ADDS DONNA
February 10 2013 - March 17 2013
Marcel Alcala, Lauren Anderson, Luis Miguel Bendaña, Andrew MausertMooney and Neal Frederick Vandenbergh.
ADDS DONNA presents Surfin’, a group exhibition featuring the work of Marcel Alcala, Lauren Anderson, Luis Miguel Bendaña, Andrew MausertMooney and Neal Frederick Vandenbergh.
Feb. 10, 2013 thru March 17, 2013
Surfin’ strives to conjure a dialogue between surface making and surface reading. By regarding surface not as a thing but as an action, and playing into the artworks’ laid-back character, surfin’ becomes a language – a slang spoken through the work of these five artists. Their mutual fluency provides a codex for the viewer to interpret their otherwise hypnotic vernacular.
Subject matter is skimmed from the world (IRL) for these makers and approached casually (NBD). Yet their nonchalant attitude is not without thought. These quick gestural acts proceed from contemplation, however abbreviated. All raise a question of the representation and disfiguration of language.
Is this the pulse of a generation – one bred on voyeuristic participation and instant gratification? In any case it seems for these artists that viewership and authorship are no longer at odds. “Artist-as-observer” and “observer-as-artist” blend beautifully in this world of mixed sincerity.
Marcel Alcala’s collaged paintings incorporate snapshots of vague social intercourse. His offhand pairings and cheeky gestures declare the viewer as voyeur, exacerbating the allure of the images’ decontextualized frivolity.
Lauren Anderson explores the possibilities of freedom and constraint within abstraction. Her monoprints adhere to a set of formal rules loosely based on the principles of Yin and Yang.
Luis Miguel Bendaña abstracts words that carry sensual connotation. His gestural respellings of words like gorgeous and meow add a cool literalness to reading the work.
Andrew Mausert-Mooney and Neal Vandenbergh share a collaborative practice that investigates embodied intersubjectivity and discourse in public space. The video presented for Surfin’ awakens an uncomfortable consciousness as viewers witness the awkward deliberations of its interviewees.
