Pick of the Week…takes place at ltd los angeles with two new exhibitions featuring artists Donna Huanca and Katy Cowan. There will also be a performance in conjunction with Huanca’s exhibition “Seeing Auras.” A solo exhibition, “Seeing Auras” features a new installation of paintings and sculpture by Donna Huanca.
Here’s what the gallery has to say:
Huanca’s installations fuse tactile materials, such as clothing, shoes and ephemera to create architectural collages that are performative in nature. Working primarily with deconstructed clothing, dipped in paint and solidified, the sculptural gestures pause the once-fluid life of the garment.
During the January 25th performance, the works interact with the vulnerability of live models, camouflaged and infused into the sculpture, giving life to otherwise static artworks.
Huanca uses found materials that are collected on various trips around the world. These pieces become beacons for artworks, displaying an exterior layer on her actors’ mammalian skins, remarking upon a primordial and complex system of socialization, that of clothing. The results are distinct and precise observations on the function of the garment as an ever-evolving manner of language production and a form of cultural transmission.
Born in Chicago, Huanca received a BFA from the University of Houston (2004) and studied at Städelschule, Frankfurt, Germany (2009-10). Huanca lived and worked in Mexico City in 2012 as a Fulbright Scholar. Huanca has developed a nomadic practice producing site-specific, experience based projects throughout the United States, Austria, Mexico, Peru, Germany, Sweden and Korea.
Publications of her work have been featured in DazedDigital, Wire, British Vogue, F5 Moscow, NY Arts, Blouin Artinfo, Art in America, and the Younger than Jesus Artist Directory published by the New Museum, NY amongst others.
Recent exhibitions include: RAW MATERIAL at Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, 2013 Arnhem Fashion Biennale, Netherlands, Pioneer Voices at the Gallery of Northern Norway, PANIC FEAR CRYING FITS at PRETEEN Gallery, Mexico.
This month at ltd los angeles, artist Katy Cowan has intentionally responded to the architecture of the back space for her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. Quite often, the back room of the gallery is a workplace or a “lean-to.” A lean-to is a makeshift shed (with frontal exposure) born of necessity; in galleries this is typically seen in the peripheral space.
Cowan’s work strikes a balance in the contrast between what is typically placed on a pedestal and what normally remains hidden. In Lean-Twos, the sculptural moments resemble detritus or sloppy accidents, but are in fact the celebration of moments one usually neglects to view as decorated or anthropomorphized. For instance, two-by-fours made of wax, will inevitably begin to slump as if attending a posture; baseboards are installed and ripped off, immediately showing remaining glue marks; and, after all, the bricks have sensory orifices. As one walks through Lean-Twos, attention is called to the subtle details. Cowan’s language is full of visual puns that usually go unnoticed and are certainly fleeting.
Katy Cowan lives and works in Los Angeles. Cowan received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2014, and has exhibited her work nationally and abroad.
21 January – 22 February 2014
What: Opening reception
Where: ltd losangeles, 7561 Sunset Blvd #103, LA 90046
When: 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Phone: 323.378.6842
Website: http://ltdlosangeles.com
