Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure. The ends, protected by two, cut-open tennis balls, recall the legs of a walker. For Rantanen’s second solo exhibition at Jancar Jones Gallery, San Francisco in 2010, one pole was placed inside the gallery while the other was located outside. This visual echo both suggested reflection and called attention to the physical viewing conditions. The muffled poles seemed to connect the spaces, to hold them up and together, while the fixity of their positions was in tension with the idea of movement suggested by the allusion to a walking-aid.
Chadwick Rantanen is an emerging, Los Angeles-based artist. Unlike his previous works, which were rather influenced by arte-povera sculpture, his recent pieces are closer to the aesthetics, language, and materials of industrial design.
His Deck Painting I recalls the simplistic stripes of conceptual artist Daniel Buren, or the minimal lines of twentieth century abstract painting, but is in reality a readymade, fashioned from repurposed fabric of deck chairs...
Glaze (Savana) (2005) is an assemblage of found materials: a car wheel, a tire, and a wooden plinth of the type traditionally used to display sculpture...
Bruce Conner is best known for his experimental films, but throughout his career he also worked with pen, ink, and paper to create drawings ranging from psychedelic patterns to repetitious inkblot compositions...
Hand Palm Echo 1 is a digital animation based on Christine Sun Kim’s staircase mural at The Drawing Center in New York (10 March – 22 May, 2022)...
Natasha Wheat’s Kerosene Triptych (2011) is composed of three images, one each from the digital files of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Field Museum tropical research archive...
In Laissez-Faire (Rainbow Flag) da Cunha has turned a beach towel into both a painting and a flag...
Ben Shaffer’s Ben Deroy (2007) is part performance, part self-portrait, and part spiritual vision...
In 8 Ball Surfboard (1995),Alexis Smith combines her long-term interests in California culture and conceptual assemblage...
Every work in Hoeber’s 2011 series Execution Changes is titled in alphanumeric code...
The artist describes the work as “very performative video-pieces but they take on a more sculptural feel...
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...
Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage...