Window Dressing 2019

Karim Shuquem
DIE KUNSTKAMMER
Jan 14 – Jan 25, 2019
Karim Shuquem’s installation, Die Kunstkammer (Cabinet of Curiosities), presents the next iteration of an ongoing and evolving sculptural installation made up of individually painted, carved, and stacked wooden crates interspersed with various found objects and backed by prints pulled directly from the carved surfaces of the boxes themselves. Never fixed or finished, the overall project is inspired by the process-based metaphysics of thinkers such as Thomas Norton-Smith, Gregory Cajete, Brian Yazzie Burkhart, Alfred North Whitehead, and Heraclitus, and
serves as a commentary on the negative effects of Western substance-based ontologies. Using the historic phenomenon of kunstkammers (also known as wunderkammers, the so-called cabinets of curiosities), in which European collectors would display acquired objects, many of non- European origins collected during colonial campaigns, and present them as decontextualized curiosities, this installation serves as a vehicle for examining how various cultural frameworks for understanding reality determine our personal immersion and interaction with our environment and with each other. The artist asserts that a metaphysics that defines the physicality of objects as made up of dead or inert matter alone leads to the type of collection, hierarchical categorization, and exploitation of ‘resources’ that occurs within an imperialistic framework. On the other hand, a process-oriented ontology tends to lead to a more relational understanding, in which the things and beings of this world can be seen as co-constituent and interdependent.

 


Ismael de Anda III
MULTIVERSO
Jan 28 – Feb 8, 2019
Ismael de Anda III’s installation, Multiverso, presents an atmospheric installation featuring a vortex or portal pattern made from hundreds of re- purposed discarded raised street markers also known as “Bott’s dots used for marking the streets of the Los Angeles area; in cooperation with Caltrans – the California Department of Transportation. The plastic “Bott’s dots” are attached to the pavement on streets to control the flow of automotive traffic and are a representation of the flow and movement of a city and its people. The worn “Bott’s dots” are individually, roughly
spray-painted in various colors using a custom-cut metal flower, common in home décor and based on one previously purchased in a Mexican Home Depot, as a stencil. Multiverso is a re-staged installation, originally presented in Chihuahua, Mexico, using discarded Mexican “bollas” (“Bott’s dots”) removed from the streets of Chihuahua. Growing up in the El Paso, Texas - Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua Gateway, de Anda has always considered that particular frontier region as a hinge of the larger Western Hemisphere. A representation of the connectivity and motility of a hinge, the spiral vortex for Multiverso emanates out from the cornered edge of the window display space. As the sun sets, colored LED lights illuminate the display - an inverse otherworldly sunrise at night. 

 

Luciana Abait
COFFIN
Feb 11 – Feb 22, 2019
Luciana Abait’s installation, Coffin, stems from the demise of retail stores due to global online sales and explores the impact this has had on the urban environment, the workforce, and social interactions. The last decade has seen traditional retail spaces eclipsed by the raise of online commerce. Many brick-and-mortar stores, the most visible element of which is the window display, are now often empty, leaving the urban environment profoundly altered. At the same time, shoppers content to consumer via screens, see less need to leave their homes and even
workplace communities decline as online companies operate with a smaller, more productive, workforce. Just as a new economic system is concentrating more power and wealth in the hands of a select few, the majority of people have become less engaged and therefore less likely to band together to counteract that imbalance. The installation, Coffin, presents the window display as an artifact of a dead economy, an enclosed environment that keeps, in a metaphorical manner, the dead retail shopping tradition and the cultural ephemera connected to and derived from it. The interior diorama portrays, ironically, the current state of e-commerce through the layout of monumental three-dimensional mountains made of paper maps from all over the world, randomly arranged to refer to the sense of loss of logical order, and linked together with lines of red yard resembling a detective’s board visualizing the clues from a murder investigation. Holding everything up, the backbone of the new economy, is a pile of cardboard boxes covered in a recognizable, slightly menacing, smiling logo. Taken together, the installation invites viewers into a surreal landscape to explore issues of social inequality, wealth disparity, and economic precarity. It also intends to make spectators reflect on the shifting urban landscape, long-term consequences of our daily actions, and how these will shape the future of our globalized cities.

