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Opening Reception: June 4, 6-9pm
Regular Gallery Hours: Wed- Sat 12-6
or By Appointment
Past Exhibition
- WEIRD WALKS INTO A ROOM (COMMA)
Sarah Conaway
Lisa Williamson - June 4-July 9, 2011
- Opening Reception: Opening Reception: June 4, 6-9pm
The Box is pleased to present Weird Walks Into a Room (Comma), a collaborative exhibition featuring new works by Lisa Williamson and Sarah Conaway. While this is the first time these two artists have collaborated on an exhibition, they have worked together previously on an artist book and a performance. But more significant perhaps is their long-standing friendship and even more long-winded conversation about the subject of art itself. While their work remains distinct and their materials and subjects diverge, these artists share an idealism and reverence for the amazing-ness of art, for its strange history, and a concern for how to make meaningful work today within such an enormous context.
The title, Weird Walks Into A Room (Comma), acts as a prompt and a pause simultaneously. It implies the continuation of a narrative as well as a particular starting point. For this exhibition, photographs, sculptures and paintings created by the artists are placed throughout a room, the gallery. These works are in conversation with themselves and with each other. Their meanings are implicit (not explicit!), resonant (not dull!) and inspired (not locked down!). Certain works are spare and economical. Others are more elaborate or obtuse. But there is an aspiratory and generative sensibility that runs throughout. There is an enthusiasm for what it means to think through material, to form a distinct language, and to physically manifest something essential. This exhibition allows for a deeper understanding of each respective practice and reinforces an internal logic that at times gets lost as things move from the head, to the studio, to the gallery.
Lisa Williamson received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2008. She has had solo exhibitions at Unosunove Arte Contemporanea, Rome and Small A Projects, New York and has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago this November. Her work was recently featured in the 2010 California Biennial at The Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach and has been presented in group exhibitions at CCA Andratx Kunsthalle, Mallorca; Layr Wuestenhagen, Vienna; Hilary Crisp Gallery, London; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; ACME, Los Angeles; Renwick Gallery, New York; Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, among others.
Sarah Conaway received her MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in the US and abroad, including solo exhibitions at Bellwether Gallery, New York, and Julia Friedman Gallery, New York and Chicago and Iceberg Projects, Chicago, and group shows including Wall to Wall, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, Sarah Conaway/Graham Hudson, Gallery Diet, Miami, Femmes, 64bis, Paris; Post Rose: Artists In and Out of Hazard Park, Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin; and I Am Eyebeam, Gallery 400, Chicago.
Both artists live and work in Los Angeles, CA.
