“Knot” denotes a cluster of persons or things, a group, a protuberant lump or swelling in tissue.
Iva Gueorguieva’s 25 ft. tapestry suspended on concrete and rebar runs the length of the gallery space splitting it in two, evoking the silhouette of a long dinner table; although the loose tapestry lacks rigidity, and a wine glass would instantly tip over and spill its nurturing contents. Gueorguieva has invited four artists: Elena Dorfman, John Emison, Josephine Wister Faure and Georgina Reskala to gather around this improbable table.
The work of this group of artists is intensely focused on physical manipulation and the disruption of surface. Through the act of interruption, the visual experience opens to the haptic, the historical and the metaphysical realms. Dorfman and Reskala crumple, prick and interfere with the photographic surface in various ways, each seeking, through intervention in materiality, evidences, echoes, whispers and glitches that marry the past with the present. Emison uses letter carving techniques to incise images in the flesh of found rocks, which are already sculpted and rounded by rivers and wind. Wister Faure pierces a wall with eyes that weep. Gueorguieva attempts to knot multiple iterations by which to visualize incomprehensible time, loss and memory. In each artist’s work, an oscillation of meaning is inherent, as are the ephemeral, the receding and the unwitnessable. The collective artworks offer suggestions through method, proximity, juxtapositions, reversals and repetitions.
K. N. O. T.
T. O. N. K
N O. T. K
K. O. N. T
-G.R
Notes on artists:
Elena Dorfman crumples, nails, tears, punctures and physically alters the paper as a means to decorate, distort, or decimate. Looping continuously through analog and digital processes, Dorfman’s crumpled original objects are also preserved, though their state of precarity is visible. The evidence of destruction is in our hands but who, ultimately, is responsible?
John Emison painstakingly adds information. Self-taught, he carves into the surface of found boulders in order to contemplate life and death. Evoking round bellies, the surfaces he engraves seems to heave and breathe. The carefully incised and painted strips of geometric patterns are reminiscent of body piercings and flesh markings.
Josephine Wister Faure made Weeping Wall in 2015, in response to the terrorist shootings in her native Paris. The wall sheds tears that trickle silently down, a surrogate portrait, an impotent witness. Despite the artifice the rhythm of the holes’ insistent production is potent enough, a contradiction able both to condemn and to incite empathy.
Georgina Reskala conceals and reveals information by reducing legibility in the printing process through multiple impressions, mimicking the act of remembering and forgetting. Crumpling the paper prior to exposure further deforms the terrain. When Reskala prints on linen and unthreads, she re-enacts the way history gets passed on (adding, omitting), mixing absence for presences.
List of performers:
We have scheduled several performances during the 7-week course of the exhibition, providing further opportunities for shifts in focus, attention, and interpretation. With each happening the atmosphere will inevitably change, affecting the ambient qualities of the space, engendering varied and revived experiences around the works assembled in the exhibition.
October 1st:
Evening Star
A durational performance by Alison D’Amato in collaboration with John Emison
https://imaginedtheatres.com/the-sacred-something/
Bitch
Bitchcraft
https://bitchmusic.com/
October 23rd:
Net that Caught a Man
A performance by Barry Del Sherman and Jennifer Stefanisko
Sherman and Stefanisko explore the complications of wrongdoing remembered in a piece written by Wesley Walker
Michele O’Marah, Tim Jackson and Jonesy, film screening of Faustus’s Children (2006)
www.micheleomarah.com
klowdenmann.com/artist/jonesy/bio/
Dave Cull, poetry/ essay reading
Kelly Marie Martin and Erin Schneider folk duo
October 30th, 2021
Music and video screenings by Unthem collective
unthem.org
Artist Select Biographies:
Elena Dorfman (Born 1965, Boston, MA, ) has had her photographs and video installations exhibited in both the U.S. and worldwide at venues, including the Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy; Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy; the Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy; MoMA, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Williams College Art Museum, Williamstown, MA; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, and The Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, Canada. Her work is held in numerous collections including the Denver Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, Palm Springs Art Museum, Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, Williams College Art Museum, and the Bass Art Museum. She was a finalist for the BMW Prize, Paris Photo. Her work is the subject of three monographs, “Empire Falling” (Damiani, 2013), “Fandomania: Characters & Cosplay” (Aperture, 2007), “Still Lovers” (Channel, 2005).
www.elenadorfman.com
John Emison (born 1987 in New Orleans, LA; raised in Northern California) studied art and anthropology at Colgate University (BA 2009) and Brandeis University, and sculpture at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University (MFA 2014). Solo exhibitions include SPRING / BREAK Art Show, Los Angeles, CA; Ms Barbers (with Jamie Felton), Los Angeles, CA; and Central Park, Los Angeles, CA. Group exhibitions and projects include Dan Graham 3.0, Los Angeles, CA; Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles, CA; PAM, Los Angeles, CA; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles, CA; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; and 808 Gallery, Boston University, MA. In 2019 he received the Central Park Artist Award.
www.johnemison.org
Joséphine Wister Faure (born 1973, Paris, France) graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts of Paris. She has had several solo exhibitions at Until Then, Paris; Keystone Art Space, Los Angeles, CA; Denk Gallery, Los Angeles CA and Silencio Club, Paris. She has also taken part in various group exhibitions at Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris; Locust Art projects, Miami FL; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance CA, Brand Library Art Center, Glendale CA; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing and Neues Museum, Berlin.
www.josephinewisterfaure.com
Georgina Reskala (born in Mexico City, Mexican-Lebanese) Shortlisted for the Hariban Award in Kyoto Japan, 2017. Solo exhibitions include: PDX CONTEMPORARY ART, Portland, OR; K.OSS Contemporary Detroit, MI; The Meyer Simpson Library, Oakland, CA; Contornos, Mexico City; Quotidian, San Francisco, CA. Public collections: The Portland Art Museum; the Frye Art Museum (Seattle, WA); The Jordan Schnizter Museum of Art, University of Oregon; Cassilhaus Collection, Chapel Hill, NC and Museo Comunitario de Arte, Zacatecas, Mexico.
www.ginareskala.com
Iva Gueorguieva (born 1974, Sofia, Bulgaria) has had solo exhibitions and projects at UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles; Miles McEnery gallery, New York, NY; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA; ACME, Los Angeles, CA; Pomona Museum of Art, Claremont, CA. Her work is included in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, CA; Art, Design and Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA; Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY and Benton Museum of Art, Claremont, CA. She was included in Variations: Conversations in and around Abstract Painting, curated by Franklin Sirmans, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
www.ivagueorguieva.com
###
