Fighting With Phantoms of Purple Prose
John Seal

January 28th – February 19th

Opening Saturday, January 28th from 7 to 10 pm

Workspace is pleased to present Fighting With Phantoms of Purple Prose, an exhibition of new paintings and objects by John Seal.

To the 17th century Calvinist Dutch, the flower was the quintessential momento mori symbol. Life in the mortal sphere blossomed forth beautiful but brief. To look at a flower was to see the desire for immortality and the inevitability of death had but one origin. It was to gaze at the certainty of our uncertainty simultaneously celebrated and mocked.

Language, too, has a momento mori aspect. To say “flower” or to think “flower” or to paint a flower is to completely divorce ourselves from the original. It is to be carried away to our deaths- cut off from the life that we shared in common with that beautiful thing before we named it. But if we can take that thought “flower” and make with it another object in the world, we can briefly escape that death. With it we can build a bridge back to the world.

No, the object we create is not a flower, but it relates. What we make is a flower. It becomes a parallel through which we can live with our thoughts and language in the world, staving off death and estrangement for a moment longer.

John Seal received his MFA from the University of Southern California in 2011 and his BA from Bard College in 2008. His work has recently been included in exhibitions at Statler Waldorf Gallery, the Torrance Art Museum, and in the 2010 New Wight Biennial at the Broad Arts Center, UCLA. In the summer of 2011 he was in residence the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Dwayne Wayned
Samantha Roth

March 2 – April 1

Opening Friday, March 2nd from 7 to 10 pm

Workspace is pleased to present Dwayne Wayned, an exhibition of new work by Samantha Roth.

In Dwayne Wayned, Samantha Roth presents a constellation of ideas that reference formal visual solutions mined from the everyday, matched with explorations of language and its’ peculiarities and structures. Influenced by art history, materiality, domestic processes and objects, as well as simple display methods, the works demonstrate a dialogue about abstraction and representation, returning repeatedly to challenges of dimensionality and communication.

Dwayne Wayne, the nerdy but audacious flirt from the 90’s spinoff sitcom A Different World is arguably most well known for his iconic spectacles. Brainy and bold, his character has a breadth of dimensionality, but can be reduced to the sign of his most eye-catching accessory, flip-top glasses. This object is made up of the purposeful base “seeing aid” portion, and the functional, but somewhat more aesthetic sunglasses frame, fitted to sit above the glasses portion. These can become a stand-in, or a metaphor, for Dwayne’s personality, as well as a formal object to be seen. There, on his face, sits an original, a source structure, and hovering just above it, the perfectly fitted copy, flexible in its interpretation of purpose.

The object is poetic and pragmatic, functional and aesthetically considered, uncanny by its very nature because of its doubling and relationship to sight. For Roth, this structure demonstrates an analogy for her practice. Embedded in the act of making, is the question of re-presentation; a sneaking sense of self-doubt about the validity of locking down that other version of something. Whether the work is a documentation or invention one can’t shake the sense that it is a translation of something that exists somewhere else, be it physically or in the mind’s eye. Every work has a partner, somewhere. For the top flip part of the flip-top glasses, that partner is right there.

Samantha Roth received her MFA from the University of Southern California in 2010 and her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003. Her work has recently been included in exhibitions at Annie Wharton Los Angeles, Sight School, and Bazalel Gallery, Tel Aviv. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Five Points Reading Series Presents:

Travis Diehl
Alex Kitnick
Rachel Kushner

6:30 pm on Sunday, November 13th, 2011

Travis Diehl is an artist and writer born in Greensboro, North Carolina. His videos and prints have been shown at such venues as the Hysterically Real Theater, Curtat Tunnel, and The Centre Pompidou. His art writing has appeared most recently at Cirrus Gallery, Anthony Greaney Gallery, and Art Műr, and is forthcoming in Artforum, X-Tra, and P.&Co. He edits the Los Angeles-based magazine Prism of Reality.

Alex Kitnick has written for October and May, and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Rachel Kushner is the author of Telex from Cuba, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction in 2008, a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and winner of the California Book Award. Kushner’s writing has appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, The New York Times, Fence, Bomb, The Believer, Cabinet and Grand Street. She is co-editor of Soft Targets Journal and lives in Los Angeles, where she is at work on her second novel.

