Cell, Share, Swivel Chair
Lynne Marinelli Ghenov, Justin Michell, & Adrian Paules
January 6-28, 2018
Monte Vista Projects is pleased to announce Cell, Share, Swivel Chair, a three-person exhibition featuring works on paper by Lynne Marinelli Ghenov and Justin Michell and sculptures by Adrian Paules.
In what ways can the infinite possibilities of a specific practice or space be aligned with a finite gridded structure? We often think of structures as rigid constraints, but perhaps a necessary flip side to this can be found in children's playground equipment. In this case, the grid functions as a space of open-ended play, where users continually re-invent new ways of interacting within these forms. In ‘Sade, Fourier, Loyola’ Roland Barthes considered three different authors as what he called “logothetes,” the founders of new discourses. Each began by breaking down their subject matter into discreet units or logical possibilities, and then proceeding to put those pieces to use and make choices among them in a combinatory - a field with its own set of rules or grammar. As Wittgenstein might have put it, logothetes are inventors of new language games.
Structure can take the form of a strict self-imposed method of production, an organized visual code found in source materials to be mutated or reacted against, or a visual syntax within which to arrange a set of elements. The resulting production invites us to ‘read’ it according to its own terms, at the same time that it resists attempts to translate it into speech or written words. This structuring exists independently from the kind of linear, propositional logic found in verbal or written statements - enacting itself directly in space. Each of the artitsts in this exhibition explore these themes in distinct ways.
Lynne Marinelli Ghenov uses graphite on found ledger paper that evokes vivid childhood memories of her parents’ home office. The relic becomes both the site and implement for the artist to invent with and compose new amalgams of forms and objects. The results are akin to a child's inventive mimicry of adult activities like bookkeeping.
Justin Michell employs a purposely limited set of elements in his diagrammatic drawings. Colored blocks, comic strip speech bubbles, and wiry lines of acrylic squeezed from syringes suggest interlocutors engaged in imaginary conversations. These noisily mute rebuses tempt us to decipher while resisting straightforward narrative.
Adrian Paules uses stacks of sawn and finished boards as a three dimensional record of movements and thoughts. Each stack functions as a record of its own making, as well as the logic and subjective decsions attached to these changes. In relation to each other, each scuplture becomes one enactment or iteration selected by the artist from an endless virtual series.