27H x 25.5W x 2 inches
Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage. Iron is one of nature’s most abundant metals. Smith, a philosopher of human detritus and poetic associations, presents it in this work as simultaneously everywhere yet paradoxically forgotten, lost in the heaps of refuse that fill junkyards and vacant lots. She thereby recalls and reclaims something important and elemental—indeed, a material that is integral to the physical fabric of culture and society, one that we associate with incorruptibility and malleability simultaneously.
At a moment when Minimalism and Conceptual Art collided, Southern California-based Alexis Smith began working with discarded street signs, matchbooks, movie posters, and other detritus to become one of the pioneers of conceptual assemblage. Her cryptic comments on the cloudy morality of American culture are derived from pop cultural references including political figures like Richard Nixon, Hollywood films, and pop musicians. This borrowing of literally recycled material and recycled cultural tropes is also seen in the work of Smith’s peers Mike Kelley, Chris Burden, and Vija Celmins.
In 8 Ball Surfboard (1995),Alexis Smith combines her long-term interests in California culture and conceptual assemblage...
The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...
The Breaks reflects Capistran’s interests in sampling and fusing different cultural, social, and historical sources...
The application of bright colors and kitsch materials in Flower Tree manifests a playful comment on the influence of popular culture and urban lifestyle...
Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...
Sign #1 , Sign #2 , Sign #3 were included in “Found Object Assembly”, Copeland’s 2009 solo show at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco...
The image is borrowed from protests during Civil Rights where African Americans in the south would carry signs with the same message to assert their rights against segregation and racism...
Justice (2014) presents viewers with a curious assemblage: a wooden gallows with slightly curved spindles protruding from the topmost plank, which in turn is covered with rudimentary netting, the threads slackly dangling like a loose spider’s web or an rib cage that’s been cracked open...
Intentionally Left Blanc alludes to the technical process of its own (non)production; a procedure known as retro-reflective screen printing in which the image is only fully brought to life through its exposure to flash lighting...
To make Mickey Mouse (2010), Paul McCarthy altered a found photograph—not of the iconic cartoon, but of a man costumed as Mickey...
Shot in black and white and printed on a glittery carborundum surface, Black Hands, White Cotton both confronts and abstracts the subject of its title...
Towhead n’Ganga, enclosed in darkness, lorded over by the sexualized folded high priestless form reflects many of Kelley’s works, in both its compositional and semantic qualities...
Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure...
Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...
The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...
A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China...