Department of Water and Power
Marina Pinsky

November 5th – January 15th, 2011

Closing: Sunday, January 15th from 1 to 5pm

Selected Press from Marina Pinsky: Department of Water and Power
Artforum.com
Notes on Looking
Photograph Magazine

Workspace is pleased to present Department of Water and Power, Marina Pinsky’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

In Department of Water and Power, Pinsky presents a selection of recent photographs and sculpture. Starkly captured in the late-afternoon Los Angeles sunlight, the large-format photographs depict meticulously crafted assemblages of building materials, food, and historical images. Displayed in the window of the storefront exhibition space, a large sculpture made of balanced bricks creates a tense and precarious structure that parallels those depicted in the photographs.

Marina Pinsky was born in 1986 in Moscow, Russia. She received her BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and will receive her MFA from UCLA in 2012. Her work can be seen in the Art MFA 2012 Exhibition at the New Wight Gallery at UCLA and in an upcoming group show at Cleopatra’s Berlin.

What Have I Done to Deserve This

Karen Adelman | John Burtle | Alexis Disselkoen | Paul Pescador | Christa von Sydow

Saturday, October 22nd
2-6 pm

Workspace is pleased to present What Have I Done to Deserve This, an event featuring performances by Karen Adelman, John Burtle, Alexis Disselkoen, Paul Pescador and Christa von Sydow. For four hours the artists will perform simultaneously, examining how both duration and the sharing of space affect performance work.

Ranging from site-specific to interactive, the works will test (physical) endurance and create an emotional buildup as the event unfolds. By the end of the evening, performers, objects, and audience will begin to blur into each other.

What Have I Done to Deserve This is the fourth iteration of Situating, a series of events involving simultaneous performances that are organized by Paul Pescador.

Karen Adelman uses performance and painting as sites for the production and reception of voice and body. Though the former may be inclined to speak and the latter do, a voice can be a conduit and a body can resound.

John Burtle creates variations on the ways we exist and interact to give new perspectives on how our behaviors effect us as individuals and as a social whole. Synergy, atoms and language are used to spurt free-thought and spontaneity. Burtle also enjoys the sight of pea blossoms fluttering in the breeze, long walks on the beach and a fresh cup of mamey ice cream from the local parlor.

For Alexis Disselkoen, participation and the negotiation of obstacles become the atmosphere and space that viewers navigate to experience her work. Disselkoen is a Los Angeles native who works with people, objects and spaces.

Paul Pescador is interested in small-scale actions and gestures that manifest in the form of photographic objects, performance events, and curated exhibitions. Whether these events occur in front of an audience, in a gallery, or in a private location, they are documented with a camera. These photographic documents are then used as the source material for the creation of new social interventions. Performances become images. Images become performances. They are linked and rely on one another to exist.

Christa von Sydow investigates contemporary gender issues. She expels the dichotomy of gendering a human body, and instigates the need for ambiguity. With the idea of being the “other,” she re-examines the concept of a fixed biological “nature,” and imposes underlying flaws within this hierarchical system.

Five Points Reading Series Presents:

Tundra

With readings by:
Ken Ehrlich
Grace Krilanovich
Karen Tongson

5 pm on Sunday, October 16th, 2011

Workspace Presents:

Kelly Cline and Amir Nikravan

CO/LAB at Art Platform Los Angeles
Presented by ARTRA Curatorial

Oct. 1st – 3rd
Opening Preview: Friday, September 30, 2011

LA Mart
Concourse Level
1933 S. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90007

Kelly Cline received her BFA from Penn State University and her MFA from CalArts in 2010. Recent exhibitions include Goldilocks at Gallery Spatium, and Hack at Statler Waldorf Gallery. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Amir Nikravan received his MFA from U.C. Irvine in 2011 and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004. Past exhibitions include Contemporary Arts Center Irvine (2011) and Rosamund Felson (2010). He lives and works in Los Angeles.

