Featuring Terry Chatkupt, Michelle Dizon and Camilo Ontiveros, Jennifer Hayashida and Benj Gerdes, Adriana Lara, Elana Mann, RJ Messineo April 29 – June 27, 2010
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NEVER VERY FAR APART CURATED BY RYAN INOUYE FEATURING TERRY CHATKUPT, MICHELLE DiZON AND CAmiLO ONTIVEROS, JENNifER HAYASHIDA AND BENJ GERDES, ADRIANA LARA, ELANA MANN, RJ MESSINEO April 29 – June 27, 2010 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, California USA 90012 Visit www.redcat.org or call +1 213 237 2800 for more information Gallery Hours: noon-6pm or intermission, closed Mondays NEVER VERY FAR APART The exhibition Never Very Far Apart brings together Pre-dating the multi-national conglomerates and behind- structured as a duet—an orderly back and forth between sparsely populated landscapes, the artist’s adds voiceover six projects that cross the poetic and political ground the-scene maneuverings of the current economic crisis, Mack’s recollections and Mann’s performance— narrative, contemplating how his own personal recol- between the individual and the group, the local and the Kreuger transformed his family’s matchstick business ultimately excavates the compounded physical and lections may resonate with other’s memories, walking a global, this moment in time and that place in history. by establishing large-scale production and distribution psychological terrain that stretches between the two. line between the familiar and the foreign. The intimate Proceeding from the particular conditions in which they facilities and raising capital to merge with or acquire register of these videos explore what it means to be at live and work, these artists explore distance as both competing companies and those in related industries. Although working through a different vocabulary, home, moving through the internal mechanisms that border and bridge—considering how a position may also Between 1917–1932, Kreuger borrowed money at low Adriana Lara’s practice also proceeds from a simple underlie notions of belonging. parallel or intersect with disparate places or distant rates on U.S. markets and loaned these funds to national though sincere desire to create conditions for dialogue. times. The exhibition’s title acknowledges a responsibility governments to leverage market control. At the height Often with a playful touch, the artist challenges notions RJ Messineo’s practice as a painter stems from quiet and to our immediate surroundings while suggesting that of his power, Kreuger stood at the helm of over 200 of authorship and originality in art. These interests are continual acknowledgment of her immediate surround- the parameters, defining these relationships extend companies and setup matchstick monopolies in at least foregrounded in her involvement with Mexico City-based ings. As of late, the artist has worked with materials farther than we can presently see, experience or articu- 34 countries. art office Perros Negros, which she co-founded with likely to be found around the house, in the back of a late. As a constellation of works in performance, moving Agustina Ferreyra and Fernando Mesta. In addition to garage or a neglected yard. By using mirror, window image, painting and printed matter, the exhibition Through contemporary footage shot in two Swedish working with the office to organize a number of large- screen and wooden lattice in recent works, Messineo considers what material ground emerges when moments Match factories in operation since the 19th century, scale residency and exhibition projects, Lara also serves throws into relief the contingency of the painting’s are thought together that usually stand apart. Populus Tremula follows the manufacturing process, as editor of its publication Pazmaker—a free, Spanish/ surface and the limits of its frame. Working in and which beyond the conversion to a fully-automated English, tri-fold poster/zine that gathers authors across against the potentials and problems of painting, the artist The exhibition includes two collaborative projects, both system, has changed little over the past hundred years. various places, times and disciplines. explores a method of working that raises fundamental of which contemplate the possibility of revisioning the “In the film loop, a superimposed sequence of text questions about looking and legibility. As Messineo relationship between the present and the past. As runs parallel to the moving image in time, though In keeping with the office’s mission and Lara’s own pen- explains: “I have been thinking about the construction individual artists and collaborators, Michelle Dizon and disrupts the ideology of progress as asserted by narra- chant for idiosyncratic exchange, Pazmaker adapts its of a resemblance as way to make a painting, because Camilo Ontiveros opens questions of migration, citizen- tives of industrialization, capitalism and the modern physical and conceptual format from Pacemaker, a publi- it points to the impossibility of representation and the ship and political resistance to a dialogue with history. day nation state. cation organized by the like-minded curatorial collective, inherent loss within every attempt, without