Museum as Retail Space (MaRS) is an artwork, and was a 6,000-square-foot commercial contemporary art gallery located on the East Bank of the L.A. River at 649 South Anderson Street, underneath the 6th Street bridge. 

ABOUT THE GALLERY

(This is an archived version of the original website)


EMILY MAST • The Stage is a Cage

RAÚL DE NIEVES • I’m in A Story

JIBADE-KHALIL HUFFMAN • The Discrepancies

DRAKE LABRY • Decorative Family Room Paintings

A SERIES OF FILM SCREENINGS AND LIVE PERFORMANCES • Regional, International, & Extraterrestrial

MANUEL SCANO LARRAZÀBAL • Inexorable Acephalous Magnificence or How the Shit Hits the Fan

MARTY SCHNAPF • The Night Brightens

LINDA FRANKE • Access to Nameless Hazards

MICHAEL ALVAREZ • Sorealism

MARWA ABDUL-RAHMAN • Open That Shit Wide Let Me See How Big Your Mouth Is

GALIA LINN and ELENA STONAKER • Rituals of Sphinx and Lamassu

VIJAT MOHINDRA • Always Believe That Something Wonderful is About to Happen

TATIANA ECHEVERRI FERNANDEZ • Bones and Bloodlines to Space

KRISTAN MARVELL • The Quiddity of Presence

LIPSCHUTZ & LIPSCHUTZ • Lipschutz or Lipschutz

ALEX SANCHEZ • I Keep Everything You Give Me

AUDREY HOPE • Remembering Not Remembering

ERIC LEISER • Time Crystals

JOSH PAUL THOMAS • Reintentions

KRISTOPHER RAOS • Blocked Out

LAURA SOTO • Flesh and Flood

MARK SO • Heliogabalus: Anarchy

EMILY MAST • The Stage is a Cage



Press Release

THE STAGE IS A CAGE • A performative exhibition by Emily Mast • January 30th, 2015 at 8:30PM


Emily Mast presents a paradigmatic juggling act!

Her performative work, The Stage is a Cage, deftly postures and posits zoomorphic preeminence, the reification of psyche, and the paradoxical captivity of artistic conception, through a sensuous process of sculptural, pictorial, and performative genesis.

The performance will produce a primal sketch — a monumental work on paper and a sculptural set — that will be included in Mast’s upcoming solo exhibition at La Ferme du Buisson in France. Museum as Retail Space will present the only public performance of the work; The Stage is a Cage is the first commercially available performance piece by Mast.

The exhibition will run approximately 45 minutes. A champagne toast to celebrate the launch of MaRS to follow.

Emily Mast is a multimodal artist expounding the dialectic of performance art as founded by Jackson Pollock and Saburo Murakami. Her work has been exhibited at LACMA, the Hammer Museum, Public Fiction, and Night Gallery in Los Angeles; Performa, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space, and Simone Subal Gallery in New York; and Galeria Luisa Strina in São Paulo.




Biography


EMILY MAST (b. 1976, Cleveland) lives and works in Los Angeles. She creates performances and ephemeral installations that incorporate bodies, movement, sound and idiosyncratic experience to exhibit uncertainty as live sculptural material.  

Her work has been exhibited at LACMA, the Hammer Museum and Night Gallery in Los Angeles; and  Performa, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space and Simone Subal Gallery in New York; and Galeria Luisa Strina in São Paulo. Emily has been an artist-in-residence at the Headlands, Yaddo and Skowhegan. She is the recipient of a California Community Foundation Fellowship, a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award and a CCI Investing in Artists Grant.





January 30, 2015


exhibition IMAGES


Video documentation
A performance by Emily Mast With Jos McKain & Emily Mast MaRS / Los Angeles, CA / January 30, 2015 Lights: Ellie Rabinowitz Sound: Steven Klems Assistant: Madeleine Lederer Video: Martin Dicicco Edit: Christopher Richmond This performance was made possible by MaRS (LA) & La Ferme du Buisson in Noisiel, France.


ELEVEN RESULTANT COMPOSITIONS

Composition #1
60 x 73 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Shelf/Brackets, Streamer, Gloves, 3 Rolls of Tape, Paint Cup, White Sheet
Composition #2
60 x 64 in
Yellow Sheet, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Composition #3
60 x 54.5 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
6 Tubes
Detail of Composition #3
Composition #4
60 x 90 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Composition #5
60 x 64 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Composition #6
60 x 90.5 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Red Shelf/Brackets, Jar Pins, H20 Bottle, Cigarette Box, Lighter, Grey Shirt
Composition #7
60 x 88 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Teal Sheet, Red Sheet
Composition #8
60 x 42.5 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Composition #9
60 x 81 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Grey Box Shelf, Plant
Composition #10
60 x 119.5 in
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper
Black Shelf/Brackets, Teal Sheet, Red Sheet, Grey Sheet, 3 Streamers
Composition #11
96 x 53.5 in


RAÚL DE NIEVES • I’m in A Story


Press Release

I'm in A Story • An Exhibition by Raúl de Nieves • February 13th – April 18th, 2015


MUSEUM as RETAIL SPACE (MaRS) is pleased to present I’m in A Story, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition and Raúl de Nieves first solo show in Los Angeles. His work spans intricate figurative sculpture and painting, ornamental shoes and garments, multimedia performance and live music, with frequent references to high fashion, nightlife, Catholic symbolism, Mexican folklore, and fairy tales.

I’m in A Story continues the narrative of de Nieves and Colin Self's critically acclaimed chamber opera The Fool, a mystical allegorical journey centered around a mother, a child, an old women, and a dog/fool (played by de Nieves). The exhibition brings to life the precious relationship between the dog/fool character and the old woman character:


Old woman, you have lived a very beautiful life and Its time to let go of fear. Fear
only brings you farther from the self. With the loss of fear one can be a
wandering spirit, and soon will choose where the spirit is to go. Your old body
and brain are not eternal, but your soul is.
Old woman why are you shaking why do you shake when you close your eyes
you’re not awake
fear not your body leaving you, for it is not your soul
my spirit wanders body to body, we’re on a journey
you must continue on
Do not be afraid, by giving me a chance to help you will have me by your side at
all time

The body I have is light as a feather
you have given me a chance to continue with greater knowledge
to always be thinking with generosity, ethics, patience, diligence and most of all
renunciation.
The message you have brought to me only makes me wiser.




