In Substrate→Spasm, there is a small risograph publication with some writing and additional information/images that point through the exhibition.
Due to the exhibition being monochromatically lit in red under heat lamps, much of the red text is illegible while inside the space, with it only being visible outside and away from the light; Intimacies that can only be afforded with space and time.
They’re free in the gallery as supplies last.
Special thanks to Karina and @punchkisspress for making it happen
My exhibition opens this weekend (4/18) with a reception from 2-5 PM at UCI. The work does not end there!
I will be hosting a shapenote singing (from the sacred harp) with @foyer_la the next weekend Sunday April 26, starting at 1 PM.
The singing is the continuation of the work started in the exhibition, and is shown alongside my peers and students in “fictions/nonfictions,” an exhibition celebrating collaborative making with Simon Leung. The singing is my offering for discourse through catharsis.
All are welcome to take part as my project shifts from substrate→ spasm→rhythm. If you know singers in the LA area, please spread the word!
If attending, please bring your own chair to sit in, and consider bringing food or drink as there will be a potluck. I will be documenting all the chairs brought for something down the line.
Thanks to Foyer for the generosity. I hope to see you there!
Under an American Heat
there are only souvenirs
substrate→spasm, a solo exhibition of all new works is opening April 18 at UC-Irvine. I have so many folks to thank to get to this point, and I can’t wait to share.
Substrate referring to the inherent state of breathless reception we find ourselves in, an asthmatic life without rhythm in time and content. Underlying here is an alienation to the violence and tumult that is both close and distant.
Spasm referring to a synthetic, aesthetic, somatic realignment of the body in the substrate.
I will be more precise with my words later. Only so much to fit here.
The exhibition does not aim for abstraction of content, but of operations of images in grief to create rhythm.
With love! More soon.
Substrate→Spasm
Opening April 18
UC-Irvine
Under an American Heat there are only souvenirs.
THIS IS WHAT REMAINS OF JUMBO.
A 214-TON, 25-FOOT LONG, STEEL CONTAINER WHICH HUNG IN A TOWER 800 YARDS FROM GROUND ZERO ON JULY 16, 1945. THE BLAST DID NOT DAMAGE JUMBO.
JUMBO WAS DESIGNED TO CONTAIN THE EXPLOSION OF THE ATOMIC BOMB IF THE TEST FIZZLED; IT WAS NOT USED. IF IT HAD BEEN, THE GIANT THERMOS WOULD HAVE BEEN VAPORIZED ALONG WITH ITS TOWER BY THE STAR-LIKE FIREBALL.
when intimacies are impossible in a state of breathlessness.
More soon.
Posting because I should more (debatable, and I guess I should keep this archive)??
One of the tintypes from dowsing in the desert. The longer the days go the more the chemistry falls apart due to the heat. The longer I would go the stranger the act would become.
Always questioning what I was finding or searching for, water as images, chemistry as performance. To be beholden to forces outside of one’s control and a desire to believe.
A Labyrinthine Impulse is an artwork created in collaboration between Jacob Lenc, Jered Frigillana, and I for “The Inoperative Community,” opening this Saturday 12-5 PM at UCI.
This work stands in opposition to the impossible myths surrounding Sol Lewitt’s staging of The Location of a Circle (yes it did happen), and responds to the desires of artists and institutions in making labyrinths. It is also an exercise in playing with authorship and submission to these structures. It is simultaneously a wall drawing of Sol Lewitt’s draft of The Location of a Circle, and a letter originally penned for Hal Glicksman the director of the gallery at UCI at the time presented in crayon at a larger scale.
I’ll show the full wall soon.
There is so much more to say about how and why, but instagram is not the venue, and I hope to see you there this Saturday!
None of this would have been possible without the support from Juli Carson, Sasha Ussef, Kevin Appel, Mona Welch, and the install team at the UAG.
This past year I was working occasionally out by Pioneertown in the desert helping to fix up a new gallery space at the Burns Piñon Ridge Reserve with some of my peers while making new work.
Here is a work “Prepared to Suspend Disbelief” that came out of this process (which included a series of performances to drawing to mapping to tintypes to video to postcard) based around the process of dowsing.
I would use the rods to traverse the property and look for dowsing responses to map out something???? using a series of small pink lawn flags. Dowsing is a unique process in that it is rooted in the desire to find something (namely water, but can be used to find anything that is properly attuned to). In the process of suspending disbelief, a map, a series of flags, and some tintypes from those places where the response happened emerged.
I was using the rods to locate my desire in the landscape, which is what we ended up with. You can send your desires from the landscape to friends in a postcard. More divinity and grace.
Photos 2+5 courtesy of Artifax Photo @artifaxphto
The full video is 15 minutes (with more to it) and i will post it somewhere soon.
Hi
I’ve been making a lot of work and will explain myself soon in a discrete package that will make more sense. It will live somewhere available digitally, though I don’t have the full details until I put it out.
I’ve been making a work called a “prelude to daydreaming.” It was part of a group show called “An Epitaph: My dreams are getting better all the time.”
I added the “an epitaph” to the title with the support of my cohort. We always need funeral rights.
Thinking lyrically not poetically (it’s sketchy an unrefined). Things to be referenced and repeated. Creating an ecology of a work to be lived in, in which to dream again eventually. The work cycling around a precarity of fire. Very specific operations (boring poetics). They needed to happen for fullness, and I hope that now that they are wrapping up I can present the full picture clearly. What I presented was opaque.
It’s a work that contains research from the fire ecology of Los Angeles started 10 months ago (!) before the fires. It has a custom scent/a perfume I’ve constructed and made (a new skill!) from ingredients in the local chaparral and other psychology. Matchbooks. Postcards of things lost. A simpler sculpture on a grid of flooring both high and low. Writing. Images and video. An unrequited radio transmission. Performances of community. Realized community. Help from others. It’s too earnest and foolish. The compendium is where it’s going.
I can’t wait to share something more succinct. And I hope to soon. I hate this platform but I want to show you more. There are so many people to thank and the specifics of that will come out as elements get shared.
But before we get there, a thank you to everyone who participated in elements of its development (there are so many!).
I can’t help but continue to make, and your support is the reason why I continue.
💚
haven’t made a post in awhile, been a little away from the internet personally. Still making things. More to come in the spring (think February). Love you all!
Falling into the Lethe
A vessel with black and white photographs from an unreliable narrator in wine.
For getting on one’s knees and grasping.
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.
.
I made this, and while not in its final form, it might be worth sharing. The photos will continue to develop in the wine over time until they are illegible (due to the chemistry of caffenol), the wine will moulder and evaporate, and the vessel with stain. There is no celebration here.
More to say, but not here.
With care always. 💙
New show opening next Saturday (1.20)!
Putting my face on here (so people will see) to say that I’m going to be showing new work in the Greater LA MFA show (GLAMFA) opening next Saturday 1.20 from 4–7 PM at Cal State Long Beach.
It’s the first time I’m showing here so come say hi. See my new installation exegesis for the first time, and works from friends @surgeon_hands , @gwynethbulawsky , and @laurengoldenberglongoria .
Thank you all 💙.
