COME AND DRAW
April 15 – June 28, 2013 / 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica
Opening Reception: June 1, 2013
Public Drawing Days: Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 11am until 3pm, April 15 – May 31, 2013
Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest is a multi-faceted project by Los Angeles-based artist Alexandra Grant encompassing a series of public drawing sessions, reading groups, artist collaborations and an installation at 18th Street Arts Center. Co-curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas and Isabelle Le Normand, this work premiers in Santa Monica and is presented at Mains d’Oeuvres in Saint-Ouen, France this fall.
Based on an ongoing exchange with the iconic French author, poet, playwright and philosopher Hélène Cixous, Grant focuses on Cixous’ book Philippines as a source for imagery, centering on the repeating thematic of the forest as a profound shared space. Drifting between a real and an imagined place, the forest becomes a site for communion with what Cixous terms “the perfect Other.”
In Philippines, Cixous explores the philosophical and sociological constructs of the “Other,” linking texts from Sigmund Freud on the shared dream, Jacques Derrida on telepathy, and the story of Peter Ibbetson, a novel by Georges du Maurier, where two childhood friends separated by class and country are reunited as adults in their joined dream-life. Within Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest, Grant examines the “twinned” ideas of Philippines, such as dreaming and reality, telepathy and empathy, and relationships between man and woman, adult and child, and colony and colonizer, through illustration of the text, an installation of the forest as image and stage-set, and through collaborations with other artists and the public.
Structured as a residency and an exhibition, Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest extends Grant’s studio practice into the arena of public engagement. Grant will hold collaborative drawing sessions ongoing through the month of May that invite community participation to construct a large-scale, site-specific work. Exploring the space between a specified aesthetic and shared process, Grant engages artists Frances Garreston, Channing Hansen, Bari Ziperstein, Annelie McKenzie and Tina Linville to produce sculptural, “Visiting Trees” (Arbres d’Ailleurs) for the installation. Artists Scoli Acosta, Lita Albuquerque, Alison O’Daniel, Renee Petropoulos, Steve Roden and Audrey Cottin will undertake “Drawing Residencies” as part the participatory drawing illustrating Philippines. The general public – students, guests and passersby – are invited to draw and will be named as participants.
To participate, please email: interiorforest@alexandragrant.com
For classes or groups, please email: Pilar Tompkins Rivas, ptompkins@18thstreet.org
Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest will be presented from September 6 to October 20, 2013 at Mains d’Oeuvres in Saint-Ouen, France.
For more information on the exhibition and the Cixous reading group, please visit: foretinterieureinteriorforest.wordpress.com
Or join the community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ForetInterieureInteriorForest
“Welcome to Alexandra Grant’s Interior Forest” Pilar Tompkins Rivas on KCET.com, http://bit.ly/ZWkNAP
OPENING SOON
LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) will present Painting in Place, a group exhibition of contemporary painting in the historic Farmers and Merchants Bank in Downtown Los Angeles (401 South Main Street Los Angeles, CA 90013) from May 22-July 31, 2013. Painting in Place is curated by LAND’s Co-Founder, Director, and Curator, Shamim M. Momin.
The exhibition will present a wide array of work from contemporary artists that tackle painting from various perspectives, using both traditional and unconventional techniques and media in their approach to the discipline. Exploring various ways that the definition of painting is continuously evolving, the project seeks to expand the traditional parameters of painting, sculpture, and installation: blurred, deconstructed, and refigured.
Three overlapping themes permeate the exhibition: the representation or metaphor of the body/self, memory and the passing of time, and the depiction and negotiation of spatial environments and architectural structures. Subjects will be explored, investigated, and highlighted through the juxtaposition and placement of these paintings within the site-specific context of the historic bank, built in 1905, which is still a cornerstone of Downtown Los Angeles.
Artists include Rita Ackermann, Kevin Appel, Jennifer Boysen, Sarah Cain, N. Dash, Matias Faldbakken, Kim Fisher, Barnaby Furnas, Alexandra Grant, Matt Greene, Mark Hagen, David Hendren, Julian Hoeber, Rashid Johnson, Jacob Kassay, Olga Koumoundouros, Jim Lee, Nate Lowman, Allison Miller, Sam Moyer, Amanda Ross-Ho, Analia Saban, Kate Shepherd, Gary Simmons, Vincent Szarek, Britton Tolliver, Kon Trubkovich, Monique van Genderen, and Bobbi Woods.
POSTSCRIPT: WRITING AFTER CONCEPTUAL ART
The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada
June 21 – September 2, 2013
www.thepowerplant.org/Exhibitions/2013/Summer/Postscript–Writing-After-Conceptual-Art.aspx
NEWS
SIDE STREET PROJECTS
Founded in 1992 by Karen Atkinson and Joe Luttrell, Side Street Projects is a completely-mobile, artist-run nonprofit organization. It’s mission is to give artists of all ages the ability and the means to support their creative endeavors. Side Street Projects teaches artists how to roll up their sleeves and do things themselves with education programs that encourage self-reliance and creative problem solving in a contemporary art context.
This year, Side Street Projects 20th Annual Phantom Ball artist is Alexandra Grant. Instead of coming to the Phantom Ball, Side Street Projects invites you to “pick something you want to do, but haven’t (because you can’t find the time) and do that instead.” By buying a “ticket” to Side Street Projects‘ 20th Annual Phantom Ball, they willl send you the “party favor” made for this infamous non-event: a signed, limited-edition print by Grant created exclusively for the Phantom Ball (edition of 150). What does the print look like? The image is secret until June 1, 2013. “Tickets” to the Phantom Ball are for sale now (with the print image sight unseen) for $150. On June 1st 2013 — when the image gets revealed — the “ticket” price doubles to $300. To buy a print and help support Side Street’s mission: www.sidestreet.org/prints/
CLOVER CANYON x ALEXANDRA GRANT TO BENEFIT LAXART
Rozae Nichols and the Clover Canyon design team have taken Los Angeles-based artist Alexandra Grant’s new body of work, “Century of the Self” as their inspiration for an exciting new collection of women’s ready-to-wear clothing.
Upon completing several paintings, whose subject matter focuses on ideas of self and bodies, Grant immediately saw the potential to explore the work in fashion: “I began seeing a direct link to textiles and fantasized about the paintings becoming cloth or tapestries.”
The nature of Grant’s artist process imbued early conversations with Nichols and created a format for the collaboration. Grant describes that, “Each painting is a series of collages, ink blots placed on a larger piece of paper or canvas and then layered with paint and writing made to replicate how the self is constructed.”Grant’s work conjures monologues of the subconscious, like “I lost myself” and the alter-ego: “I found myself.” A veteran text-based artist, Grant says that these are all found texts, “some just lists of phrases that people say to themselves.” In “Century of the Self” Grant channeled diverse voices from political statements by strong women to the wisdom of ancient Greek tragedies. The collection features Audre Lorde’s “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” and Sophocles’ Antigone: “I was born to love not to hate.”"
To see the complete line:
“I WAS BORN TO LOVE” tote bag:
http://www.grantlove.com/ collections/frontpage/ products/i-was-born-to-love- not-to-hate-tote
Clover Canyon and Alexandra Grant are proud to donate 20% of proceeds to LA><ART