Biography


RAÚL DE NIEVES (b. 1983, Morelia Michuacan, Mexico) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work spans intricate figurative sculpture and painting, ornamental shoes and garments, multimedia performance and live music, with frequent references to high fashion, nightlife, Catholic symbolism, Mexican folklore, and fairy tales.

De Nieves’ performance has been featured at The Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, MoMA San Francisco, Performa, as well as prominently in the works of Ryan Trecartin. His intricate sculptural shoes are often worn in de Nieves’ decadent performances and have recently been photographed by Mario Sorrenti and Karl Lagerfeld, worn by Lady Gaga, and earned notable press editorials in publications including V Magazine, W Magazine, and Harper’s Bazaar. De Nieves has mounted solo exhibitions at Live with Animals (2010); Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York (2009 and 2007); Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin (2008) among others. His recently premiered collaborative chamber opera, The Fool, will perform at The Kitchen (NYC) later this year (2015).


February 13 – April 18, 2015


EXHIBITION IMAGES


Days(Ves) of Wonder
2007 – 2014
23(l) x 17(w) x 39 1/2(h)
Mixed Media
The Fool on the Hill
2013 – 2014
112(l) x 30(w)
5 pieces
Watercolor on Paper
Mixed Nuts
2013
256(l) x 105 1⁄2(w)
33 piece mural
Collage on Paper, Tempera Paint, Pen Ink
Celebration
2010 – 2015
98(l) x 39 1⁄2(w) x 19 1⁄2(h)
Mixed Media, Sculpture
Party Room
2014
Installation
Tape, Confetti, Plastic Bag, Yarn, 3 Robotic dolls
Porcelina
2015
32 (l) x 17 (W) x 10 (h)
17 (l) x 12 (W) x 20 (h)
Mixed Media
Pena and Joe: The Art of Comfort
2013
9(l) x 7(w) x 16(h)
19 1⁄2(l) x 7 1⁄2(W) x 13 1⁄2(h)
Mixed Media 
VeRD Inn
2013
12 (l) x 9 (W) x 13 1⁄2 (h) (left foot)
10 1⁄2 (l) x 9 (W) x 13 1⁄2 (h) (right foot)
14 1⁄2(l) x 9 (W) x 6 (h)
Mixed Media
Detail of As Far As You Take Me That’s Where I B Live
2013 – 2014
25 1⁄2(l) x 18 (W) x 22(h) (bottom)
24(l) x 22(w) x 17(h) (circular (top))
Mixed Media

Selected Works



JIBADE-KHALIL HUFFMAN • The Discrepancies


Press Release

THE DISCREPANCIES • An Exhibition by JIBADE-KHALIL HUFFMAN • May 2nd – May 30th, 2015


The Discrepancies is a new body of work by Jibade-Khalil Huffman, centered around a multichannel video/sound installation. This central work, Untitled (Citizen) marks the first adaptation of another writer's work for Huffman – in this case a portion of Claudia Rankine's award winning Citizen.

The exhibition presents a notion of passivity contextualized through displaced temporality via video screens and sound, an anachronistic sculptural depiction of the Internet, and insidious forms of racism digitally abstracted and physicalized as composite silkscreen-digital-prints.

Biography


JIBADE-KHALIL HUFFMAN (b. 1981, Detroit) is graduate of Bard College and Brown University and holds an MFA from the University of Southern California. Huffman lives and works in Los Angeles.

Huffman's work uses performance, photography, and video that push the capabilities of text and image to tell stories and convey meaning. Drawing on his background in poetry, Huffman plays with timing and pacing in his visual work to tease out suspense, tension, expectation, and release.

Huffman’s work has been exhibited at The Hammer Museum, MOCA, MoMA/PS1, LA><ART, Machine Project, Public Fiction, Night Gallery, and Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. He is the author of two books of poems, 19 Names For Our Band (Fence, 2008) and James Brown is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011) as well as his recently published book, Sleeper Hold (Fence, 2015). His work was included in the anthology The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing (Northwestern University Press, 2013).May 2nd – June 6th, 2015


EXHIBITION IMAGES


Candypaint
2015

Archival Inkjet Print and Screenprint on Glass
26(l) x 38.5(w)

Edition 1 of 3
Untitled (Memory)
2015

Archival Inject Print and Screenprint on Glass
29.5(l) x 19.5(w)

Edition 1 of 3
Picture for Cecil Fielder
2015

Archival Inject Print 
47(l) x 32(w)

Edition 1 of 5
Untitled (Safety)
2015

Archival Inject Print and Screenprint on Glass
44(l) x 29.5(w)

Edition 1 of 3
Untitled (Wall)
2015

Archival Inject Print
36(l) x 23.5(w)

Edition 1 of 5
Untitled (Parking)
2015

Archival Inject Print and Screenprint on Glass
36(l) x 23.5(w)

Edition 1 of 5
Poster
2015

Archival Inject Print and Screenprint on Glass
41.5(l) x 23(w)

Edition 1 of 3
LLLL18
2014

Archival Inject Print
25(l) x 37(w)

Edition 1 of 5


Selected Works


DRAKE LABRY • Decorative Family Room Paintings


Press Release

DECORATIVE FAMILY ROOM PAINTINGS • An Exhibition by DRAKE LABRY • JUNE 13TH – JULY 25TH, 2015


Museum as Retail Space (MaRS) is pleased to present Decorative Family Room Paintings, the first extensive solo exhibition of Drake LaBry in Los Angeles.

Decorative Family Room Paintings presents an overview of his "phenomena paintings", utilizing bulk-purchased glitter, hand-cut aluminum, salvaged cardboard, and air-cured polyurethane, to compose sensuous geometric patterns with complex (in)organic textures. The work delimits itself, by a praxis of directly translating stimulation for the sake of stimulation, as pure ornamentation.




Biography


DRAKE LABRY (b. 1985  Bayou Teche, Louisiana) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. His studio practice focuses on large-scale painting produced intuitively, with an emphasis on chromatic relativity, typically integrating salvaged and base-consumer materials with formal oil and water-based techniques. Patterns drawn from nature as well as contemporary society figure abstractly into his work.

