Klowden Mann
Los Angeles
klowdenmann.com
Klowden Mann is very pleased to present a selection of new work from Los Angeles-based artists Jamison Carter and Rodrigo Valenzuela.
"Stature" is a new photographic series of work by Rodrigo Valenzuela, created from built and rebuilt staged casted concrete forms from discarded consumer electronic products, and now printed as photogravures. In this series, Valenzuela builds and re-builds the casted objects purely to be photographed from a fixed point—blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction through narrative, presentation, and production. The cast objects are not glued or affixed to each other, but are instead balanced in arrangements that form anthropomorphic and abstracted forms. Through this new series of work, Valenzuela explores the discards and inversions of capitalist endeavors, citing influences ranging from surrealist paintings, Latin American brutalist architecture, and Ursula Schulz-Dornburg’s images of post-Soviet era bus stops in Armenia. Valenzuela’s sculptural work further speaks to the visceral experience of institutional visual language. Viewed from above, the ceramic works resemble engines, machine parts isolated from any recognizable function, sitting in solitary confinement in the floor and lit in a way reminiscent of altars, both foreboding and beautiful. The sculptures also become a metaphor for a city, yet one we can only view in pieces.
Jamison Carter’s sculptural wall works utilize a new technique in Carter’s practice, in which marker drawings are transferred onto cast urethane resin. The resulting works play with the line between two and three dimensions, while incorporating subjects that have long been fascinations for Carter: imagery of astrophysics and space phenomena, esoteric symbolism from belief systems, Dante’s Inferno, nebula, celestial bodies, Piranesi’s Prison etchings. This practice of drawing is new to Carter’s work in that it is the first time his hand is significantly present in the making of the drawings; past drawing work has most often been mediated by a straight edge. The mandala-like radial compositions are driven by the attempt to capture nebula as they appear to us in imagery--the drawing reads as a distinct object within larger space. Rather than placing the objects in Earth-bound space, Carter is placing them in celestial space.
Klowden Mann exhibits conceptually-driven, formally innovative work across mediums, with a strong focus on and commitment to Los Angeles artists. Many gallery artists engage in practices that challenge the conventional medium-based approach to categorization, working across formal languages: highlighting collaboration, social engagement, and a commitment to artistic community and dialogue.