@ REDCAT - Group Exhibition : Never Very Far Apart

Never Very Far Apart
Exhibition Dates: Thursday, April 29, 2010 - Sunday, June 27, 2010
Opening reception: Wednesday, April 28, 6-8p
Artist talk: Wednesday, April 28, 6p

The group exhibition Never Very Far Apart brings together six projects that cross the poetic and political ground between the individual and the group; the local and the global; this moment in time and that place in history. Proceeding from the particular conditions in which they live and work, these artists explore distance as both border and bridge--considering how a finite position may also parallel or intersect with seemingly disparate places or distant times. Using performance, moving image, painting and printed matter, the artists examine the parameters by which context is defined and consider how they can be re-imagined to activate social spaces for renewed thought and action. Organized by REDCAT curatorial assistant Ryan Inouye, the exhibition features new and recent works by Terry Chatkupt (Los Angeles), Michelle Dizon and Camilo Ontiveros (Los Angeles), Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida (New York), Adriana Lara (Mexico City), Elana Mann (Los Angeles) and RJ Messineo (St. Louis).

The exhibition includes two collaborative projects, both of which explore possibilities of re-visioning the relationship between the present and the past. In the case of Michelle Dizon and Camilo Ontiveros' Westlake Theatre (2009), the video installation mines the layers of Los Angeles history that are held within the city's majestic 1926 cinema house. The proscenium that once presided over images of early Hollywood now arches across a swap meet that occupies the orchestra level below--bridging the various economies of production and presentation housed within the walls of one structure. Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida's 16mm film loop Populus Tremula (2010) channels the life of Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932), the industrialist, financier and founder of the Swedish Matchstick Corporation. While the camera follows the manufacturing process in two factories in operation since the 19th century, a sequence of superimposed textual interventions disrupt the seamless narratives advanced by industrialization and the nation state.
photo -Terry Chatkupt, "Field Memories" (2009) courtesy the artist.

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