HIs work has been displayed at the Marjorie Barrick Museum (Las Vegas, NV), Martine Chaisson Gallery (New Orleans, LA), and is in the permanent collection of the LSU Foundation (Baton Rouge, LA) and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation (Los Angeles, CA).June 13th – July 25th, 2015


exhibition images


My Little Pony
2015

Polyurethane, Oil, Metal and Glitter on wood

108(h) x 72(w) inches
Ninja Turtles
2015

Polyurethane, Oil, Metal and Glitter on wood

108(h) x 72(w) inches
Marlin
2015

Glitter, Acrylic and Spackle on Stuffed Marlin

28 (h) x 103 (w) inches
What Seems So Close But So Far
2014

Polyurethane, Oil and Foil on Wood

73 ¾ (h) x 48 (w) inches
Bronze Fish 
(right)
2012

Polyurethane and Oil on Wood

36(h) x 34.5(w) inches
Clown Fish
2012

Polyurethane and Oil on Wood

48(h) x 41(w) inches
Sopping Wet
2013

Cardboard, Polyurethane and Oil on Acrylic Panel

65 ½ (h) x 52 (w)  inches


Selected Works



 

REGIONAL, INTERNATIONAL, & EXTRATERRESTRIAL

A SERIES OF FILM SCREENINGS AND LIVE PERFORMANCES




MaRS is pleased to announce Regional, International & Extraterrestrial, a series of evening events featuring live performances and video screenings curated by MaRS’ own Associate Director and visual artist Lisa Jugert. The events were programmed around a range of foci – the dramatization of domiciles, the negotiation of identities, the narration of histories, and the domestication of the extrinsic. There will be a BBQ and refreshments in our garden space after each screening.

Thursday July 30th, 7:00 - 10 pm
Thursday August 6th, 7:00 - 10 pm
Thursday August 13th, 7:00 - 10 pm
Thursday August 20th, 7:00 - 10 pm
All video works will be available for view during normal gallery hours.

Participating artists: Patrick Michael Ballard, Hanna Bergfors, Milena Bonilla, Megan May Daalder, Danielle Dean, Margarethe Drexel, Kelman Duran, Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, Linda Franke, Alex Gross & Anna Mields, Claire Hooper, Jeepneys, Lisa Jugert, Sadaf H Nava, Paul Simon Richards, David Rych, some times



Biographies


Patrick Michael Ballard is a Los Angeles based artist who works in a broad range of media. Foregrounding all of his projects as orchestrations, he evokes living images, objects, and mutated strategies of fantasy aesthetics to examine the power of unseen emotional architecture, collective narrative reverie, escape, and nostalgia into a theater of self paradox and absurdity.  Ballard studied music and sculpture at Cal State Long Beach and holds a MFA from the California Institute of Arts, Los Angeles. His work has been featured around Los Angeles by Machine Project, Human Resources, Automata, and as a part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative.

Hanna Bergfors grew up in Sweden and studied narrative and experimental film at the University of the Arts in Berlin. She is a producer, director and performer in the independent and queer-feminist cinema culture of Berlin. Bergfors co-founded the production collective Systrar Productions with Kornelia Kugler, with whom she has co-produced and co-directed several films. Bergfors' award winning films have been shown at a number of internationally accredited film festivals including the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany; Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival; Molodist Festival Kiew, Ukraine; Ozu Film Festival Sassuolo, Italy; Mecal International Short Film Festival, Barcelona; Achtung, Berlin; Rencontres Internationales, Berlin.

Milena Bonilla was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and is based in Amsterdam. Bonilla’s interdisciplinary work is concerned with questions that link economy, territory notions, transit and politics, with actions that touch everyday life. Bonilla holds degrees from Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, and Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Visual Arts, Bogotá. Her work has been shown at The Mistake Room, Los Angeles; Valenzuela Klenner Gallery, Bogotá;  Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam; Segunda Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan, Puerto Rico; Havana Biennial, Havana; Muca Roma Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City; Bucharest Biennial, Romania; Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden; Photographer's Gallery, London; amongst others. Her most recent solo show at The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, has just been reviewed in Artforum.

Megan May Daalder (US) is an interdisciplinary Los Angeles based artist who works primarily with video and performance. Her work is an ongoing search for identity in the context of science and technology. After a period of research, each project imagines a possible future and how it may, or may not, fulfill our most primordial needs. Daalder holds a BA from UCLA's Design Media Arts Department. Her work has been shown at Five Car Garage, Santa Monica; UCLA Art & Science Gallery, LA; Mains D'Oeuvres Gallery, Paris; Jack Hanley Gallery, NYC, the 14th WRO Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland; the Rotterdam International Film Festival; Kyoto City University of Arts Gallery amongst other international festivals and venues.

Danielle Dean is an American born dual citizen of the US and the UK, who currently splits her time between NYC and Houston. Dean's video work is often concerned with observations on American culture filtered through a global perspective, challenging expectations of advertising, filmic narratives and questions of cultural identity. She holds a MFA from the California Institute of Arts, Los Angeles and studied at The Whitney Museum of American Art: Independent Study Program, NYC as well as Central Saint Martins, London. Her work has been shown at The Hammer Museum, Commonwealth and Council, Human Resources in Los Angeles; Tate Modern, James Taylor Gallery, Auto Italia South East in London; The Guggenheim gallery at Chapman University; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore.

Margarethe Drexel is an Austrian multi-disciplinary artist currently based in Los Angeles. Her work often plays with the topic of heritage by raising questions about expectations through notions of home and romantic nature sceneries. She attempts to reveal hidden motivations through absurd chains of events and expectations that create shifts in perspectives. Drexel is currently attending the MFA program at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna; Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, Saar University of Arts, Saarbrücken and Leopold Franzens University, Philosophy and Art History, Innsbruck. Her work has been shown at Bolsky Gallery, Selecto Planta Baja, Los Angeles; Lancaster Museum of Art and History Cedar, Lancaster; Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Funkhaus und Uferhallen, Berlin; Semperdepot and Fluc Vienna; House of Cyprus, Athens; Cusanushaus, Bonn; Caochangdi Gallery, Beijing.

Kelman Duran is a Los Angeles based artist and curator who was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Washington Heights, NY. His work is informed by counter-histories that deal with power and political exclusion. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles and was the Resident Curator at Otras Obras, Tijuana, Mexico in 2014. Duran's work has been shown at LACMA, REDCAT, Echo Park Film Center and Human Resources in Los Angeles; Viennale Film Festival, Vienna; Split Film Festival, Croatia; Bradford International Film Festival; Zinebi, Bilbao; Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, Cambridge.

Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez is a Berlin based artist who was born in Columbia and raised in Germany.  Her sculptures, videos, performances and fotograms are assemblages constructed through a complex process of layering and juxtapositioning. Obsolete objects and historical forms are reworked to suggest alternatives to their previous functions and ideological referents. Fernandez studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and holds an MFA from the Royal College of Art, London. Her work has been shown at Kunstverein Düsseldorf; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Gagosian Madison Avenue and Lisa Cooley Gallery, New York; ICA, Carl Freedman Gallery, Bloomberg Space and Barbican in London; CCA, Glasgow; Gallery Casado Santa Pau, Madrid; L'Espace de l'Art Concrete, Mouans-Sartoux; Triangle France, Marseille; Akinci Gallery, Amsterdam; Outpost; Norwich.

Linda Franke was born in Dresden and is currently based in Cologne. She is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on video, installation, performance art and sound. Her work is posing existential questions in an often alienating combination of settings that are meant to challenge imagination. Her videos often include hyper artificial spaces that are created or modified with 3D programs and protagonists who are not clearly instructed about their roles and positions. Franke studied Fine Arts at the Universität der Künste Berlin, Chelsea School of Art and Design London and Bauhaus Universität Weimar. Her work has been shown at Georg Kolbe Museum, Schaulager Barbara Thumm, Galerie Eva Bracke and Westgermany in Berlin; W139, Amsterdam; Simultanhalle Cologne; Art Cologne; File Festival, Sao Paulo; Galapagos Art Space, New York; Moscow International Film Festival; CCA, Glasgow; Jiksiten Gallery, Nogoya, Japan; Myymäla, Helsinki; Soma Mexico City & Museu de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico City.

Alex Gross & Anna Mields were born in Berlin when it was a split city. Gross grew up on the west side while Mields did on the east. Today the couple is still based in Berlin and collaborates on many projects while continuing their individual practice. Their collaborations include video, installation and sculpture as well as running the independent art space Infernoesque. Their work is often concerned with changing ideas of Utopia and it's visual manifestations in art, architecture and every day life. Both artist attended the University of the Arts in Berlin and hold MFA’s from the Glasgow School of Art. Exhibitions include shows at the Tramway Museum, Transmission Gallery and Glasgow International Festival in Glasgow; Collective Gallery, Ediburgh; Kunst und Literatur Forum Amalienpark, Kunsthalle m³, HAU 1 and .HBC in Berlin; Raum für temporäre Kunst, Köln; Kunsthalle Rostock; New Wave Festival, Melbourne; Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde; Tankstelle, Kopenhagen; PIST, Istanbul and Crawl Space, Seattle.

Claire Hooper is a British artist based in London. Hooper’s recent work has been concerned with Greek mythology, in particular the way in which Hesiod’s Theogony gives an anthropomorphic familial relation to matter and experience. Her practice touches on perception and experience in narrative, and how one immerses oneself in reading or watching, and in particular she has been interested in descriptions of interior spaces and how this relates to the interiority of fantasy. Hooper holds an MFA from Goldsmiths University of London and is enrolled in the the PHD program at the Royal College of Art London. Her work has been shown widely in Europe and abroad including shows at MUMOK, Vienna; Serpentine Gallery, Hollybush Gardens, Whitechapel Gallery and ICA in London; Art Statements, Art Basel; IT Park, Taipei; Kunstwerke and Galerie Kamm in Berlin; Lothringer 13, Munich and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main.

Jeepneys (Anna Luisa Petrisko) is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist working primarily in sound, video, dance, and performance. Named after the iconic converted WWII army jeeps of the Philippines, she is of mixed race Filipina and Slovak heritage and her work focuses on the complexities of identity, memory, and language through a decolonizing and critical lens. Jeepneys holds a MA from the music program at the California Institute of Arts, Los Angeles. Her work has been shown at Pacific Standard Time Presents, REDCAT, Human Resources, LACE, Machine Project, ALOUD for the Los Angeles Public Library, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Avant-Garde Festival curated by Faust. She is a member of Black Salt Collective, which was recently awarded the 2016 Curatorial Commons Residency at SOMArts Gallery in San Francisco.

Lisa Jugert is a Los Angeles based artist who spent most of her life in Germany. Her interdisciplinary art practice is concerned with the psychology of visual perception and conventions of representation. She explores historical and contemporary relationships to images and the way they are being used to generate meaning. Jugert holds an MFA from the Städelschule Frankfurt am Main and studied at the Glasgow School of Art and Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her work has been shown at MAC, Birmingham; GSL Projekt, Westgermany, HAU 1, Galerie Barbara Thumm and Clarke Gallery in Berlin; Glasgow International Festival; Dependance, Brussels; Frankfurter Kunstverein and Das Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Marburger Kunstverein; Explum Museum, Murcia; Casino, Luxembourg; Semperdepot, Vienna;  F.A.I.T. Gallery, Krakow; Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm.

Sadaf H Nava is an Iranian born multidisciplinary visual artist, performer and musician based in New York. Her focus is the body, its extensions, resistance and confinement, vocal improvisation and the construction and deconstruction of identities. Sadaf’s practice incorporates a variety of mediums, often using formal explorations of movement and materiality through a dual urge for confrontational experimentation and narrative cohesion. Sadaf holds an MFA in Performance Studies from NYU and a BFA in Studio Arts and Photography from Concordia University, Montreal. She frequently performs in NYC and has presented work at 47 Canal, Issue Project Room, Silent Barn and Grace Exhibition Space in NYC; FIFA festival at the Museum of Fine Arts Montreal, Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal; Nexus Cultural Center, Beijing.

Paul Simon Richards is a London based artist who explores the potential of thought to describe and make present in language that which cannot be experienced. Working mainly with spoken word, performance and film, Richards' work draws together immersive narratives that incorporate elements of spectacular entertainment and moments of enlightened consciousness that come about during mundane daily tasks. Richards holds an MA in Philosophy from the University of Greenwich, London and BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art London. His work has been shown a Nile Sunset Annex, Cairo; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; The Showroom, London; Jerwood Space, London;
Fulham Palace, Auto Italia Live, Modern Art Oxford and Frieze art fair in London; International Project Space, Birmingham; Kunstbüro, Vienna.

