed in new configurations by the artists for a ceremonious goodbye before they are retired to a 40-yard bin.
Shana Lutker contributes fifteen steel support structures (pedestals now without objects), and a sculpture consisting of most of the New York Times from the years 2003-2008.
Jedediah Caesar shows a set of eight massive casts of earth. Originally made within an architectural frame, here, outside of that framework, each part functions as its own stage.
Re-presenting these pieces, the parameters of the work are unstable. This stop on the road from the studio to the landfill is a pause to consider the physical limitations and expectations of these objects. Both artists are collectors of things, of objects from the world, but also their own work. Getting rid of parts of the collection is an anxious and uneasy decision. For the artists, this project is the trap door.
Jedediah Caesar and Shana Lutker are both artists who live in Los Angeles.
About D3
D3 is an artist-run service specializing in object divestment. Dealing with objects that are emotionally burdensome and have outlived their welcome, D3 provides a personalized step-by-step process to clients who wish to deaccession such items from their personal collections. This process is founded upon the 3 Ds: Deliver, Document, Destroy. This approach to destroying an object functions to transform matter, reorganize the energy it represents, and disperse the formidable associations triggered by the object. D3 accepts submissions on an ongoing basis.
For more details, visit www.D-three.org.
A RAY ARRAY is a new video directed by Sarah Rara that examines forms
of visual and aural interference: from the failure of a message to be
discernable, sudden interruptions, visual disturbance, the interaction
of 2 sound signals, instability, and optical effects.
Structured like a collection of short stories, the work is composed of
16 video chapters that explore the subject of interference using
simple sets, everyday objects, and subtle special effects.
The Array will be projected in the gallery from 12pm to 12am on Thursday, November 17.
A RAY ARRAY features a soundtrack created by Lucky Dragons
"A RAY ARRAY" : video, 58 min.
To watch the trailer click here
www.sarahrara.com
www.luckydragons.org
a live rendition of Gregory Rogove's multi-media album PIANA
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
7-8:30pm
Special Guests: Devendra Banhart, Lucky Dragons, Carly Margolis
(w/ Mark Noseworthy & Nicole Simone)
This event acts as a preview or a live rendition of Gregory Rogove's multi-media album PIANA, set to be released on January 31st, 2012 on Knitting Factory Records. Rogove is a drummer and singer in a number of musical groups, including Devendra Banhart & the Grogs, Megapuss, and Priestbird. PIANA is an album of instrumental, solo piano pieces composed by Gregory Rogove and performed by John Medeski (Medeski Martin & Wood). It also includes a DVD of musical and visual reinterpretations, or "remixes," of the piano pieces. (Please see below for a list of contributing artists.) For the event, Rogove will play a few of the original pieces on piano and have three of the musical remix artists perform their reinterpretations of the pieces. (Please see special guest list.) Meanwhile, all of the visual pieces (drawings, photographs, designs, collages, sculptures and videos) will be hung or projected in the space. He will also project a stop-motion animation video for one of piano tunes that he animated and directed with Diana Garcia.
www.gregoryrogove.com
Molly Larkey
The Lost Alphabet, Pants That Fit, and Other Implausible Disguises
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 22nd, 2011, 7pm-10pm
Human Resources is pleased to present Molly Larkey: The Lost Alphabet, Pants That Fit, and Other Implausible Disguises In her new body of work, Larkey continues to investigate the boundaries between the self and the world, by looking at the ways the individual is both hidden and revealed through representation in language and clothing. Including painting and sculpture, the new works incorporate flatness and volume, painted gestures and printed patterns, symbolic language and raw materiality, and evoke a bodily presence while remaining within abstraction. The variety of works in the exhibition - ranging from large sculpture to small painting - actively engage the viewer within the architecture of the exhibition space.