giving up on The artists’ video installation Westlake Theater (2008) Toasting Agency, based in Paris. Conceived as both a the act of trying to communicate some kind of truth of explores the many uses of this majestic, 1920s, cinema Through artworks and larger discursive projects, meeting point and means of distribution, the publication experience… [It] is not so much a pursuit of what it is house. Like many old theaters in Los Angeles, films were Elana Mann’s practice explores the theatrics of social facilitates ongoing exchange between cultural producers we are looking at, but how it looks and the messy models presented here for decades, before the building closed and political life through instances of interpersonal in Mexico and those working abroad. For the first time, by which we make meaning from this how.” Messineo’s for renovations, and reopened as a swap meet. exchange. Over the past few years, the artist’s perfor- Lara presents all eight Pazmakers published since 2006, new works on wooden lattice, Shield Painting (garden) mance-based works, in particular, have often explored along with a new issue produced specifically for REDCAT. (2010) and Concept of Yearning (2010), continues to In the work, a luminous view of the proscenium that once the body’s capacity to register systems of communica- With its presentation here, Lara uses Pazmaker 9 as a bridge elements of her personal life within a language presided over the early Hollywood now spans a thriving tion and control. Building upon these interests, the platform to “edit” others into the show.”. In addition to that has a public presence. swap meet on the orchestra level below. Audio samplings performance video Can’t Afford the Freeway (2007-10) a handful of recently published texts, she also calls upon from the space draw attention to activity on the ground grows out of shared conversations between the artist new contributors and enlists the skills of designer Robert Ryan Inouye level, where vendors sell clothes, toys, food, and other and Captain Dylan Alex Mack. Revolving around the Snowden for this issue. Curatorial Assistant desirables, activating alternate, though equally rich, tension of driving and being driven, the work intertwines REDCAT experiences of cultural production and exchange. In audio of Mack describing the perils of ground travel in Shifting from public dialogue to personal narrative, a move that parallels the theater’s re-ise (following modern warfare with footage of the artist’s movement- Terry Chatkupt’s trilogy of videos—Trail Memories the heels of its dis-use), the work centers a part of Los based performance in and around the architecture of (2008), Field Memories (2009) and Park Memories Angeles that isn’t usually remembered here. her station wagon. In the work, the captain describes (2010)—navigates visual and psychological passageways driving as a vulnerable maneuver, while the artist through open fields and wooded expanses just outside Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida’s 16mm film attempts to position and reposition herself in relation places the artist has called home. Within each work, loop Populus Tremula (2010) is one work in an ongoing to her car as a private space and personal freedom. Chatkupt adds layers to his original video sequences project that draws upon research on the life of Through this lens, Can’t Afford the Freeway represents a by incorporating found footage and photographs—the Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932), the industrialist, financier kind of labor in which the artist acknowledges participa- kind one might find in a family photo album or salvage and founder of the Swedish Matchstick Corporation. tion in a system that she opposes. What appears to be from the an old antique store. To the backdrop of these Michelle Dizon and Camilo Ontiveros, Westlake Theater (still), 2008, video installation, sound, Terry Chatkupt, Field Memories (still), 2009-10, single-channel HD video with sound, 21 min., courtesy the artist. 4:55 min., narrated by Jane Pickett, courtesy the artist. Jennifer Hayashida and Benj Gerdes, Populus Tremula (still), 2010, Laser subtitled Elana Mann, Can’t Afford the Freeway (still), 2007–10, HD video projection and 2002 16mm film, 9 min., courtesy the artists. Subaru Legacy Outback seats, sound, 15 min. Kristen Smiarowski, Choreographer Laura Bouza, Director of Photography, courtesy the artist. Pazmaker Issues 2–4, text, 23-1/2 x 16-1/2 in. (60 x 42 cm.) poster, edited by Adriana Lara / Perros Negros, ongoing project since 2006, courtesy the artist. RJ Messineo, Concept of Yearning (detail), 2010, 48 x 97-1/2 x 3 in., paint on wooden lattice, courtesy the artist. Memories Trilogy Can’t Afford the Freeway Voiceover transcript from Field Memories (2007) by Terry Chatkupt Text by Elana Mann with Dylan Alexander Mack Trail Memories (2007) After moving to Los Angeles I was interested in connecting and disrupting my experience as a Southern Californian NARRATOR driver with the site of modern physical warfare: the road. In It’s a funny place here where I grew up. All of the flat land, 2007 I began seeking out individuals with whom I farms, and big clouds.