 

Chet Glaze
INFINITE BEDROOM
Feb 25 – Mar 8, 2019
Chet Glaze’s installation, Infinite Bedroom, presents an overlapping vignette of works that derive from the abscessed spaces surrounding eating establishments. The primary components of the installation consist of shaped sculptural paintings recalling the neatly-manicured hedges, grasses, and decorative gardening that flanks restaurants such as McDonalds and Denny’s. These family-style eateries are unique intersections
of public space, private property, and communal congregations. Whereas a public park is intended for such gatherings, the spaces being referenced in this installation are not intended to be used at all.  The inviting beauty of these idyllic non-places is especially biting to the homeless and under-housed populations that typically gravitate to these iconic restaurants, communities which could otherwise make use of these areas, but who are ultimately precluded from so doing. The window exhibition space at Cerritos College Art gallery is especially relevant
to this project as it is also a public space that provides no meaningful access to the viewer; a space to present an idea, but not to offer sanctuary, to the viewer.  This distance between the viewer and the viewed is a compelling reflection of the installation’s ultimate inspiration. The bright and neatly-colored paintings are also lit with programmable colored LED lighting that will evoke the less-than-subtle neon signage
commonly found at chain restaurants. The lights call the viewer to come closer, but also function as a clearly delineated boundary. The imagery throughout the installation consists of plants and generic greenery painted on large geometric canvases, which likewise speak to this desirable, and yet unattainable, pseudo-domestic space.

 

Marvel A. Rex
MARVEL A FAÇADE
Mar 11 – Mar 22, 2019
Marvel A. Rex’s installation, Marvel A Façade, presents a body under legislative attack, exposing the powerful existence and complex nuances of navigating a non-normative (queer) body. Using 250 pounds of raw clay and the artist’s own body, this performative installation seeks to abstractly catalogue the labor of creating one's body as both a transgender and masculine-read person. During gallery operating hours on March 11th through March 15th, the artist will physically occupy the space of the gallery display window, building up a human-sized body out of
wet clay and engaging as a multiplicity of characters, while performatively moving the clay body from one length of the window hallway to another, ad infinitum. The artist’s discursive monologue continuing throughout this endurance performance, and heard outside via a series of contact microphones and speakers, ranges in topic from identity politics to quantum mechanics, from ontological quandaries and relational theories to modern subjectivity and postmodern quandaries. All of this seemingly abstract discussion (with the self) ties into the themes of
subjectivity and the non-normative body in the shadow of white male subjectivity (which is what modern subjectivity is built around). During non-operating hours, the clay is wrapped tightly in cellophane and pink industrial vinyl safety tape, to then be undone upon the artist’s arrival back into the gallery. The entire performance will be live-streamed on Instagram and a projector will screen these videos directly onto the clay body/remnants whenever the artist is not physically present, allowing a ghostly image to haunt the space in their absence.

 

Adrienne Cole
POV
Mar 25 – Apr 5, 2019
Adrienne Cole’s installation, POV, transforms the Cerritos College Art Gallery’s exterior display window into a colorful and quirky miniaturized environment. Peeking through window frames and half-shuttered blinds attached to the outside windows gives the viewer access to an abstracted domestic interior consisting of three-dimensional ceramic wall plaques, painted paper rugs, and petite ceramic furniture including chairs, benches, and tables. Scales and perspectival viewing angles become uncertain in this playful illusionistic space, leaving viewers both surprised and confused, which in turn allows visitors to spend all the more time looking and wondering about this very different world, a fanciful place about which they continue to know naught.

 

Dawn Ertl
TRANSGENERATIONAL
Apr 8 – Apr 19, 2019
Dawn Ertl’s installation, Transgenerational, presents a diagrammatic series of woven textiles aimed at unraveling the biological threads of multigenerational inheritance and deviation. Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance studies have shown how environmental and behavioral traits can be passed down from one generation to the next. These epigenetic influences are positioned above the permanent genetic makeup given to an organism by both of its immediate parents, in effect controlling which genes stay active and/or become inactive. Changes in epigenetic programming can be altered by exposure to external stimuli including environmental toxins, such as DDT, dioxin, fungicide (i.e. agricultural pesticides), Bisphenol A (i.e. plastic), and oil, as well as collective and individual traumas like slavery, 911, the Holocaust, mass shootings, and police violence, along with nutrition, famine, access to fresh drinking water, attention, and love. To reference these concerns, the installation is composed of 433 individual 5 x 5 inch woven pieces, some open and some closed, collectively divided into three connected modules housing pendent plains with structural masses built atop them. In a subtle narrative of evolutionary change, the work transforms from left to right, generationally; the first structure exists with small disruptions, the next one adapts to having more a stable form, while still carrying the weight of the previous units broken code, and the last one represents a 3 rd generation of cellular mutation. This work as a whole also makes use of its medium and environment in a similar way to evoke mutation. Interacting with its environment in a different way than the typical paintings and sculptures that came before it, the installation takes transformative cues from artists who experimented with non-traditional materials like Lee Bontecou and Eva Hesse. Fusing the idea of painting and sculpture, the work exists on the wall, while
simultaneously reaching out from it.