On View: October 3rd - December 12th, 2020
Introduction
We Transcend Ourselves: Five Facets of Humanity at FOCA
For a complex natural shape, dimension is relative. It varies with the observer. Now an ancient concept, dimension, becomes thoroughly modern. -- Benoît B. Mandelbrot
With thoughtful curation by Khang Nguyen, this exhibition poses some pretty big questions about the nature of life, consciousness, and the experience of humanity as an individual, social, and spiritual construct as well as a state of consciousness, invention, and transcendence: the kinds of questions with answers that are open-ended, paradoxical, fractal, and intuitive. Wrestled with by philosophers and theologians of Eastern and Western traditions, as well by poets, scientists, and occasionally politicians, these are perhaps the sort of inquiries to which art is actually the most capable of responding. Art’s truly boundless potential for juxtaposition and transformation, reflection and generation is exactly what is required for an examination of our complexified existence.
To that end, the artists assembled demonstrate a deep facility for lateral thinking, layered techniques, empathy, and imaginative extrapolation. Despite the diversity of materials and styles which they employ in a range of mediums from photography to cello, movement and performance, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, digital splicing, analog collage, assemblage, and places in between, a holistic vision emerges. Across its premise of a five-faceted multiverse, the exhibition takes a convincing position of proponency for a synergistic, hybridized, mindful consciousness of ourselves, the world around us, and our place in it. Not only imagery but actual objects from the natural and artificial world insinuate themselves into studio pieces, and the ingestion of digital content makes itself felt in myriad ways in thought and in hand.
There is a proliferation of interest in bricolage as both an omnivorous material and digital sourcing technique, as well as a conceptual approach that reflects the accumulative character of our information culture, and finally a manifestation of the plurality of perspectives balanced in our modern sense of self. Also, as one might imagine, there are repeated instances of artists using their own body as both the site of and the protagonist in their abstract dramas. Reaching back into memory, out into the real-time present, and ahead toward possible futures, these artists each posit a version of comprehension that unites the body with the mind, science with emotion, nature with identity, and the cosmic with the atomic. While each of these artists already view the world as a wonder, their art is about sparking the promise of something more wonderful still.
-- Shana Nys Dambrot
Los Angeles, 2020
For a complex natural shape, dimension is relative. It varies with the observer. Now an ancient concept, dimension, becomes thoroughly modern. -- Benoît B. Mandelbrot
With thoughtful curation by Khang Nguyen, this exhibition poses some pretty big questions about the nature of life, consciousness, and the experience of humanity as an individual, social, and spiritual construct as well as a state of consciousness, invention, and transcendence: the kinds of questions with answers that are open-ended, paradoxical, fractal, and intuitive. Wrestled with by philosophers and theologians of Eastern and Western traditions, as well by poets, scientists, and occasionally politicians, these are perhaps the sort of inquiries to which art is actually the most capable of responding. Art’s truly boundless potential for juxtaposition and transformation, reflection and generation is exactly what is required for an examination of our complexified existence.
To that end, the artists assembled demonstrate a deep facility for lateral thinking, layered techniques, empathy, and imaginative extrapolation. Despite the diversity of materials and styles which they employ in a range of mediums from photography to cello, movement and performance, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, digital splicing, analog collage, assemblage, and places in between, a holistic vision emerges. Across its premise of a five-faceted multiverse, the exhibition takes a convincing position of proponency for a synergistic, hybridized, mindful consciousness of ourselves, the world around us, and our place in it. Not only imagery but actual objects from the natural and artificial world insinuate themselves into studio pieces, and the ingestion of digital content makes itself felt in myriad ways in thought and in hand.
There is a proliferation of interest in bricolage as both an omnivorous material and digital sourcing technique, as well as a conceptual approach that reflects the accumulative character of our information culture, and finally a manifestation of the plurality of perspectives balanced in our modern sense of self. Also, as one might imagine, there are repeated instances of artists using their own body as both the site of and the protagonist in their abstract dramas. Reaching back into memory, out into the real-time present, and ahead toward possible futures, these artists each posit a version of comprehension that unites the body with the mind, science with emotion, nature with identity, and the cosmic with the atomic. While each of these artists already view the world as a wonder, their art is about sparking the promise of something more wonderful still.
-- Shana Nys Dambrot
Los Angeles, 2020