BRAND NEW GALLERY

presents

THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN 2 POINTS IS OFTEN INTOLERABLE

curated by Andrew Berardini

13 January – 26 February 2011

Opening: 13 January, 6pm-9pm. Special performance: Joel Kyack

 

Justin Beal, Jedediah Caesar, Liz Craft, Liz Glynn, Patrick Hill, Anthony James, Brian Kennon, Joel Kyack, Anthony Pearson, David Ratcliff, Kara Tanaka, Mateo Tannatt, Ryan Trecartin, Jonas Wood

 

“Space is what we have in Los Angeles, but not in the way that you might think.

 

Space has it charms, it leaves us open to move and think without the usual hindrances of social neuroses and the the emotional heavy-lifting required of being surrounded by other people. It does have its downsides, lots of people hate Los Angeles.

 

The spaces of Los Angeles are ones of openness and chance exchange, of opportunities defined individually, where strange eccentrics are able to work without too much hassle. There is a geology of accumulated ideas, but one that’s constantly evolving and with few hierarchies.

 

Los Angeles space isn’t the copious lawns cut by armies of immigrant landscapers or the yawning freeways plugged by commuters or the flimsy dreams of wealthy developers, those are only symptoms of a larger disease. The space in Los Angeles, especially for artists, is an imaginative space, it’s contemplative space, it’s diachronic space, it’s the individual freedom and solitude of the open road everyday mixed with the constipation of traffic, needing to move through, disdaining direct travel and preferring circuitous routes.

 

As Bukowski once wrote, “The shortest distance between 2 points is often intolerable;” we need the space in which to get lost in, to move but never in a straight line. This is freedom that helps high-minded dryness have a little wit, that lends itself to experimental mysticism and the generative madness of someone by themselves a lot. It’s a space that allows unexpected things to happen.

 

Rather than making a totalizing gesture for a city too big to take one, this exhibition does a sampling of the individuals who make Los Angeles home, an eccentric collection who use the space they find there for their own purposes.

 

This exhibition prefers the inefficiencies of Los Angeles.” (Andrew Berardini)

 

On the occasion of the opening: special performance of the artist Joel Kyack.

 

Contemporaneously with our show, the following artists have solo shows at:

-          Ryan Trecartin - Istanbul Modern Museum, Istanbul

-          Anthony Pearson - David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

-          Patrick Hill – Bortolami Gallery, New York

-          Jonas Wood - Anton Kern Gallery, New York

-          Kara Tanaka – Simon Preston Gallery, New York

During the spring solo show of Ryan Trecartin at MOMA PS1, New York and solo show by David Ratcliff at Team Gallery, New York.

 

 

 

 

Curator’s Biography

Andrew Berardini is a writer living in Los Angeles. He's contributed in the past to frieze, Art Review, LA Weekly, Rolling Stone Italy, and Modern Painters. He currently holds the appointments of Senior Editor at Artslant, Los Angeles Editor for Mousse, and Adjunct Curator at LAXART. Recently the author of a monograph on the work of Richard Jackson published by the Rennie Collection, Berardini has curated original exhibitions with Bruce Nauman, Dave Muller, Emily Mast, Raymond Pettibon and Yoshua Okon. Recent curatorial projects include the group exhibitions "Projects and Assignments" at Saprophyt in Vienna in October 2010 and “Dead Letter Office” at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in March 2010

 

Catalogue

published by Brand New Gallery

texts by Andrew Berardini