David Rych is a Berlin based artist and filmmaker who was born and raised in Austria. His work is preoccupied with the construction and representation of identity. His projects, videos and films explore the production of knowledge in relation to collective identities, personal and official narratives of history and their visual representations.  Rych holds an MFA from the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts Marseille and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Bezalel University Photography and Media Department in Jerusalem, Israel as well as Studies of Art History and Architecture at the University Insbruck, Austria. His work has been shown at many international venues, including the Berlin Biennale at Kunstwerke, Berlin; Thyssen - Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Secession and MQ in Vienna; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck; AGORA - Athens Biennale; National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bukarest and the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Murcia.

some times is a neon sign that can be plugged in anywhere; it is also a performative project space that takes the form of a bar. some times opened in 2014 as a response to artists’ needs at the California Institute of the Arts. It reappears frequently to present new artist projects focused on performance, exchange, and collaboration. some times recently occupied the office of ltd Los Angeles for a six month residency and is currently collaborating with Big City Forum on a new salon series called “After Hours.” some times is owned and operated by artist Meghan Gordon.

Narrating the Political - July 30th, 7:00 - 10:00 pm

Lisa Jugert
Xerox
David Rych
Breaking the News
Sadaf H Nava
Dubai Shopping Mall
Danielle Dean
No Lye
Hanna Bergfors
Doska Frank


Lisa Jugert - Making Her Work (2015) - live performance
Making Her Work is a scripted dialogue that is partly lecture performance, partly visual entertainment. Based on an interest in analyzing learned structures of assigning meaning to given situations, Jugert will stage a visual and verbal reflection of art making in general and in contemporary America specifically. Art, in this case, is a place holder for any form of expression, based on the presumption that the message is always determined by the receiver.

David Rych - Breaking the News: FEMEN (2012) - 11:20 min
Breaking the News: FEMEN is part of a series of films that explore performative strategies, which directly attract media attention to bring political ideas into circulation. The series speaks about various media processes and spaces of negotiation, thereby reflecting on the mediation of "reality" and to address the question, where political "public" takes place. Some of the films contain staged scenes, but then tie seamlessly into the documented reality. In Breaking the News: FEMEN the camera accompanies the Ukrainian collective FEMEN, which over the past year appeared at various protests using their naked bodies, in the planning and realization of an action in Kiev. The activists lock themselves in the bell tower of the cathedral in Kiev and ring the bells to protest the government-adopted ban on abortion, until security intervenes.

Sadaf H Nava - Dubai Shopping Mall (2015) - 2:54 min
Dubai Shopping Mall tells the story of a post-bargain high, an inner and outer aesthetic awaking through layered dressing and undressing, under the veil of global fetish expansion. Is it the right match? Does it fit? Dubai Shopping Mall is the universal re-telling of international teen boredom; a moment of Reggaeton re-discovery. The trials and errors of looking at the mirror refracted; the emotional range of draping and re-arranging identity. The joyous unraveling of a cassette tape loop. Dubai Shopping Mall is a music video for the indoor personal club life of it's protagonist, a cultural mixing and matching; a woeful "Nothing is really happening".

Danielle Dean - No Lye (2012) - 8:48 min
Confined to a bathroom, five women communicate to the limit of words taken from political speech and advertising from Ebony magazine and Vogue. The women are engaging in making a bomb.
Text Sources: Barack Obama, Speech About Guantánamo And Terrorism, May 21, 2009, David Cameron, Speech on radicalization and Islamic extremism, Munich, 5 February 2011, George Bush, speech on terrorism, September 2006, Mitt Romney, on immigration, 2012, Nazi Party Manifesto, Dachau Concentration, Camp memorial site, 1920, Tony Blair, The speech by prime minister, at the Labor Party conference, October 2, 2001, Ebony Collectors edition, Jan 2009. Ebony, May 1946, Ebony, Feb 1946, Ebony, Nov 1955, Essence, Nov –Apr 1978-79, Ebony, Sept 1989, Ebony, March 1990, Ebony, May 1998, Ebony, Dec 2011, Ebony, April 2011, Ebony, Sept 2011, Vanity Fair, June 2011, Vanity Fair, August 2011, Vogue, July 2011.

Hanna Bergfors - Doska Frank (2012) - 20:00 min
Doska Frank depicts some days in the life of a young couple in Stockholm, Frida and Oskar. Parallel to the couple, the film follows a real estate agent who gives tours in Stockholm’s up and coming neighborhood. Political ideas are removed from their context and get consumed like fashion. Extreme make-up trends have become casual. Frida desires Black Metal, and she wants it loud. Oskar needs Frida, but Frida needs music as a symbol of something more.


Living with Borders - August 6th, 7:00 - 10:00 pm




Millena Bonilla
An Enchanted Forest 
Anna Mields & Alex Gross
Arkenberge
Alex Gross & Anna Mields
Lore of Colors (Farbenlehre)
Kelman Duran
To the North


Milena Bonilla - An Enchanted Forest (2013-2014) - 9:15 min
The film An Enchanted Forest narrates and analyzes a discovery made by a group of scientists between 2002 and 2011. While tracking Red Deer population as a control routine, the scientists noticed that the Red Deer females from both countries were not crossing the former Iron Curtain border, even though the fence has been removed since 1989. The title refers to two books, which mention the existence of an in the area that is covering the former Bohemian Forest, which has been divided between the Bavarian and Šumava Natural Parks. The parks belong to Germany and the Czech Republic respectively.

Anna Mields & Alex Gross - Arkenberge (2010) - 8:16 min
Set on a landfill by Berlin, Arkenberge tells the story of a society dropout. Arkenberge is the name of the trash mountain, which attracts crows and a few isolated dwellers such as a man in a hooded sweater. While grilling pork chops in the snow, he is telling his story - his past and his fate. Meanwhile a mysterious woman appears, who is set to climb the mountain. Whether destiny or desire, the dumping site doubles as romantic idyll.

Anna Mields & Alex Gross - Farbenlehre / Lore of Colours (2011) - 11:00 min
Farbenlehre tells the story of a community and architectural experiment of a small village in Spain. Influenced by the revolutionary student movement of 1968, an ambitious German art teacher buys a mountain in Spain in the 1970's. He then invites his German friends to join him in building a new village. Having left their native West-Germany behind, they are seeking space and freedom to shape their life according to their own optimistic ideas. Creating a discourse between images, narratives, facts, and fiction, the retrospection also evokes questions: Is it possible to create a piece of reality based on naivety, freedom, and spontaneity?  Is this reality sustainable?  Is it worth trying to create a thing like that at all?

