The Port of Los Angeles and Angels Gate Cultural Center have commissioned fourteen installation and performance artists, nine video artists and one documenting artist to install and present art in shipping containers as part of the Port of Los Angeles Art on the Waterfront Festival 2007.
Under the supervision of Angels Gate curator Marshall Astor, the fourteen artists will create new works that can be seen on the day of the festival only. The works will be site specific, taking advantage of the challenge provided by the limitations of the 20-foot shipping containers. Photographer Slobodan Dimitrov, will document the artists as they work. Video curator Anne Bray has selected works from nine artists, organized into themes relevant to the harbor environment. The videos will show all day in rotation in a special 40-foot container outfitted with projection equipment and seating.
During daytime hours (11:00 AM - 5:30 PM), the container installations and five of the nine video artists' works will be on view. Four different videos artists will be represented during the evening's Artists Reception, from 7:00 - 9:00 PM. The public is invited to the free, catered reception, which will feature a cash bar.
Installation/performance artists:
David Deany, Beth Elliott, Mark Farina, Jeff Foye, Jocelyn Foye, Megan Geckler, Bean Gilsdorf, Dan Gilsdorf, Pato Hebert, Eric Medine, Christine Nguyen, Joe Sola, Matthew Thomas, Michael Webster
Video artists 11 am - 5:30 pm:
Jaco Bouwer, Sabine Maier, Hilary Mushkin, Agnes Nedregard, Karolina Sobecka
Video artists 7 - 9 pm:
Sebastien Pesot, Mikael Prey, Aaron Valdez, S. Vijayaraghavan
Documenting artist - Slobodon Dimitrov
Installation and performance artists curated by Marshall Astor, Visual Arts Director, Angels Gate Cultural Center.
Video artists curated by Anne Bray, Executive Director, Freewaves
David Deany
"The Black Hole Paradox"
The title of the installation refers loosely and playfully to a scientific quandary regarding either the loss or re-animation of "information" upon the evaporation of a black hole.
The viewer's engagement is facilitated as well by the sort of creepy, carnivalesque funhouse environment - a scaled-up cabinet of wonder, with slightly incredible phenomena of the lights and magnets, mixed with the creaky mystery of the dirty old boards, hopefully disarming viewers and allowing for undirected experience.
Beth Elliott
"String Theory"
Outside: powered by the wind, a flat metal sculpture of a diver writes with a pendulum in a pool of black & white sand.
Inside: a walk-through of air, water, space, time and oracle.
Mark X Farina
"Alien Terrain"
The viewer will believe he/she is staring into a seascape horizon. An earth-like sphere will hang down from the sky and be illuminated to reflect off of a pool of water.
Jeff Foye
The viewer will enter a virtually static image of the view looking out the door of the container. Spotlit on a pedestal is a button, which activates a video showing me entering the frame of the formerly static view from the mouth of the container, wearing knee pads and other protective gear as well as a t-shirt and athletically styled shorts, and roller skates. I will begin skating at high velocity towards the open container, tripping on the lip of the container and sliding, marring the flat-white floor. At this point the video will reset to the static image. (Perhaps the curious viewer will also notice the marks I made remain on the floor.)
Jocelyn Foye
"Cheerleading Performance"
Following the investigation and comparison of different athletic and cultural movements, I am putting on a series of live performances which capture authentic dance or sport on clay. This work has stemmed from a place which is interested in showing how anyone leaves a mark in the world. I have chosen performance events that resulted in very different mark making as well as establish a strong flavor of difference among one another, metaphor for current political events as well as the intimacy between the performers and audience. Using the institution of sport as compared with choreography and action, art makes these metaphors more accessible to a larger audience.
Megan Geckler
"I Can Tell You How This Ends"
"I Can Tell You How This Ends" is a 20-foot long vortex made of red plastic ribbon used by the surveying industry. A series of complex layers run the length of the shipping container and swirl into the rear of the space.
Bean Gilsdorf & Dan Gilsdorf
Hailing from Portland, Oregon, the wife and husband team of Bean Gilsdorf and Dan Gilsdorf work in traditional mediums in non-traditional ways. Bean works as a quilter, fusing a craft-bound traditional art with a unique printmaking technique that is physical and visceral. Dan's kinetic sculptures evoke the mystery of the American highway and captures it's iconography through motion, video and sound.
"Shipping and Receiving, Part One"
"Shipping and Receiving" is a planned series of installations that examine the transfer of material---physical or metaphysical---between two points. Drawing on the atmosphere of the harbor environment, "Part One" is an exploration of the labor and material that flows through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Using fabric, paint, fluorescent lighting, and electronic controls, the Gilsdorfs distill the scale and rhythm of the port complex into their basic components. The walls of a standard 20' shipping container are lined with 48 continuous feet of fabric hand-printed with images of container ships. Behind the fabric on each of the long walls there are two large-scale fluorescent arrows, which blink on and off; these count the containers arriving and leaving the ports over the course of the day. In this way, the Herculean labor of the port operation is presented in a context where the pace at which individual containers enter and leave the country is made plain to viewers.
Patrick "Pato" Hebert
"Drop Off"
Patrick "Pato" Hebert's "Drop Off" is a minimalist soundscape that haunts from within a closed shipping container. A layered track of percussive banging starts strong and gradually dies out over the course of its looping, ten minute cycle.
Christine Nguyen
Fresh from a solo exhibition at the UCLA Hammer Museum, and the recent recipient of the first Contemporary Collectors of Orange County $10,000 Fellowship, Christine Nguyen is a photographer/drawer whose work has proved a challenge to categorize. For this project, Christine will create a cave-like environment where viewers will encounter a series of pinhole drawings illuminated under black lights.
Joe Sola & Michael Webster
Joe Sola is a conceptual and performance artist whose work crosses boundaries between viewer and participant. Joe's work takes advantage of the expectations of the participants and the viewers to achieve unexpected results.
His work has been exhibited widely at many public institutions in the US and internationally including: J, Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, The 2002 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA Berkley Museum of Art/Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, CA, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR, The Atlanta Contemporary Center, Atlanta, GA, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA. And internationally at: Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico, InSite 2000, San Diego + Mexico, ICA London, and as part of the 1999 Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba.
Sola's work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art on Paper, Art Papers, ArtUS, Frieze, and the New Yorker.
"Shakey's"
Conceptual and performance artist Joe Sola and composer Michael Webster will present "A Ragtime Slapstick Pizza Spinning Piano Extravaganza" inside the tight confines of a 20' shipping container. Viewers will view the performance through bubble-windows that create a series of forced perspectives.
Video Curator
Anne Bray
Artist, nonconformist, cultural catalyst and advocate, Anne Bray states, "In my artwork I place intimate images into public arenas or I manipulate public, often commercial, language into personal messages.
FR8 and the Port of Los Angeles' Art on the Waterfront Festival - Saturday, May 12
Festival Hours 11 AM - 5:30 PM
Artists Reception, 7 - 9 PM
All events are free to the public.
All events take place at Berth 87, at the intersection of 1st and Harbor Streets in San Pedro.
Directions: Take the 110 South to Gaffey, exit left on Gaffey Street; left at 1st Street; five blocks to the festival.
FR8 is made possible by generous support from The Port of Los Angeles, Fast Lane Transportation, Inc., American Portable Storage, and The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Angels Gate Cultural Center
3601 South Gaffey Street, San Pedro, California 90731
Phone: 310-519-0936, Fax: 310-519-8698
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