Free Fall Perspective, Online and Perception

November 8 December 7, 2008 Opening Reception November 8, 7 10 pm

Ricardo Alzati, Diego Toledo and Alejandro Pintado

“Free fall perspective, on line and perception” is an exhibition that reflects upon the influence of systems in everyday day life, in particular it focuses on perspective. It analyzes the rational and logical way this system has to represent the three- dimensional space. Perspective is known as a system used to create the illusion of three-dimensional images and spatial relationships on

a two-dimensional surface. To accomplish this, there are a set of rules that should be followed. The vanishing point is the center from which the order should be placed; everything that is set out of this order is excluded from perspective. By having this apparently simple rule, all other possibilities are shot down. We tend to think that the system of perspective is only used for representation in a flat surface, on a two-dimensional flat object. The truth, is that the influence of this system has not stayed 2D, it has moved to the three-dimensional space. More than
ever two-dimensional images describe our experience of the world, this expressions affect the way we perceive our individual experience of the three-dimensional world. Perspective gives preference to the rational and logical order over the abstract and perceptual experience. Free fall perspective on line and perception questions the retinal experience and pushes the boundaries of what is expected to be seen. In the shape of light, shadow, line, paintings and drawings is that the artists Ricardo Alzati, Diego Toledo and Alejandro Pintado invite the viewer to move further away the expected rules enhancing his experience of abstraction of the physical space.

-Alejandro Pintado

This exhibition was made possible by ART2102

Ricardo Alzati was born in Mexico City in 1974. He received his education in History and Visual Arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and in Photography and Visual Arts at
the Centro de la Imagen and Centro Nacional de las Artes. In 2001-2002 he also attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Alzati’s photography, video, installations, paintings, and drawings have been exhibited in Mexico and the United States, including solo exhibitions at the Museo del la Ciudad de México (Mexico City), Casa Vecina (Mexico City), Fototeca de Veracruz (Verazcruz, Mexico), 111 projects (Mexico City), and group exhibitions, such as the 2001 Visions: Contemporary Mexican Photography show at the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and
the 2008 Proyectos para descontrucción at the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes MUCA Roma in Mexico City. In 2007, Alzati was recipient of the Jóvenes Creadores art production grant. In 2008, he was selected as part of the core group participants at United Nations Plaza Mexico City and was also awarded artist residencies at the Triangle Artist’s Workshop (New York), and the 26th International Symposium of Contemporary Art, Baie St. Paul (Quebec, Canada). Alzati also writes for Rim Magazine (Los Angeles), and Arte MX (Mexico City). He currently lives and works in Mexico City.

Alejandro Pintado was born in Mexico City in 1973. He received his MFA at Goldsmiths (London), and his BFA at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura. Pintado has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. He has had numerous solo shows, including Galeria O (Mexico City), Galeria Emma Molina (Monterrey), the Museum Ciudad de Querétaro, Vaknin Schwartz Gallery (Atlanta), and Haus der Kunst Gallery (Guadalajara). Pintado was also included in the 2008 Moscow Bienale for young art, the 2007 Bienal de Artes de Yucatán, the 2005 Bienale de Monterrey at the Centro Navional de las Artes, and Declaraciones, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid (2005).

From 1994-1999, Pintado co-founded the artist run space, Tallería espacio cultural, and has since curated several international exhibitions including Speedy González is German: Playing with Stereotypes (2003) and Landscape Interventions at the Moscow Bienale (2008). In 2007, he was awarded an artist residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was also honored with a Pollock-Krasner Grant. He currently lives and works in London.

Diego Toledo was born in Mexico City in 1964. He graduated as a painter from the National University School of Arts, San Carlos, UNAM (1983-87). As co-founder in 1988 of the alternative and independent space called “La Quiñonera” in Mexico City, he experimented with different materials and other technologies, and began to show his work. Toledo’s work has evolved
from painting to the use of a great variety of materials and processes, creating pieces of a site-specific and conceptual nature. Toledo’s work has dealt with elements and forms that concerned information design, advertisement and public art, and recently has produced objects and installation dealing with problems of how we experience and understand space through architecture and its representation from a phenomenological point of view. Toledo has exhibited widely in Mexico and internationally. He has had solo shows at many galleries and museums, including the Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City (1993), Contemporary Art Museum, Oaxaca City, Mexico (1995), Radio House Gallery, New York (2002), and OMR Gallery, Mexico City (2003). In 2000, Toledo was awarded artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada) and the “Laboratory Mexico-Cuba” (Cuba). He currently lives and works in Berlin. 

Psychogeometry

September 27 October 25, 2008 Opening Reception September 27, 7 10 pm

David Hatcher, Laura Riboli, Brian Sharp Curated by Matthew Thompson

Various recent group exhibitions have articulated a preoccupation with more primary elements
of artistic production. Whether iterated as formalism, objecthood, “thingness,” or sculptural assemblage, these exhibitions attempt to frame a renewed interest in visual exuberance
and focus on materiality. The relationship of primary elements to psychology is often under- examined. Psychogeometry picks up on another primary construct geometry and presents three artists whose work exists in the peculiar personal, cultural, and historical intersections between psychology and geometry.

Including work in a variety of media by David Hatcher, Laura Riboli, and Brian Sharp, the exhibition takes a nod from Guy Debord’s notion of psychogeography especially his focus on its effect “on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Instead of closing off or articulating a distinct relationship between geometry and psychology, Psychogeometry will function more as a drift through possibilities.

David Hatcher creates hallucinatory prints on perforated blotter paper by re-purposing diagrams from Western philosophical texts. In Laura Riboli’s videos, objects take on totemic, science-fiction qualities through their suggestive geometry and re-animation. Brian Sharp’s abstract paintings take the notion of abstraction as language to its logical extreme, oscillating between recreational linguistics and formalism.

The exhibition will also feature a rotating selection of research materials, visual references, and other ephemera.

Psychogeometry is organized by Matthew Thompson, Associate Curator, Aspen Art Museum. 

Welcome Wilmington

August 16 September 17, 2008 Opening Reception August 16, 7 10 pm

Arnoldo Vargas

Wilmington California is synonymous with Industry. Home to more oil refineries than any other US city and gateway to the third largest port in the world, Wilmington is also synonymous with skyrocketing levels of pollution, cancer, asthma, and other ill effects of industry. “Welcome Wilmington” is a photographic exhibition by Arnoldo Vargas chronicling not only the glare of Wilmington’s oil refineries but also the complex political relationship with the thriving community who live within it. Documenting altars of victims of police shootings or participants in this year’s Peace and Dignity Run, Vargas examines the ways various instances of spiritual reflection continue to manifest within this structure.

Arnoldo Vargas received his BA from UCLA in fine art in 1999 and will be attending Calarts for his MFA in the fall. He has exhibited through out California, with his most recent exhibition “Stardust” at Space 47 in San Jose. He is a native of Wilmington, California, where he currently teaches art at Banning High School. 

Coastal States

July 12 August 2, 2008
Opening Saturday July 12, 7 10 pm

Gilda Davidian, Ignacio Genzon, Rena Kosnett, Jeff McLane, Katie Shapiro

“Coastal States” is a 5 person photography and video exhibition. The works are varied--some are landscape, some are portraits, some are arachnid. But all 5 projects are about existing on the periphery-- of family, in your social outlets, and in your neighborhoods--and the changes that occur when you come up for air after realizing you’ve been coasting on auto-pilot, without taking immediate surroundings into account.

The artists are Gilda Davidian, Ignacio Genzon, Rena Kosnett, Jeff McLane, and Katie Shapiro, who are graduates of CalArts currently working in Los Angeles and contributing to the From Here To There art collective. 

Sew (A) Piece A Collaborative Flag Rearrangement

July 6, 2008 12 noon - ?

Jade Thacker

In March 2008, at the War Protest in Hollywood, Jade Thacker performed a rearrangement of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece wearing an American flag as her dress. Sitting in the street, Jade invited anyone to cut a piece from her dress/flag and offered them the choice to either keep it or put their piece in a cup she had for use in a later attempted reconstruction.

With many cut pieces remaining and one very disheveled American flag, Jade invites anyone and everyone to collaborate in a Flag Rearrangement. This all day extravaganza will take place at Monte Vista Projects in Highland Park, July 6, 2008 beginning at 12 noon and carrying on! There will be a working table with the remainder of the flag from back in March and various sewing materials where attendees will be able to take turns altering and revamping the flag. Participants may choose to sew back a flag remnant or cut a piece from their own clothes to add to the new flag. Everyone isencouraged to wear or bring clothes or cloths to cut and insert. There will also be an afternoon BBQ, musical talents, and a non-traditional flag raising!

This is Jade Thacker’s first solo exhibition. She is currently a BFA4 at California Institute of the Arts, living in the mysterious Val Verde, CA. 

Hey, You Never Know

May 31 - June 28, 2008 Annie Shaw

Monte Vista is proud to present “Hey, You Never Know.,” an absurd exploration into the geographical distribution of luck and money, faith and fate starting in the east and ending in the west by Annie Shaw.

“Hey, You Never Know.” is the promotional slogan for the New York lottery, including Mega Millions. A multi-state lottery, Mega Millions draws its capital from twelve states, two of which are New York and California. Since migrating to the east coast three years ago, Annie has found herself living next to the Mega Millions billboards in Manhattan and in Brooklyn. Twice a week, as the number indicating the jackpot would change from low to high, she imagined anticipation rising and falling at each transition. And then once in a blue moon, the number would drop drastically, and she knew someone’s life had changed.

For the duration of the exhibition, Annie will dedicate her time at Monte Vista as an artist-in- residence, and a Mega Millions participant. Each day, she will purchase one Mega Millions ticket at one location in one zip code in Greater Los Angeles. Visitors to the installation are invited to join the lottery pool. Each additional dollar will bring her to purchase one more ticket in a different location. Any winnings will be evenly divided amongst all the participants who contribute to the pool. A series of images video, photograph and sculpture, will be developed and displayed throughout this process.

Please join us for the following events:

Saturday, June 7 at 7 pm : “How to Win the Lottery” : a lecture by Melissa Brown
Based in New York, Melissa has spent the past few years fascinated with the Powerball
games and how to measure and capitalize on their idiosyncrasies. She has incorporated this numerological science into both her drawings and her purchases in the New York State Lotto. Serving as the official spiritual guide of “Hey, You Never Know,” Melissa has provided Annie with a set of numbers, calculated from the formula, in order to test their probability of winning against QuikPick. She will be at Monte Vista in person to share the intricacies of her system for beating the lottery.

Friday, June 27, 7pm : Final Drawing and Closing Party
Celebrate the closing of the exhibition and watch the live broadcast of the Mega Millions drawing with Annie on site. Witness the fate of the last ticket purchased by the lottery pool and view all the materials developed during the four-week project.

Annie Shaw is the founder of Leefahsalung at the New China Town Barber Shop, a site-specific, curatorial and collaborative project series challenging the role of art production and its relationship to local identities. A catalog detailing its five-year history is currently in production, to be published this coming fall. She moved to New York in 2005 to study at Columbia University, where she completed her MFA in 2007. We are thrilled that she has returned to present her first solo project in the Southland. 

An Evening With Martha Ronk, Kate Wolf, and Jibade-Khalil Huffman

May 23, 2008     6 pm

An Evening With Martha Ronk, Kate Wolf, and Jibade-Khalil Huffman A celebration of new work by poets and fiction writers at Monte Vista

*Martha Ronk* has published 8 books of poetry, most recently “In a landscape of having
to repeat” (Omnidawn), winner of the PEN USA Best Poetry Book 2005, and “Vertigo” (Coffee House), a National Poetry Series selection. She is a 2007 NEA recipient and teaches Renaissance Literature and Creative Writing at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

*Kate Wolf* is an MFA candidate in writing at the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has appeared in the LA Weekly and Swingset Magazine. She lives in Los Angeles.

*Jibade-Khalil Huffman* was born in Detroit and raised in Florida. He is the author of “19 Names For Our Band” (Fence Books, 2008). His poetry, fiction and photography have appeared in Boston Review, Court Green, Canarium, NOON and Encyclopedia among others. His awards include the 2004 Grolier Poetry Prize as well as fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Ucross Foundation. 

The Mystical, Scatological and the Occult

April 12 - May 10, 2008
Opening Reception 7-10 pm, April 12, 2008

George Kuchar, Alice Cattaneo, Elizabeth DiGiovanni, Michael Decker, Candice Lin, and Loren Hartman

“Any structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins.” Mary Douglas

The Mystical, Scatological, and the Occult is an immersive exhibition of film, video, and sculpture. Inspired by anthropologist Mary Douglas’s idea that all margins are imbued with transgressive power, this exhibition explores the liminal territories between the living and the dead, the sexes, and the bodily interior and exterior, as metaphors for the marginal at large.

Participating artists include legendary underground filmmaker George Kuchar, who began his career at the age of twelve “making a transvestite movie on the roof,” for which he was “brutally beaten by [his] mother for having disgraced her and also for soiling her nightgown.” With a sly sense of humor, startlingly raw vision, and celebration of the vulgar, Kuchar’s films and videos embrace subjects ranging from the scatological to the sublime.

Quite different in sensibility, but equally powerful in personal vision, Italian artist Alice Cattaneo transforms simple materials such as paper, toothpicks, tape, thread, and felt into abstracted sculptures and installations that evoke ephemeral and elusive things like “falling hair”, “droplets of blood”, “flames”, “the perfect formula”. Her videos and animations use a similar strategy of simplified action to create a sense of anecdotal metaphor and sparse drama.

Elizabeth DiGiovanni’s videos, sculptures, installations, and drawings evoke the miasma of cultish private spaces. Somewhere between the poster-coated walls of sullen teenagers, and an old decrepit woman’s collection of snow globes and chandeliers, DiGiovanni’s work offers us a glimpse into a very personal construction of fantasy and longing. With an aesthetic that slides between camp and sincerity, DiGiovanni’s work circles around fantastical visions of grandeur and excess.

Michael Decker’s sculptures recreate and abstract objects that unveil or remove one’s subjective pain or trauma body pillows, massage tools, mortars and pestles. The everyday becomes archetypal, creating narratives that elicit an immediate enjoyment compounded by perplexed wonder. Using an aesthetic of muppetry, Decker’s sculpture Emperor’s Scroll stages an intimate printing device for rendering the invisible visible. The muppet figure is at once a cultural symbol, an educational device, and a mythical sage. In this conflation, the domestic vernacular of embossed toilet paper becomes a spiritual ground for communicating artistic insight.

Candice Lin’s drawings, animations, and sculptures focus on the blurry and ever-changing boundaries between longing and disturbance, sexuality and violence, history and memory. The allegorical and imaginative characters inhabiting her work rogue girls, witch doctors, and animalistic gnomes create a provocative ritual-laden world that is as visually captivating as it is puzzling to understand.

Loren Hartman is a painter, performance installation artist, and short filmmaker whose works often pivot around the construction of identity, with an aesthetic that is informed by vaudeville and folk drama. Phant explores the porous borders between self and non-self in a narrative that is elusively meditative, hauntingly beautiful, and absurdly comical. Kafka-esque in tone, the film traces a psychological, abstract, disintegrating story about a boy who lives in a hole until he dissolves. 

The Coffeehole

March 1-30, 2008
Opening Reception 6-9 pm, March 1, 2008 Special Events During The Coffeehole

Colin Roberts

March 14, 8:00 pm - Backgammon with Ryan Taber
March 15, noon - Daytime Nightclub by Pentii Monkonnen                                                      March 29, 7-10 pm- Folk Music night presented by Jeff Cain

In The Coffeehole, Colin Roberts pokes fun at the caffeine bombarded society we live in today by creating his own version of a coffee shop. The gallery space is transformed into something the average caffeine addicted consumer would never expect. Coffee pours from the ceiling in a stream when a button is pushed, slightly reminiscent in an oddly humorous way to Charles Ray’s ink line piece. One can also not help but think of what the future has in store for coffeehouses when standing in the space. In true coffee shop fashion, this installation will include art and music performances that are scheduled throughout the month that The Coffeehole is installed. 

Daytime nightclub 

ELECTRIC FOLK MUSIC

Material Issue One Launch

February 16, 2008 7-10 pm

INTRODUCING MATERIAL: TEXTS BY VISUAL ARTISTS

Please help us celebrate as we launch MATERIAL Issue One and the MATERIAL Limited Edition Series in Los Angeles.

WHAT WORDS FOR WHAT THEN? *

Inspired by publications such as Documents, ZG, and REALLIFE Magazine, MATERIAL emerges as a contemporary outlet for the artist’s voice.

Started by artists interested in the writings of other artists, MATERIAL supports visual artists with textual concerns. MATERIAL is not a thematically driven nor ‘on-topic’ publication, but rather an image-free, ad-free context for the materialization of artists’ ideas, divergent opinions, thoughts, and appropriations of language. Our sensibility is experimental and critical. We solicit friction and conviviality both.

The editorial board for MATERIAL is made up of artists who make writing a central part of their practice: Thomas Lawson, Olivier Richon, John Stezaker, Jonathan Miles, and Dorit Cypis.

Issue One features texts by international artists: Hirsch Perlman
Olivier Richon
Becky Beasley

Nicholas Grider Olivia Booth Marie Jager
Pete Kirby
Darren O’Donnell Katrina Palmer Charlotte Smith Andrea Büttner Roman Vasseur

NO THOUGHT EXISTS WITHOUT A SUSTAINING SUPPORT. **

Designed by 3n17 in Berlin, the journal encourages tactile handling; it is printed and folded for maximum utility on Alster Werkdruck paper, and opens in tri-fold. Printed in an edition of 1000, more or less biannually, MATERIAL will be available in Los Angeles at Bank Gallery, in London at Man Gallery and Laura Bartlett Gallery, in San Francisco at the Silverman Gallery, and the list is growing; check the website for more locations soon: www.materialpress.org.

INDEPENDENCE IS AN UNREALISTIC CONSTRUCT.
Independence is an unrealistic construct that relies on bravado and many forms of denial. We are all dependent in some way it is simply a matter of who or what one would like to become dependent on. MATERIAL would like to be dependent on writing and artworks and the people who love writing and artworks. MATERIAL aims to be self-funded by offering limited editions of visual work that engage the textual.

For our inaugural issue, we are offering a series of editions by nine international artists: Marie Jager, Becky Beasley, Nicholas Grider, Arthur Ou, Augusta Wood, Katie Lewis, David Raymond Conroy, Duncan Wooldridge and Jacob Melchi. The artists involved have all generously donated work to MATERIAL to fund its continued operations. We are offering these works much

below market value to encourage collectors to support the journal as an emerging space for experimentation.

These works are available for purchase at the launch parties at Man in London and Monte Vista in Los Angeles, and on our web site: www.materialpress.org.

For more information please contact Ginny Cook and Kim Schoen, founding editors, at info@ materialpress.org.

Material is supported in part by ART2102 of Los Angeles. Through 2008, ART2102’s program aims to collaborate with and support a number of emerging artist-run spaces and initiatives, in and beyond Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.art2102.org.

*Samuel Beckett, Worstword Ho, 1983
**Mel Bochner, epigraph to a preparatory sketch for his inscribed wall drawing Theory of Boundaries, 1969-70 

Circle Jerks

January 12–February 9, 2008

Opening Reception 7-10 pm January 12, 2008

Monte Vista is proud to present “Circle Jerks,” an exhibition of a collaborative painting project

initiated by Max Lesser and Brett Cody Rogers. Participating artists are Kathryn Andrews, Tomory

Dodge, Bart Exposito, Hadley Holliday, Max Lesser, Katie Lewis, Jay Lizo, Allison Miller and Brett

Cody Rogers.

Lesser and Rogers came up with the idea for an experimental, “exquisite-corpse”-like painting

project as an outlet for making paintings outside the realm of their personal practices and the

highly competitive nature driven by “personal style.” Several LA-based artists were asked to

participate and “Circle Jerks” was born.

Over the last eight months, the participants each started at least one painting. These paintings

were then passed from artist to artist, with each person reacting and contributing to the move

made by the previous one. Each painting was circulated until someone declared it “finished,” with

the end-result being a collaborative exhibition free of stylistic pretext. This exhibition features an

edited selection of these paintings.

“Circle Jerks” focuses on turning the solitary and masturbatory nature of artistic style into group

activity, and is inspired by the Los Angeles-based punk band of the same name, whose ‘80’s hit

song “Group Sex” invites group sexual exploration in a low-key setting, free from embarrassment.