Image: Amir Nikravan: Blue Narcissus, Riso/Serigraph Print on Paper, 11″ x 17″, Edition of 10, plus 2 AP, 2011

The Land Before Time

Erich Bollmann
Samantha Contis
Nick Lowe

Opening Friday, September 16th
7-10pm

September 16th – October 16th

The Land Before Time is an exploration of the figurative. The artists in this show draw from the past of our childhoods, yet also tap into a much deeper past, one that feels prehistoric. Consequently, there is a delicate rawness that emerges from the way the subjects seem excavated into being: bodies torque in primal ways, newsprint is roughly scrawled upon, and a child deliberates about how to assemble a sculpture.

Erich Bollmann received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2010. Recent exhibitions include Matter of Principle at Art Mûr (Montreal) and L.A. NAPOLI at Le Cercle Blanc (Berlin). Bollmann lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Samantha Contis received her MFA from Yale University in 2008 and BFA from New York University in 2004. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at Smack Mellon (NYC), Newspace Center for Photography (Portland) and the Voies Off Festival in Arles, France. Her work has been published in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Capricious and T. She is a recipient of the Tierney Fellowship. She currently lives and works in New York City.

Nick Lowe is currently an MFA candidate at UC Riverside with an expected date of completion in 2013. He has had solo exhibitions at Marc Jancou Contemporary (NY), John Connelly Presents (NY), Black Dragon Society (LA), and The General Store (Milwaukee). He has been in group exhibitions at the Hammer Museum (LA), Andrea Rosen (NY), Gavin Brown Enterprise (NY), and Peres Projects (Berlin). He currently lives and works in Riverside, CA.

Curated by David Gilbert.

Image: “Untitled”, Nick Lowe, 2011, Charcoal and Pastel on Newsprint, 36″ x 24″

Five Points Reading Series Presents:

Little Earthquakes

With readings by:
Aimee Bender
Allison Carter
Samantha Cohen

Sunday, June 5th, 2011

Join us early to celebrate the closing of The Elephant, works by Betsy Lin Seder.

Gallery opens at 3 pm
Reading starts at 7 pm

Leverage

Sonja Engelhardt
Luke Stettner
Gustabo Velazquez
Claudia Weber

Curated by Jo-ey Tang

Opening Sunday, June 12th
3-7pm

A pair of scissors is one way.
A wheelbarrow another.
Also a human mandible.

the mind too….

exert a large force over a small distance at one end by exerting only a small force over a greater distance at the other.

influence the other side to move closer to the negotiating position.

pull away from each other with an equal and opposite force. the arms do not originate this force alone, but are assisted by tension in trunk musculature, through body weight and by momentum.

borrow money, buy fixed assets, use derivatives, multiply gains and losses.

identifying those observations which have a large effect on the outcome of fitting regression models.

attempting to block a kick, jumps off a teammate to attain a better position.

Volume and distance become leverage.

The Notary Public = 192” long x 135” wide = 180 square feet
Workspace = 216” long x 120” wide = 180 square feet

But maybe only a mental projection of where we are and will be standing.

We leverage our ways.
We have to.

—-

Four New York-based artists will create distinct works for The Notary Public, New York and Workspace:

Sonja Engelhardt – * 1975 in Mönchengladbach, Germany.

Luke Stettner’s first solo exhibition, The Fold, opened at Stene Projects in Stockholm, Sweden, and his solo project for the Present/Future prize opened in Torino, Italy, both in 2010. He will have his first solo exhibition in New York in September 2011 at Kate Werble Gallery. Luke is an editor of thehighlights.org, an online arts journal dedicated to artists writings and web-based projects.

Gustabo Velazquez was born in Upland, California in 1971. He received his MFA from New York University in 2010.

Claudia Weber was born in Germany where she received her MFA from the University of Fine and Applied Arts in Offenbach. She has had solo exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna, as well as at Momenta Art and currently at WaveHill in New York. In September she will be featured in a solo exhibition at Vox Populi, Philadelphia. Her work has been included in recent group shows at White Columns, New York; Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York; Croxhapox, Ghent, and the Contemporary Art Center, Bretigny, France.

Curator:
Jo-ey Tang founded curatorial project The Notary Public in 2010, and is picture editor of n+1. He received his MFA from New York University Steinhardt School and an Edward F. Albee Foundation fellowship, both in 2011, and was included in the 2010 UCLA New Wight Biennial. His upcoming solo exhibition is in September 2011 at Exile, Berlin.

Image: Sonja Engelhardt, Untitled, Pencil on Paper, 2010

Images from Leverage NY: Here