Kelman Duran - To the North Pt. 1 (2014) - 46:00 min
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is one of the poorest and at the same time most documented reservations in the US. To The North Pt. 1 is a diary film set at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Shown in sections, it documents a family, the weather, a lawn mower, "no sale", some uranium, and a dog. Duran's film gives slow paced, casual and personal insights to a family's life on the 'Res. To the North is part of the artist's long-term project Open-Air Prisons, which deals with architecture and social control.


Private Business - August 13th, 7:00 - 10:00 pm




Patrick Michael Ballard
MAYBE ISN'T EVERYTHING
Tatiana Echeverii Fernandez
Bang
Megan Daalder
Eureka and the Biomass
Margarethe Drexel
Somebody's Always Watching!
Linda Franke
Inland Freaks

Patrick Michael Ballard - After the Rise and Fall of Teenager (2015) - Live Performance Premiere
After the Rise and Fall of Teenager is a new work by Patrick Michael Ballard examining the relationship between object based narrative, persona, and tableaux to enact a physical montage of performance genres and unstable effects.  It is arranged as an orchestration of cultural forms in opposition to their expected behavior, utilizing the incomplete metaphors of teenage poetry, noise, comedic timing, and procession to enact behavioral paradox.  Transformation, uncanny objects, and symbolic disorder govern an incomplete diegetic space where characters emerge, build, and transform in the theatrical ether of a strangely full but vacant room.

Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez - Bang (2009) - 2:54 min
Bang is a short video of a hand catching sun light. Simple and straight forward, it literally sheds a new light on a simple gesture.

Megan May Daalder - Eureka and the Biomass (2015) - 13:33 min
Eureka and the Biomass is a Beauty and the Beast for the 22nd century. Through original music, lo-fi special effects, and an eight foot puppet this sci-fi musical brings an alien form of nature to life and questions the future of our ecological relationships. The year is 2100, and a period of climate change has radically altered ecosystems around the world. A biotechnology company called Synthetic Earth Corporation has designed, patented, and grown an organism called the Biomass to help stabilize the carbon cycle. When Eureka, a young woman raised during the peak of ecological collapse, is hired as the janitor at Synthetic Earth Corp, she has no idea that she is just one security door away from an unlikely return to Eden.

Margarethe Drexel - Somebody's Always Watching! (2014) - 2:27 min
Set in a forever unfinished house in the mountains of rural Austria, Drexel explores the uncanniness of a modern ruin that was built for but never got to house a family. A young woman and found objects act as protagonists in this series of unsettling and humorous scenes: Acting through rooms. A house, unfinished yet already desolate. Fragments are found and scope for action is perceived. It must happen. Never alone. The spirits I've summoned, I cannot dispell. Never. This fate is sealed!

Linda Franke - Inland Freaks (2015) - 14:00 min
Inland Freaks is an exploration of family relationships. Oscillating between intimacy and distance, brother and sister trust each other just enough to be honest, demanding and unfair to each other. They want to confess to each other that they are not human and knew it all along about the other one, but they don´t know how to start. A collage of authentic documentary dialog fragments with scripted fictional elements confuses the borders of what is real and what is not. The melodramatic encounter is taking place somewhere in space, but the illusion of a three dimensional space is constantly disturbed by zooms into surfaces of objects and bodies. Nothing stays the same - the bodies as well as the environment they inhabitant is imploding and exploding into one another.


States of Being - August 20th, 7:00 - 10:00 pm

Claire Hooper
NYX
Paul Simon Richards
∆ HS.FS. ZWN-BS.NC.BS.
Jeepneys
OLINGLINGO: THE MOVIE
Jeepneys & some times
Jeepneys video shoot // some times a set


Jeepneys & some times - A Jeepneys video shoot // some times a set - live performance
Several brightly-patterned, spandex-skinned performers will casually shift roles: dancing, directing, emoting, merging through gesture, camera operating, communicating with pattern, role-playing, exploring the set, and of course, bar-tending. The some times bar is an open video set temporarily inhabited by the Jeepneys mythological universe becoming a space to socialize, to collaborate and to incubate ideas for a forthcoming Jeepneys opera. Together some times, Jeepneys, and their guests will decolonize hospitality by shifting the context and structure of service and labor. The performance will begin promptly at 7pm and will resume post-screening as a dance party alongside a MaRS barbeque. Drinks will, as per usual, be served by others for others in the company of all.

Claire Hooper - NYX (2010) - 22:00 min
Shot on location across Berlin’s modernist U-Bahn network, NYX examines the Ancient Greek concept of ‘the night’ to interrogate the semiotic relationships between sleep, death, hallucination and oblivion. Following on from Hooper's 2008 film Nach Spandau — a nocturnal architectural lament on the U7 line — NYX uses the same location as a set to represent the underground domain of Nyx, the goddess of the night. Hallucinating and disorientated, the film follows a drunken young man as he is caught in the cross-fire of her aggressive encounters with related gods Hypnos, Nemesis and The Erinyes.

Paul Simon Richards - ∆ HS.FS. ZWN-BS.NC.BS. (2014) - 14:00 min
∆ HS.FS. ZWN-BS.NC.BS. consists of fragments of spoken word monologue, animation and music; it is structured loosely on induction methods used in clinical hypnosis, translated into structuralist film technique, e.g. repetition, periods of rest and periods of heightened stimulation in image and sound.
Two charismatic characters present stories directly to the viewer; the anecdotes told describe the internal mechanisms of a hallucination and implicate the viewer in the production of this vision. Visual diversions appear, momentarily, drawing attention away from what is being said and manipulating the way that images are formed in the mind.

The title of this video, which is intentionally difficult to say, is a list of acronyms that relate to a repeated phrase in the script: "Hard Space, Fixed Space, Zero width, Non-breakable space. Non-collapsing, blank space", a list of commands which are used in web programming to determine a gap between two lines of text (as viewed on screen). The title does not encapsulate the film, but extends another line of thought within it. 

Jeepneys - OLINGLINGO: THE MOVIE (2014-2015) - 34:00 min
Originally staged as opera, Jeepneys’ Olingolingo is now a movie, in which opera meets experimental performance documentary. OLINGLINGO is a ceremony to invoke ancestral memory from the future to the past, from earth to outer-space. Using footage from live performance, staged footage, and 80’s-style analog videographics, the opera explores embodied culture transfers, ecstatic celebrations, pensive prayers, and healing release. OLINGLINGO is a reference to the precolonial Filipino amulet Linglingo, a sacred fertility symbol used in rituals, births, and ceremonies to bring abundance and prosperity.