In making welded metal sculpture, Larkey responds to a tradition of modernist male sculptors, from Anthony Caro and Tony Smith to lesser known figures such as Julio Gonzalez and Jorge Oteiza. The sculptures reveal hidden subjects: phrases broken down into fragments of language, and dress patterns made into armor-like edifices. By injecting familiar, everyday content into this tradition of abstraction, Larkey provides a slippage between looking, reading, and wearing - evoking and questioning the different ways that one interacts with an object in the world.
Similarly, in the paintings, what seems to be a straightforwardly painted surface reveals itself to be layers of raw canvas, fabric, clay fragments, and paint. For "The Lost Alphabet," Larkey imagines an alternative to the basic elements of language, suggesting that the world is not as fixed as it might seem, and that new modes of communication are possible. In the series "Masks," each painting contains within it an abstracted face; the paint becomes a kind of make-up, and the painted surface becomes a series of false fronts. Using different materials and techniques to extract both solid forms and subtle gestures, the paintings confuse negative and positive space, yielding lyrical shifts between the covering and the covered-up.
Molly Larkey (b. 1971, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received a MFA from Rutgers University, New Jersey and a BA from Columbia University, New York. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at PS1 Moma, New York; The Saatchi Gallery, London; The Drawing Center, New York; Horton Gallery, New York; Samson Projects, Boston; Bobbie Greenfield Gallery, Santa Monica; Ochi Gallery, Ketchum; among others. She is the founder of Statler Waldorf Gallery, an alternative art space, which she runs from her home in Echo Park.
On view October 22nd - November 12th, 2011, Thursday - Saturday 12-6pm
Plain Brown Wrapper
Sophie Lee, Anne McCaddon, Allison Miller, Yunhee Min
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 22nd, 7-10 pm
A plain brown wrapper is used when something is too valuable - or too subversive - to reveal to the world. It’s a strategy of concealment, so that the treasured object isn’t immediately recognized for what it is. It’s also an enticement; since only things of value are given a plain brown wrapper, it creates an urgency to know what lies beneath the surface. “Plain Brown Wrapper” presents four LA-based artists - Sophie Lee, Anne McCaddon, Allison Miller, Yunhee Min - whose work shares a seemingly straightforward, humble presentation that leads to layered richness upon further looking. This exhibition is a joint venture between Human Resources and Statler Waldorf Gallery.
On view in the Upstairs Gallery: October 20th - November 2nd, 2011, Thursday - Saturday 12-6pm
Also on view: "Molly Larkey: The Lost Alphabet, Pants That Fit, and Other Implausible Disguises”, October 20th - November 12th, 2011
Sophie Lee has a BA from Mills College and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Her work is a response to the formal and psychological manifestations of spaces, whether the frame of the paper or the architecture of a room. Incorporating a variety of found and traditional artist materials, the work manifests as collage, painting, sculpture and installation.
Anne McCaddon received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 and her MFA in Painting from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2009. Solo exhibitions include Over-Under Worked, with Artist Curated Projects at Parker Jones and The Alphabet Paintings at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art ARSG Special Exhibitions. McCaddon has exhibited with Statler Waldorf Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA; Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA; Glu & Harvey Levine Temporary, Los Angeles, CA; and V&A, New York, NY.
Allison Miller received her BFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA with a concentration in Painting and Drawing from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has had solo exhibitions with and is represented by ACME., Los Angeles and has a forth-coming solo exhibition at Susan Inglett, New York. Group exhibitions include: New Art for a New Century, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, Meet Me Inside, Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, Tables and Chairs, D'Amelio Terras, New York, Something About Mary, Orange County Museum of Art, LA Now, Las Vegas Museum of Art, softcore HARD EDGE, The Art Gallery of Calgary, and a four person exhibition at Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles. Her work has been reviewed in Flash Art, Artforum, Frieze, and the Los Angeles Times. In 2009, she was included in Painting Abstraction: New Elements In Abstract Painting, by Bob Nickas, published by Phaidon Press. She has lectured at various colleges and graduate programs and has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, San Diego, the University of California, Irvine, the University of California, Riverside, Anderson Ranch Arts Center and Claremont Graduate University.
