12 Sept 2009 to 17 Oct 2009
Gallery hours
Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 - 5:00
The Kopeikin Gallery
8810 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood
CA. 90069
Los Angeles, CA
California
North America
p: +1 (310) 385-5894
m:
f: +1 (310) 385-7964
w: www.kopeikingallery.com/
Image � Chris Jordan, courtesy Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles
Image 1 - description Lightbulbs, 2008. Depicts 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.).
Chris Jordan: "Running The Numbers....Continued"
Laura Ball: "Boundary of the Interior"
September 12th � through October 17th, 2009 Opening Reception: Saturday, September 12th from 6:00 - 9:00
Chris Jordan: "Running The Numbers: Again"
The Kopeikin Gallery is pleased to present it's fourth solo exhibition by Seattle based photographer and environmentalist Chris Jordan http://www.chrisjordan.com The exhibition "Running The Numbers: Again" follows up on a previous exhibition held at the Kopeikin Gallery in September 2007 when Jordan began the series. Since many images which define the series have been added since the first show this exhibition features all new material. The exhibition opens on Saturday, September 12th with a reception from six to nine and continues through October 16th 2009. It is free and open to the public. Unfortunately Chris will be on Midway Island for the opening working on his next body of work, a further extension of the series having specifically to do with the world's oceans. However, signed copies of his new Monograph, "Running The Numbers," will be available throughout the run of the show.
Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. The intent is for images representing these quantities to have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.
This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, the hope is to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
As a speaker and commentator on the environment Chris has become somewhat of a phenomena over the past few years as his work has been recognized throughout the world. His artwork has also been collected and exhibited extensively throughout the United States. In fact, an exhibition of Chris' "Running The Numbers" series is currently traveling throughout the United States through 2011.
Laura Ball: "Boundary of the Interior"
The Kopeikin Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles of artist Laura Ball http://www.laurasgallery.com who grew up in Southern California and graduated from U.C.Berkeley. The exhibition "Boundary of the Interior" opens with a reception with the artist on Saturday, September 12th from 6:00 - 9:00 and continues through October 16th. This event is free and open to the public.
Laura Ball's work has always addressed real world battles and the ludic activities of play and competition. Ball's work displays an epic struggle, suggestive of an archetypal rite of passage, but their dreamlike and surreal qualities are created from specific sources. Ball draws on memories from her visits to Disneyland and other southern California theme parks as a child, and from her recent travels to Greece and Germany to create the backdrops to her narratives. She also works from controlled situations in which she photographs her mother and three sisters acting out and posing to re-create the confrontation and drama found in her narrative works. Ms. Ball's watercolors (she also paints although there are no paintings in the current exhibition) incorporate journeys, trials, and transformation woven into narratives that resemble contemporary fairy tales. Modern day struggles of the subconscious unfold into playful conflict among surreal and dreamlike landscapes. Gender politics, the environment, and violence are themes embedded within her fantastical narratives. In these scenarios, her human subjects and animals are in a struggle with each other and their environment.
The watercolor themselves become a subjective antagonist and a force opposing the adventurers. Reality and perception are bent as the foreground disappears, only to reappear later in a flood of rainbow colors. Pattern and color weave throughout the work in shifting densities as the varied brushwork seems to reflect the various roles and emotions of the figures' adventures.
Using, among other influences, Joseph Campbell's "A Hero with a Thousand Faces" as a road map for the obstacles Ball's heroines confront, vibrant colors and exotic animals help create a fantastical world where one must undertake a journey, fraught with peril in order to gain a great prize or personal truth. Pivotal moments from the heroines' journeys inspire her work, which can in turn be read as universal icons that map progress along life's path. The animals, while skillfully rendered, resemble the animals of carousel rides, emphasizing the playful aspects of her work. The beautifully crafted line and use of vibrant, yet feminine color help to create the sense of otherworldliness.
Kopeikin Gallery is located at 8810 Melrose Ave, west of Robertson Blvd.
There's plenty of street parking and public lots within walking distance.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 - 5:00.