MANUEL SCANO LARRAZÀBAL • Inexorable Acephalous Magnificence or How the Shit Hits the Fan



PRESS RELEASE

INEXORABLE ACEPHALOUS MAGNIFICENCE OR HOW THE SHIT HITS THE FAN • AN EXHIBITION BY MANUEL SCANO LARRAZÀBAL • SEPTEMBER 19TH – November 14th, 2015


Museum as Retail Space (MaRS) is pleased to present its first international artist in residence, Manuel Scano Larrazàbal, and his exhibition Inexorable Acephalous Magnificence or How the Shit Hits the Fan. The work explores self-perceptions of causation and the will, as extrapolations intrinsic to matter, yet ultimately authored as super-conducted aesthetic arrangements subjugate to, yet exceeding, the will.

The exhibition features a series of large scale works on paper, primarily created by the use of complex interconnected drawing apparatus. Larrazábal’s vast, constellation-like, compositions are made on industrial paper in a process that involves various modes of application with washable inks, water, and dyed mashed cellulose (akin to spit-balls).

A site-specific drawing machine, made in residency at the gallery, creates a new large-scale work on paper throughout the duration of the exhibition. Larrazàbal’s drawing machine utilizes oscillating fans to create a marionette-like dance of hundreds of suspended multicolored markers, leaving ink in manifold forms on large sheets of paper over the floor.

Over fifteen works, including a 270 sq/ft monumental painting, will be shown over the course of the exhibition. An auxiliary event will be held upon the apparatus' completion of its large-scale drawing, approximately six weeks after the opening.



Biography


Manuel Scano Larrazàbal was born in Padua in 1981 to a Venezuelan mother and Sardinian father. He spent his childhood in Caracas from 1983 to 1992 before returning to Italy along with his family after the coup of Hugo Chavez. In Italy he attended the Accademia di Belle Arti of Brera and continued his learning process by installing stands for various galleries and participating in workshops with international artists and curators including the Fondazione Spinola Banna and the Fondazione Antonio Ratti. In November 2011, in Turin, he took part in a one-week cohabitation planed by Roberto Cuoghi and Gian Antonio Gilli.

Larrazàbal's work has been exhibited at In Fact And In Fiction, Room Gallery, CRIPTA747, Barriera, Fondazione per l’Arte, Museo dell’Alto Garda Arco with MART, Casa Masaccio, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Museo del 900, Almanac, Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, GC. AC, Turin, and Le Magasin.



September 19th – December 5th, 2015


exhibition IMAGES


video documentation


SELECTED WORK
PROCESS VIDEO

MARTY SCHNAPF • The Night Brightens



PRESS RELEASE

THE NIGHT BRIGHTENS • AN EXHIBITION BY MARTY SCHNAPF • JANUARY 9TH – MARCH 5th, 2016


Museum as Retail Space (MaRS) is pleased to present The Night Brightens, a solo exhibition by Marty Schnapf. This exhibition features bronze sculptures, oil paintings and drawings.

A cursory read of Schnapf’s works might lead one to see them as portents of eschatological cataclysm. In actuality they operate in a modality of synchronicity - a receptivity to the semiotic emergence of coincident events and atemporal perspectives.  

‘Time’ and ‘Presence’ wrestle in orgiastic confrontation, rather than reference social or narrative particulars. Geometric manifestations, Vitruvian figures, and amalgamations of orifice, phallus, and carapace perform in an orchestration of apocalypse and genesis. 

Circumventing societal references, the work reveals meta-societal subjects. The viewer is left in a position of parallax - asked to accept the proposition of synchronistic events against a praxis concerned with immortal forms.



BIOGRAPHY


Multidisciplinary artist, Marty Schnapf has exhibited work throughout the US and internationally including at Vooruit, in Ghent, Kaaistudios in Brussels, 3rd Ward in New York, Ballhaus Ost in Berlin, Caranza 25 in Mexico City, and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. Most recently Schnapf created site specific installations for The Property Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles and Permanently Closed in Chinatown.



January 9th – March 5th, 2016


exhibition IMAGES

Carapace 1
2015
56 x 32 x 43 in
Bronze sculpture
Carapace 2
2015
36 x 23 x 23 in
Bronze sculpture
Helmet
2015
18 x 26 x 19 in
Bronze sculpture
Carapace 1
2015
56 x 32 x 43 in
Bronze sculpture
Denouement and Dissolution 2015
200 x 94 in
Oil on canvas
Orgy
2015
120 x 86 in
Oil on canvas
Reconciliation of Apparent Opposites
2015
84 x 84 in
Oil on canvas
Lineaments
2015
15 x 17.5 in – framed
Graphite on paper
Lineaments
2015
15 x 17.5 in – framed
Graphite on paper
Lineaments
2015
15 x 17.5 in – framed
Graphite on paper
Lineaments
2015
15 x 17.5 in – framed
Graphite on paper
Lineaments
2015
15 x 17.5 in – framed
Graphite on paper


SELECTED WORKS

LINDA FRANKE • Access to Nameless Hazards



Press Release

ACCESS TO NAMELESS HAZARDS • AN EXHIBITION BY LINDA FRANKE • MARCH 26TH – APRIL 23rd, 2016


Museum as Retail Space (MaRS) is pleased to present Access to Nameless Hazards, the first solo exhibition of German artist Linda Franke in the United States.

Linda Franke’s work engages with the constants of human life by staging situations in which our daily routines are being transformed into absurd Tableaux Vivants. Found materials, elaborately produced props, 3D animations and soundtracks, create a cinematographic set that serves as the environment for her performers and the resulting video.

Her collaboration of hyper-artificial settings, exaggerated, sound effects, and comedic ironies create scenes that never truly resolve, yet reveal tragic qualities and insights on the limitations of human faculties. By using props and actors in unusual ways, Franke changes the narrative of objects and considers degrees of human limitation. On an interpersonal level, she recognizes linguistic restraints – how meaning is, more often than not, lost in translation. Facets of relationships are confronted by Franke’s use of everyday conversation, which presents the aforementioned limits of verbal communication as well as reflects on the properties that are supposed to help us develop our sense of identity.

