Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Summer is around the corner and so are we!

Start the ball rolling again

Opening Reception Sunday, June 12th from 5-8PM
Pickling Demonstration with Jen Smith from 4-6PM

Exhibition runs from June 12th to July 2nd

Summercamp's ProjectProject 3119 Chadwick Dr. LA, CA 90032

Hours by appointment, please contact summercampprojectproject@gmail.com

Gaye Chan
Chris Ellis
Carmine Iannoccone
Jason Kunke
Yoshie Sakai
Jen Smith
Ryan Taber
Mercedes Teixido
and Christy Roberts in Guestroom


Summercamp’s ProjectProject presents, Start the ball rolling again, an outdoor group exhibition of artists who re-purpose ideas and translate materials. Organized by Fatima Hoang, Elonda Billera & Janice Gomez.

Mercedes Teixido’s Sisyphus and Newton, a big boulder (painted giant ball) to be pushed up or rolled down Summercamp’s ProjectProject’s hill becomes a theatrical and playful version of the task. Teixido is interested in concepts related to the domestic sphere; its histories, presence and mostly the people that inhabit them. Investigating history in many different spheres, Ryan Taber mines the canon and explores the linkages. Taber codifies and re-contextualizes his findings into newly crafted objects, drawing and sculptures.

To find the hidden forms that authority takes in art, and vice versa, Jason Kunke pursues his desire to want to be a cop, or at least, an artist who acts like a cop, investigating where authority and aesthetics coexist. Common wisdom considers authority and art as oppositional, and the artist as a transgressor of authority. Kunke thinks they contain each other, and the apparent opposition is just one way the authoritative structure manifests within art.

Understanding the notion of common standardized units, Carmine Iannoccone tests his memory of the ubiquitous “eight inch regular” and gives them an embodied presence by hand building cement blocks without measuring tools and molds. The eight inch regular is cheap and employed in the most democratic of ways by absolutely everyone, from the huge building contractor responsible for vast swaths of urban infrastructure, to the solitary homeowner building a property wall on the weekend, to the dorm-room denizen jury-rigging a quick set of bookshelves. Iannoccone creates a liquid set of correspondences and exchanges: between the art store and Home Depot, between the studio site and the construction site, between industrial engineering and fine art, between craftsmanship in sculpture and craftsmanship in the building trades, between uniformity and irregularity, between blue collars and white collars, between critical thinking and manual labor.

In an investigation of the “working prototype”, Chris Ellis contrasts the differences in the static and the kinetic object to see what relationships may happen between the two. With Prototype of Mechanics of Transition there are multiple ways to manipulate and move the structure while encountering physical parameters or limitations that guide the experience. While Ellis encourages perpetual structured change, Gaye Chan re-purposes a ceramic frog/bear from the lost and found unclaimed communal glazeware shelf to reclaim existence and poses the question, “Did it turn out so differently than intended that you fail to recognize it, or was the shock of recognition so horrifying that you simply fled?”

In secret space, Yoshie Sakai’s Dream kitchens. video installation will be investigating the “kitchen” and its related aspects from the functional to basically, the kitchen as an emotional hub. There will be videos simultaneously projected onto kitchen-related items. The videos will range from an original cooking show broadcast made specifically for this piece juxtaposed with selected scenes from various kitchens/chefs from different families, restaurants, dormitories, etc., wherever the everyday (un)magic is happening.

Summercamp’s ProjectProject will host a hands on pickle demonstration with artist and cook, Jen Smith. Smith aims to negotiate a synthesis between her formal aesthetics, social practice project of pickling and day job as a caterer. Interested in a dialogical aesthetic that encourages critical investigation, communication and fellowship, Smith hopes that is what these community canning exercises bring to participants. Please BYOV (Bring Your Own Vegetables). Space is limited. RSVP to secure your spot with a $5 donation (materials, except vegetables, included). All proceeds go to the artist.



In addition to Start the ball rolling again, Christy Roberts will take over Guestroom, an intimate space that features a single artist. She will create a platform for dialogue using local concerns of El Sereno as a driving tool. In a previous site determined project, Roberts stated “I was trying to help the land with my art project, at the end of the day, the land is bigger than I am, with an agenda larger than mine. The process itself, then, became a symbolization of our relationship to the land. We can affect the land, but ultimately, the land has the final say. By destroying the land, we do not kill the planet, we make it for ourselves.”

Click here for more detailed information about the exhibition.