|
|
|
|
|
   AROUND THE GALLERIES July 14, 2006 Close-knit 'Sweater' teamwork Even with so many cooks in the kitchen, the collaborative installation "Sweater" leaves singularly refined impression. And more. By Holly Myers Special to the Times  "Sweater" is a collaborative installation organized by Gallery 825, directed by sculptor Tim Hawkinson and created by six of the L.A. Art Assn.'s member artists: Michele Jaquis, Arthur Pembleton, Sharon Kagan, Meeson Pae Yang, Neil Fenn and Sophia Allison, none of whom has worked with one another before. The second in an ongoing series of collaborative projects designed to foster mentorship opportunities for LAAA artists, it sounds like a good time.It also sounds like something that, with so many cooks in the kitchen, could easily degenerate into chaos. I can't speak to the nature of the process, but the final result is just the opposite: a strikingly harmonious creation that, though physically sprawling, leaves a singularly refined impression. The unlikely material is cream-colored industrial spray foam. The artists used it to produce a series of large, flat, rectangular grids that were subsequently strung together and draped from ceiling to floor around the gallery. The effect is that of a massive fishing net — or, as the title suggests, a very loosely woven sweater. An audio component, which feels less than essential but doesn't particularly detract, strings together snippets from instructional knitting tapes. With a nod to Eva Hesse and a distinct (though not overpowering) echo of Hawkinson's own convoluted contraptions, the piece has a weird, organic delicacy that encourages exploration, drawing the viewer into its fold. The material is strong enough to hold its shape (with the help of a few wires and some monofilament) but looks like it would crumble to the touch, as if produced in some fantastic growth spurt but now on the verge of deterioration. The fact that it is shifting over time — responding to fluctuations in temperature and sagging under its own weight — underscores its air of organic vitality. In the season of the sprawling group show, with individual artists thrown into jostled competition on crowded gallery walls all over the city, a community effort as thoughtful and focused as this comes as a refreshing alternative. It's art for art's sake, in the best possible sense. The three solo shows that accompany the installation — Lana Shuttleworth, Robin McCauley and Dori Atlantis — embody a similar range of formal concerns and are also well worth a look. Especially notable is Shuttleworth's "Rock Bottom," a fantastic multipaneled landscape made entirely (like all of the works in her show) from the rubber of road construction safety cones, sliced into hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny slivers and disks. It's always thrilling to see so banal an object transformed into something beautiful, but this is a particularly impressive stretch. Who knew that this humble, road-battered fixture contained such an astonishing range of tones and textures?
Where: Gallery 825, 825 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA (310) 652-8272
|
|
|
||