Another multitude of her work questions the effects of daily exposure to advertisement and pop culture language and the means by which we collectively attribute value. The thematic depths of human nature and societal function are used by the artist as a channel to alter and defy the conventional restraint to preserve the vitality of freedom.



Biography


LINDA FRANKE (b.1980, Dresden) is a graduate of Universität der Künste Berlin, Chelsea School of Art and Design London, and Bauhaus Universität Weimar. Franke lives and works in Cologne.

Franke is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on video, installation, performance art, and sound. In her work, Franke creates bizarre situations in which performers reenact everyday routines and dialogs within hyper artificial spaces. These environments, which serve as stages for her scenes, are either created virtually with 3D programs or as sculptural installations with modified interior objects and costumes. 

Her work has been shown at Georg Kolbe Museum, Schaulager Barbara Thumm, Galerie Eva Bracke, and Westgermany in Berlin; W139, Amsterdam; Simultanhalle Cologne; Art Cologne; Film Festival, Sao Paulo; Galapagos Art Space, New York; Moscow International Film Festival; CCA, Glasgow; Jiksiten Gallery, Nogoya, Japan; Myymäla, Helsinki; Soma Mexico City & Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico.



March 26th – April 23rd, 2016


exhibition IMAGES


ANIMATION STILLS

MICHAEL ALVAREZ • Sorealism



PRESS RELEASE


Museum as Retail Space (MaRS) is pleased to present Sorealism, a solo exhibition by artist Michael Alvarez.

A native Angeleno, Alvarez grew up in North East Los Angeles, and his subjects are typically from the milieu of the city’s street community, civic spaces, and domestic life. Alvarez depicts in a sharp vérité style characters and social scenes from his life as sprawling and ornamented memories.

The representational virtuosity Alvarez articulates his work by underlines a need for direct experience, both in process and societally.

The regionalism of Alvarez’s work is brought into contrast by his references to social media, cell phones, and photographic artifacts – facets of our age of global electracy. As time and space are collapsing through digital life, and cultural reference becomes part of a general Internet vernacular, community roots suddenly become profound and inalienable.



Biography


MICHAEL ALVAREZ (b. 1983, Los Angeles) is a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

Alvarez is a figurative painter with a fascination for human interactions, experiences and history. His paintings pull from his collection of visual artifacts, stories and his own daily experiences and observations. The artist describes the subject matter of his work as simultaneously dysfunctional and celebratory. Alvarez’ use of technical details and distortion add nuance to the content of his paintings.

Alvarez’ work has been shown at Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC; Cal State Northridge, CA; Cerritos College, Ca; Longmont Museum and Cultural Center, CO; Pasadena Museum of California Art, CA; Vermillion Gallery Seattle, WA, as well as Juxtapoz Magazine.



April 30th – June 4th, 2016


exhibition IMAGES




SELECTED WORK


Neighborhood Watch
2013
72″ x 96″
Mixed Media on Panel
Post Coital Clean Up
2013
32″ x 57″
Oil, Pencil, Spray Paint, and Paper on Canvas
Aunt Helen (Delicious Spread)
2013
48″ x 48″
Oil, Spray Paint, and Paper on Panel
I’m the Boss
2013
48″ x 48″
Oil and Spray Paint on Panel
Instabirth
2015
25″ x 32.5″ 
Mixed Media on Panel
Our Guardian Angel (Fat Bob)
2011
40″ x 48″
Oil and Spray Paint on Canvas
Backyard Banger
2012
40″ x 73″
Oil and Spray Paint on Panel
Celebration of a Large Baby
2014
60″ x 48″
Oil, Spray Paint, and Pencil on Canvas
Take a Hike
2014
80″ x 97″
Oil, Spray Paint and Pencil on Panel

MARWA ABDUL-RAHMAN • Open That Shit Wide Let Me See How Big Your Mouth Is



PRESS RELEASE


I don’t know, number one, what gangster rap is. Number two I wouldn’t classify what my music is as gangster rap…. 
That’s, it’s what it is. It’s poetry. To me it’s storytelling, poetry. 
I didn’t say that. That’s not what it says…It says “I’m a victim for real. Everything I talk is for real. I really got my ass beat I really don’t like THEM.”   The interviewer wrote ‘police.’ 
I really don’t like crooked police. 

– Tupac Shakur, 1995, on trial for writing and releasing music that allegedly incited the shooting of a Texas State Trooper.

I wanted to set the record straight, that, people hear a lie long enough, people believe it. …Don’t judge a person unless you have spoken to them one on one, ‘cuz what you hear is a lie, untrue. Jesus said to love the children and to be like children. He always surrounded himself with children… 

– Michael Jackson, 1996, on trial for child molestation. 

Lawyer for the prosecution: “Did you perform at the Virgin Mobil music fest in 2008 with Kanye West?”
I don’t know. But I know I did perform at this BADass bitch birthday party recently. She was crazy, stupid, thick… 
I don’t recall.
I don’t know.
I don’t remember. 

 – Lil’ Wayne, 2010, answering questions in a deposition regarding the documentary made about him, which he was trying to block.

Defendant’s lawyer, in the beginning of the deposition, as defendant was answering questions rather immediately:  “Just wait and give me a chance to object, ok?”
I don’t have to listen to anything you have to say. Guess what? Guess what, guess what? I don’t recall. I was found on YouTube.  I think that I was detrimental to my own career… Instrumental. 

 – Justin Bieber, 2012, answering questions in a deposition regarding his bodyguard allegedly assaulting paparazzi.

On the advice of counsel I invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and respectfully decline to answer your question. 

 – Martin Shkrelli, 2016, in response to almost every question directed at him in a congressional committee hearing investigating drug price hikes.



Biography


MARWA ABDUL-RAHMAN (b. 1974) received her BA from Yale University and her MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Abdul-Rahman is a mixed media artist whose work focuses on ideas of perception, definition, boundaries, and fluidity. She is interested in the conversation between contrasting themes, and the belief that opposites connote a type of freedom through the act of boundaryless transformation.  Her work aims to blur the distinction between positive and negative space, and challenges the viewer to find an awareness of art as a construction. This in turn extends to an awareness of one’s surroundings, and varied perspectives that confront and challenge previously held ideas of truth. Ultimately, the re-examination of widely held ideas reflects the anxiety of our times, and opens up thought, especially in regards to meaning and interpretation.



June 11th – August 13th, 2016


exhibition IMAGES




SELECTED WORK