re:LAX 

 

Dates:  July 11 – August 22, 2003

Opening Reception:  July 10, 5-7 p.m.

With:  Fabian Birgfeld, Marco Brambilla, Zoe Crosher, Guy Hundere, Soo Jin Kim, Ester Partegàs,

Christina Ray, John Schabel, John Sparagana , Kerry Tribe and Tim White

 

Curator:  Megan Riley

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“With airport travel, travelers are never where they want to be; they are always on their way, and there are always better places to go.” 

Jodi Hauptman, Martha Rosler: Positions of the Life World

                                                                                               

 

Airports and air travel combine endless motion with emptiness and a certain transient anonymity. Los Angeles International Airport (best known to frequent flyers as LAX) is the gateway to one of America’s largest cities. For this exhibition, LAX provides the departure point for contemplating broader themes of airport culture, travel, as well as movement in general.  

 

re:LAX brings together work by 11 emerging and established artists whose contributions reflect and challenge the ideas surrounding “airport culture.” LA-based artists Kerry Tribe and Zoe Crosher use LAX as their backdrop and the platform for their interpretations of movement and space.  Ester Partegàs celebrates the ordinary by offering her own irony-laced insight into the often overlooked utilitarian components of transit – in this case, sculptures of corporate airport terminal planters.  Fabian Birgfeld’s sleek terminal interior triptychs embrace these somewhat transient areas of passage while documenting their sheer beauty.  With the traveler as subject, John Schabel’s photograph from his “Passenger” series exhibited in the 1997 Whitney Biennial captures the passenger pre-departure, in that identifiable moment between tension and relaxation.  Additionally, the video and photography work of Marco Brambilla, Guy Hundere, Soo Jin Kim, Christina Ray, John Sparagana and Tim White continue to explore and are inspired by the ideas of spatial experiences and perpetual motion.  re:LAX provides the viewer a grounded opportunity to reflect upon travel, its fleeting and frozen moments, stolen glances, and the time and space in between.

 

For further information, please contact Dennis Christie or Ken Tyburski at the gallery.