Thursday, August 26, 2010

1920s Field Day: Obsessed with Parasols to Boot

Hector Oviedo in Guestroom.

Rochelle Botello's Dreamboat floating down the hill.
Watercolor by Aragna Ker
Finding tigers in El Sereno...
The lay of the land.

Images from Paul Pescador's photographic series 3119 Chadwick.
New works by Kris Chatterson. Courtesy of Western Project.
Shifting in and out of focus, Jamison Carter's Specter.
Meriel Stern and friends amongst the nipples.
Matt MacFarland continuing the Lost Artworks series.
On to the next one.
A breath of fresh air courtesy of Laurie Sumiye's OxyTree.



View from the bottom of the hill. Nancy Popp getting ready to roll and unwind.
Audience watch from Meriel Stern's crocheted Womans Work  while Nancy Popp catches air.
Laurie Sumiye's OxyTree provides fresh green oxygen (and some much needed shade) 24/7.
Thank you Dan and Kate for providing transportable shade! A special thanks to Yuki for photographing the day's festivities.    


Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Obsessive Obsession Obsessed


Summercamp's Project Project presents Obsession Obsessive Obsessed, an outdoor group exhibition of artists who either through material, compulsion, process or concept are consumed, fixated, or possessed.
Organized by Fatima Hoang, Elonda Billera & Janice Gomez. 
 

Opening reception Sunday, August 22nd from 5—8 pm
Exhibition runs from August 22—September 3. Hours by appointment

Paul Pescador is an artist and artist organizer. His actions, gestures and performances deal with issues surrounding social disconnection and communal space. For Obsession Obsessive Obsessed, Pescador will display photographs of created pairings between seemingly unrelated objects in the private spaces of Summercamp’s Project Project.  Aragna Ker blurs individual identity through experiential consumptions to create a digestive process that expels objective matter to be inspected, avoided or re-consumed by the audience. Subliminal bells gently prompt viewers to dig through the layered depth of intuition; thus, cultivating space for onlooker to become participator. Public presentation of this work creates its own virtual hybrid of culture and globalism.

In another installment of The Lost Artworks, Matt MacFarland will create comic drawings to document his experiences at the opening. The Lost Artworks, MacFarland’s ongoing project, adheres to a structure that suggests a serial production without the series.  Any medium can be employed in the Lost Artworks.  Video can be next to a sculpture made of dryer lint, drawings next to a wall painting resembling a stain.  The potential meaning of each part of the installation, similar to how words are structured in a sentence, is contingent on the piece next to it.  Rochelle Botello’s Dreamboat is fueled by her experiences, both real and imagined. Botello uses cardboard, paper, tape and fabric to create absurd scenarios that engage issues of identity, desire, and control thereby exposing the complex and contradictory nature of everyday life.  Meriel Stern  is transforming the topography of Summercamp’s Project Project by crocheting a covering blanket for the land out of clothesline and a path of round crocheted galvanized steel wire and silicone nipples.
 

Through constructed membranes, Jamison Carter explores the existence of spirit(s), phantoms, thoughts and things that have no physical form. Carter’s precarious linear structures attempt to give form to the physically undefined while remaining tenuous in their construction and defined by their negative space.  Kris Chatterson paints to explore abstract possibilities within self-prescribed limitations. The limitations serve as a conceptual framework to keep his process focused. Each painting begins with a series of structural marks that provide an armature for the looser marks. After being convinced of his motives, the resulting marks become passing thoughts in paint and time.

The OxyTree® is an indoor-outdoor installation by artist Laurie Sumiye that asks the viewer to imagine a near-future where clean air is a premium, and trees are sold and marketed as “all-natural air filters.” The work considers how obsessively buying green products blurs the reality of sustainability and science, and how our belief systems and cultural habits shape what we perceive our own health and well-being is related to the environment.  Nancy Popp’s projects investigate the body’s relationship to site and architecture, along with the risk and vulnerability of serious play.  For Obsession Obsessive Obsessed, Popp will invite audience participation and utilize the slope of backyard hill.

And as a compliment to Obsession Obsessive Obsessed, Hector Oviedo will be featured in Guestroom.  Oviedo’s drawings, often religious in nature, use a dense vivid color palette and extensive patterning suggestive of a rapturous experience.  Oviedo creates and shows his work at First Street Gallery Art Center, an exhibition resource and arts management center for adults with developmental disabilities in Claremont, California.