Julie Weitz: MY GOLEM
APRIL 1ST-MAY 31ST, 2018--9039 SUNSET BLVD.
AIRING EVERY 15 MINUTES FROM 6AM -2AM
MY GOLEM is the social media alter ego of artist Julie Weitz. She is an exaggerated personification of the artist’s Jewishness and an embodied metaphor commonly appropriated to symbolize technological domination through Artificial Intelligence run amok. MY GOLEM hypnotically seeps through the virtual world, unleashing bodily witchcraft and ecstatic incantations; she is the uncontrollable corollary of truth and technology gone awry. Weitz turns the historical symbol of our monstrous protector on its head as she imagines the hangover of a sin eater’s binge. Inspired by silent horror films, Kabbalistic rituals, anti- Semitic propaganda and queer performance, MY GOLEM situates Weitz’s cultural identity and physical body as a lens for examining how identity mutates online. In a much larger context, MY GOLEM is the talisman of our planet’s toxic vilification, an amalgam of rumor and symbol: the repository of our discontent.
Adam Mars: NO ROCKSTARS
Appropriating aesthetic elements from an urban art context, Mars’ work blend veracious humor with the sensibilities of pop art to create forums for contemporary topics. Overlaying vibrantly colored brick backgrounds, stenciled witticisms cover a diversity of subjects while remaining relatable to an audience bound by a shared social-media experience. Mars’ work ultimately examines what it means to live in a rapidly evolving society and collectively question the ambiguity of our future.
Pascual Sisto: NO CONTENT/MONUMENT VALLEY
Pascual Sisto’s work explores the transitional and uncertain phase of subjects undergoing a rite of passage in which their normal condition and function is altered, leaving them in a suspended “betwixt and between” state. Their sense of purpose and identity dissolve, bringing about our disorientation. By placing these items into conversation with one another, they parallel the constructed, transitional identity of Los Angeles’ layered reality. Representations of the familiar, in a hypnotic dance of transition, offer an expanded experience of once immutable objects; now unmoored with no ending, resolution or ‘fixed state.’ Because nothing is off-limits, Sisto is able to create a mathematically based visual shorthand that takes the detritus of our daily life and makes it all new.
Jen Liu: THE PINK DETACHMENT SERIES
Based on her award-winning film and dance performance for the Whitney Museum, Jen Liu’s THE PINK DETACHMENT SERIES reinterprets Madame Mao’s THE RED DETACHMENT OF WOMEN. This significant ballet from China’s Cultural Revolution describes the domestication of an all-women military corps whose violence has been transformed from the threatening red of military action to the soft and submissive pink of factory food production. Hot dogs, as a particularly industrial food product, integrates the “undesirable” portions with the “desirable” portions of an animal for utmost efficiency and availability to the masses, while serving as a greater allegory for the possibilities of “pinko” communism and feminine obedience: a vision of social harmony through a technologically-enabled abundance, political unification through compromise.
Martine Syms: LESSONS
Syms examines the myths of identity and memory; how they are transformed by the shifting boundaries of business and culture. Boundaries are at the very center of Syms practice: how can she best collapse them? By carefully disassembling the false truths that have been erected by society, by Hollywood, by popular culture. Syms references Fred Moten's essential theory that black radicalist tradition was born within the pauses of improvisational jazz. Similarly, Syms seeks to illuminate the white-washing of history with her own modern break. Site-specific interventions in the truest sense, Syms' semi-autobiographical, caught glimpses offer a window that is at once mundane, subversive, intimate and profound.
Barry Anderson: TOTEMIC PERSONA
The current administration is spreading anxiety, frustration, fear and resistance. One theme that is especially resonant with artists is the refusal to submit to the bigotry and nationalistic aggression surrounding immigration. In this climate, artist and filmmaker Barry Anderson examines ideas of equivalency with the world premiere of his 2-channel digital series,TOTEMIC PERSONA. By focusing on the multi-national patchwork of his students in Kansas City, Anderson underscores how significant and pervasive this crisis of identity has become; the effects of which are reflected in their unsmiling faces. But then in response, Anderson’s collage of eyes and skin and hair moves and blends together; a smooth rippling reassurance. Every individual belongs, a unique part that creates the whole. The Totemic Persona demonstrates our oneness; humanity writ large. In previous work, Anderson has explored different interpretations of totem- a grouping of similar items to create an alpha. This examination of our baseline persona illuminates any remaining doubts. We are all one
Assume Vivid Astro Focus: ANTES VULGAR AGORA FINO
ANTES VULGAR AGORA FINO repurposes paint marker blots used in the making of drawings. Originally imagined as a wall paper piece, ANTES VULGAR AGORA FINO (which loosely translates to ‘once trash, now fabulous’) is a multi-dimensionally resonant extravaganza. ANTES VULGAR AGORA FINO was first exhibited in 2012 in collaboration with MAM São Paulo. It took the form of a 3D mapped projection onto the dome of Oscar Niemeyer’s OCA building in Parque do Ibirapuera.
Kenzo Minami: THE HYPNOTIST
With“THE HYPNOTIST” Kenzo Minami reconstructs and represents a different interpretation of reality. Revealing within it, the true system of the cosmos - both the layered reality and the orchestration behind it. Here one action leads to another and everything connects. Every gesture has a purpose and function- in and of itself as well as part of the whole. Object and construct- two worlds interacting and intertwined. Two sides working in unison. Two worlds in circular motion. The duality of reality. Kenzo Minami’s practice of meticulous mindfulness in the graceful shape of a mandala echoes our perpetual impermanence. At once a warning and a blessing: this too shall pass.
Síta Valrún: GOLDFOSS EPISODES
Síta Valrún’s films are emotional postcards she sends to her dispassionate future self. Dream-like and dissociative, this collection of haunting short films exists separately and together to paint a nuanced picture of Valrún’s visceral history. With luminous accuracy, Valrún illustrates the dilemma of feeling: relationships and situations infused by profound emotion fade with temporal distance. In response, these filmic windows become the catalyst to re-living the pathos of the past.
Amia Yokoyama: INITIAL CONDITIONS
Amia Yokoyama is continually reexamining of the concept of origin. Hers is the idea that our physical and philosophical origin is a constantly shifting circumstance that binds us to the context of the present. What occurs when the boundaries of one’s origin collides with the boundaries of another? T Through her work she celebrates multiplicities and their ambiguities. This is not in opposition to identity but in defense of sometimes not knowing; the failure of language and definition to describe the transforming. There is no beginning or ending; no value or judgement; there is only relation.
JEDEDIAH CAESAR –ADAPTIVE IN 4 PARTS
APRIL 1ST-MAY 31ST, 2019--9039 SUNSET BLVD.
AIRING EVERY 15 MINUTES FROM 6AM -2AM
In the material world, artist Jedediah Caesar is interested in following the potential of a given material as it is fixed within an object and then engaging with that object to undo this fixed state. Conceptually, Caesar is interested how art and community imprints itself on a physical place. Caesar’s work seeks to unearth the stories buried within urban and natural landscapes.
Lucas Ajemian: BLACK HOLE NETWORK ON SUNSET
Artist, Lucas Ajemian is focused on cycles of dissolution, regeneration and creation. Like a fable, Ajemian’s proposed installation at both locations leads us through the modern moral cycle of appropriation, consumption and decay. Ajemian is turning his focused, epic lens on our collective quandary. How do we evolve without waste? From the content providers that foment our desire to the turnips and the blackberry we didn’t eat for dinner Ajemian, takes us through the allegorical cause and effect of our mass consumption.