Yunhee Min holds a BFA degree from Art Center College of Design and a MA degree from Harvard University. Solo exhibitions include LAX ART, Los Angeles, The Amie and Tony James Gallery at The City University of New York, The Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (Circa Series), ArtPace, San Antonio, TX; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; and the Luckman Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles, CA. Min has been included in exhibitions at Silvershed, New York, NY; Sweeney Art Gallery, Riverside, CA; the Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, NC; the CCAC Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, CA; the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA; Artists Space, New York, NY; in “Snap Shot”, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; in the Altoids Collection at The New Museum, New York, NY; the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, CA; and the San Francisco Art Institute, Walter/McBean Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Statler Waldorf Gallery is an artist-run exhibition space located in a private residence in Echo Park. We are open by appointment only. For more information, please email: info@statlerwaldorfgallery.com.
Last week to view Eros and Civilization, curated by Benjamin Lord
Dawn Kasper
Tricia Lawless Murray
Amy Sampson
Davida Nemeroff
Heather Cantrell
12pm - 6pm Thursday through Saturday
and by appointment
Eros And Civilization
September 16 – October 7, 2011
Opening reception: Friday, September 16, 7-10 PM
Heather Cantrell
Dawn Kasper
Tricia Lawless Murray
Davida Nemeroff
Amy Sampson
Curated by Benjamin Lord
Eros And Civilization gathers together the work of five female artists based in Los Angeles who use photography to explore the relationship between desire, power, and the act of looking. Where classical theories of art associate femininity primarily with the power of seduction, these artists explore an active female observer that negotiates a complex, polymorphous range of positions between the liberated post-feminist subject, the objectively distanced genderless observer, and the subjected sex object.
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Herbert Marcuse's famous book, a critique of Freud that became a philosophical touchstone of the New Left, and of the 60s counterculture in general. Marcuse broadly argued that Freud's separation of the libido and the repressive superego was oversimple, and that Eros was not merely a chaotic but rather a constructive force. In Marcuse's vision, it was the task of classical art to orchestrate a return of the repressed, not only on the individual but also on the generic-historical level. “The imagination shapes the ‘unconscious memory’ of the liberation that failed, of the promise that was betrayed.” But in the era of capitalism's highly structured exchanges, Marcuse argues, it is not enough for art to espouse a merely uninhibited or utopian pre-genital sexuality. In order to negate the unfreedom of capitalism, it is paradoxically necessary to at first represent that very unfreedom within the artistic work. Writing in 1955, he claimed that “at the present stage, in the period of total mobilization, even this highly ambivalent opposition [that of catharsis] seems no longer viable. Art survives only where it cancels itself, where it saves its substance by denying its traditional form and thereby denying reconcilation…”
A half century later, these aesthetic theories have percolated into the mainstream of artistic practice. In wildly disparate fashion, each of the artists in this exhibition employ a creative strategy that can be described as an oscillation between power and subjection, in which utopic fantasies of liberation are tempered and sustained by darker fantasies of subjection and unfreedom. These artists take up the reality principle of the photographic camera, which instantly sketches the known surfaces of things, and collide it with deeply personal, unstable, and hermetic realms of uncivilized fantasy, which the camera by its very nature ultimately refuses to be fully reconciled with. This failed reconcilation becomes an aesthetic success, however, to the extent that it presents a true image of the our own civilization.
Within the exhibition:
Heather Cantrell, known for her photographic portraiture, will debut The Looker, her first video. The piece broadly alludes to the famous sequence in Antonioni's film Blow-up, in which a female model is ravished by a male photographer, and photography becomes a substitute for sex. In Cantrell's scenario, however, it is the female who controls the camera. The artist (and her “double,” a friend who stands in for her at one point) unfold a scenario in which the female photographer directs and controls a male model, played by Cantrell's real-life fiancé.
