Los Angeles, CA (March 13th, 2018) – Mixografia is pleased to announce Making Space, an exhibition that features artworks by Gunther Gerzso, Mathias Goeritz, Peter Halley, Jorge Pardo, Ed Ruscha, Ignacio Salazar, Sebastián, and Juliao Sarmento, and Susana Sierra. This exhibition considers the various ways in which artists conceptualize and represent space. The opening reception will take place on Saturday, March 24th, 2018 from 4:00PM – 7:00PM.
Entering the exhibition, one confronts a group of monoprints by Susana Sierra and Laddie John Dill. Susana Sierra’s monoprint series Espacio Interior examines how atmospheric color influences one’s sense of space. Each print in this series is unique, although built off a common matrix, taking an expressionistic view of a unifying subject. The space is largely undefined, however characterized by geometric forms throughout the picture plane. Likewise, Dill’s Aerial Landscapes II series depicts a subtle view of a landscape as it reacts to the changing light of day. The space is conveyed only in the perspective shifts of the rectangular forms in the image.
Also on view will be a selection of artworks that make use of essential geometric forms to convey fundamental elements of the built environment. The degree to which these compositions represent actual spaces varies in their degrees of specificity and abstraction. As in the piece Interior de Madera by Ignacio Salazar, there is a clear sense of a room’s interior, while also disrupting the elements of conventional perspective by emphasizing more essential forms. On the other hand, Sebastian’s monoprint series Encuentro references an abstract structure and space with a prominent central form placed upon a ground plane. Others are depictions of literal structures, such as Peter Halley’s Prison with Smokestack I, which represents a fixture of the urban landscape. Bright, linear forms contrast the prison cell’s jagged and muted surface, as a wisp of dark smoke ascends upward. Ed Ruscha’s Ghost Station portrays a familiar image of urban architecture, replacing color with pure subtlety and thus evoking a sense of quiet solitude, as the delicately rendered and near-invisible gas station fades toward the vanishing point.
The exhibition continues with works by John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha. Concrete Couples by John Baldessari references pop cultural icons that are as ubiquitous as the concrete tiles their names are drawn into. Alluding to the notoriously autographed sidewalk outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, it is a portrait of cultural and structural foundations. Meanwhile, Ed Ruscha’s Petro Plots series takes a macroscopic view of a similar subject – these Los Angeles street maps focus on very familiar aspects of a city with many differing associations, rendered with the textures of the landscape itself.
The final room of the exhibition features artworks by Jorge Pardo and George Segal, both of whose works make use of light and the space they occupy as formal elements. These pieces interact with the environment, whether by emphasizing the room’s features or by emitting light directly from the piece.
The California Suite by Mimmo Paladino will be on display in the upstairs gallery.
The exhibition will remain on view through Saturday, May 19th, 2018.