Dawn Kasper will show a new photographic diptych. Kasper has described the two dimly lit images as existing in relationship to an intimate dreamlike state of consciousness but also as an implied image diary, referencing the passage of time in monotonous day to day living. As inspiration for this piece, she references a passage from Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents: “the struggle between human instincts and the conscience of repression (superego) which is self-repressing trying to follow society's mores and norms…”
Tricia Lawless Murray will exhibit an installation of photographs that explore the theme of masochism. Harshly lit images of the artist's bruised body are shown alongside landscapes and interiors, creating a fractured tapestry that depicts a broken narrative addressing sexuality, desire and loss.
Davida Nemeroff's new work explores the nature of spectatorship through the thematic device of the gorilla habitat at the Los Angeles Zoo. Large scale color photographs made with a consumer camera are mounted onto a sculptural support of intersecting planes, placing the gorillas near life size. The photographs are at once formal motion studies, self-conscious meditations on the act of display, and comments on the zoo as a constructed metaphor for primitive desire.
Amy Sampson will show two new large works. First, the large installation The Last Photo I Took of Heather is an sprawling archive of photographs of the artist's friend and occasional muse. Produced over a period of a decade, the images mix fact with fiction, dress-up with undress, and intimacy with estrangement, narrating a tumultuous relationship in a complex, diaristic style. Second, the sculpture Total Depravity is a lifesize sculptural casting of the artist's own naked body, covered in sushi, displayed on a glass table. Evoking the international feminist furor over nyotaimori, the Japanese practice of serving sushi off of a nude model, the sculpture calls into the question the very act of aesthetic consumption.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a makeshift photocopied lettersize publication, which does not document the work in the exhibition so much as expand upon its multiple contexts. The publication responds to the expectations surrounding a group show catalogue, but explicitly channels the production style of early 90s zines, at the pivotal moment when affordable desktop publishing was radically transforming the visual style of DIY print production. The publication will include contributions from each of the artists, along with texts from Eric Kroll and John Tottenham. Copies will be available for purchase at the gallery.
Personnel
Heather Cantrell is best known for her photographic portraiture, which considers the relationships between notions of self, social status, public performance, and collective identity. She has had solo exhibitions at Kinkead Contemporary (Los Angeles), MOT International (London), Newman Popiashvilli (New York, NY), sixspace (Los Angeles) and Sandroni Rey Gallery (Los Angeles). Group shows include Wonderland Art Space (Copenhagen, Denmark), curated by Paul Pys; The Luckman Fine Arts Complex at CSULA (Los Angeles), curated by Annie Buckley; the 18th Street Art Center (Los Angeles), curated by Ciara Ennis and CCA Wattis Institute (Oakland); and the exhibition Likeness: Portraits of Artists by Other Artists, curated by Matthew Higgs. Reviews of her work have been published in Artforum, New York Times, Frieze, LA Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Cantrell received her MFA from UCLA in 2001 and her BFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1995.
Dawn Kasper is well known for her performances that explore language, subjectivity, the body, and cultural norms of behavior. She has performed and exhibited at galleries and institutions including the Migros Museum Für Genenwartskunst in Zurich, LISTE Basel, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Art Basel Art Positions, Miami, LACMA, LACE, The Hammer, MOCA, Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York, Anna Helwing Gallery, Honor Fraser Gallery, Circus Gallery, Leo Koenig Inc., Projekte, New York. Her videos have been screened at Art in General, New York; Copy Gallery, Philadelphia; and David Castillo Gallery, Miami. Kasper is one of the founding members of Human Resources.
Tricia Lawless Murray uses photography, video, and performance to document the interaction between personal fantasy and the mediated world of representation. She is represented by Jancar Gallery in Los Angeles and has exhibited her work in Germany, Iran, Poland, Spain, and Taiwan. Her work was included in The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography, Vol. 2 published in March 2011. She also curated eros/thanatos, a project containing the photographic work of 36 artists, which was first exhibited at PØST in Los Angeles before traveling to Project Space Kreuzberg in Berlin and then back to Southern California to be shown as part of the 12 Gauge Series at the Torrance Art Museum. Born and raised along the coast in Southern California, she completed her BA in the History of Art at UC Berkeley and her MFA at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Davida Nemeroff works with the language of photographic print to explore how pictorial information is literally and metaphorically framed. She holds a BFA in Photographic Studies from Ryerson University (2004) and a MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2009.) Her work has been exhibited in Canada, The United States, Germany and South Korea. She is represented by Annie Wharton Los Angeles in the U.S. and by Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects in Canada. In addition to her work as an artist, she is active as an organizer, co-directing the nocturnal platform Night Gallery in Los Angeles.
Amy Sampson has an MFA from California College of the Arts in Photography and a BFA from Sonoma State University in printmaking. She has exhibited her photography and short films in the Moscow Biennial, the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose, The Valand School of Art in Sweden, Tart Gallery in San Francisco, the DiRosa Preserve, Materials and Applications, Los Angeles, CA, and The Silver Lake Film Festival. She is also active in the collaborative EarthBound Moon, a group that produces site-specific sculptural projects internationally.
Benjamin Lord received his MFA from UCLA, and his BA from the University of Chicago. His artwork spans the techniques of photography, video, drawing, sculpture, and bookmaking. A solo exhibition of his work titled False Positives will be on view at Las Cienegas Projects in Culver City from September 10 – October 8, 2011. Much of his work takes the form of a collection or sequence of images, objects and texts. Most recently, in 2010, Humaliwo Chambers, a set of twenty five color photographs in three portfolios, was published in a large edition as the Norton Christmas Project. As a curator, last year Lord organized Three Tall Men, a group show with Erik Bluhm, Paul Gellman, and Peter Harkawik at Space 1520 in Hollywood. He is also active as a writer on art, publishing feature articles in X-TRA, Afterimage, and other publications.
“MGM Grand is coolness incarnate.” ~ New York Times
NUT is structured like a nut: a fruit with a skin, meat, and a seed. NUT speaks to
our relationship with dance, as practice and as a discipline. NUT is MGM’s first dance
created during the winter months. It questions the aesthetics of produced dance, and
how it is expected to affect an audience and a venue. NUT takes cues from diverse
performance cultures and historical influences such as Motown, elements of the
mid-90’s NYC dance improvisation scene and Tommy DeFrantz's dance class for
undergraduates at MIT.
MGM Grand (Modern Garage Movement), an (un)disciplined art dance group, started
as a threesome in a one-car garage in CA. Since 2005, MGM has taken themselves
on the road, transforming spaces into arenas for audience-mobilizing dances: garages,
galleries, alleyways, schools, movie theaters, streams and valleys. NUT began in
Cambridge at MIT, premiered at The Kitchen, was recently performed at the Museum
of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) and will travel up the West Coast Aug/Sept
2011.
MGM is Biba Bell, Jmy Leary and Piage Martin, with R McNeill.
Previous works include Oneness: Making It With Love (2010), Easy Royce (2010), Royce (2009), Dajointe
(2009), Tonight (2009), New Gree (2008), THIS DANCE IS CALLED GREE, IT IS FROM BEDSTUY.
(2007) and Maynard (2005).
MGM has performed at numerous places, including American Dance Festival, Durham, NC; Artissima,
Turin, Italy; Bohemian National Home, Detroit, MI; Callicoon Fine Arts, Callicoon, NY; Capital Theater,
Olympia WA; Creative Time OceanFront Pavilion at Miami Art Basel, Miami, FL; Esalen Institute, Big Sur,
CA; Henry Miller Library, Big Sur, CA; Jack Hanley Gallery, NY, NY; MacArthur b Arthur, Oakland, CA;
Milk & Honey, Sebastopol, CA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; Mission Creek
Music Festival, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Jurassic Technology, LA, CA; Pace Wildenstein Gallery, NY,
NY; Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR; Pleasure Pad, San Francisco, CA; Shane's llama barn,
Portland, OR; Subterranean Arthouse, Berkeley, CA; The Kitchen, NY, NY; and Twin Peaks Orchard,
Lincoln, CA.
For more information, visit www.moderngaragemovement.com.
moderngaragemovement@gmail.com
