Krysten Cunningham
3 to 4
Thomas Solomon Gallery
September 11 – October 9, 2010
Reception for the Artist: Saturday September 11, 2010 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Thomas Solomon Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles artist KRYSTEN CUNNINGHAM. This is Cunningham’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, following last season’s very successful solo debut at Dispatch, New York City, and her sophomore appearance at Ritter/Zamet, London. The show will open the 2010-2011 season at Thomas Solomon Gallery with a reception for the artist on Saturday September 11, 6 – 8 PM at 427 Bernard Street, Chinatown, Los Angeles.
3 to 4, Cunningham’s video (funded in part by the Henry Moore Institute and the Durfee Foundation) is the center of a new body of work that continues her investigation of time, space and perception. Cunningham’s sculptures have combined high and low materials and theories, such as spare parts from a physics lab (where she works, at UCLA) and hand-dyed textiles, referencing the Bauhaus and “crafts.” In an exploration of the otherwise unperceivable 4th spatial dimension, the artist ignores our rigid notions of physics in favor of haptic or intuitive ways of perceiving space. Working with basic components of the RGB color system, XYZ Cartesian space, and weaving, the work suggests ways of seeing that are instinctively connected to ways of understanding, both ancient and new. The video presents six dancers clothed in Red, Green and Blue costumes manipulating colored rods corresponding to the hues of LCD monitors. The dancers construct a sculpture based on a Cartesian vector system, rotating it and passing it from hand to hand. The colors present a unique visual space, while the rods present physical space. The dancers’ movements within the work suggest a 4th dimension where perception and action intersect.
Working backwards from the video, literally deconstructing the costumes into yarn-like textile strips, Cunningham creates “paintings” by weaving the textiles into unique patterns mounted on pegboard backing panels. The weaving is an analogue to the video of the depiction of three-dimensional space in two dimensions, and suggests the sophisticated communicative powers of textiles by sources as varied as the Inca, the Quakers, and Anni Albers. The works are created much like topological experiments, using a scientific approach, but without the burden of being proven in a double blind experiment. Scientific method is both a framework for the artist’s practice, and another paradigm for intuitive thinking. The woven works are, in a sense, made of old and new materials, working across digital and material platforms. Viewed as a collective whole, the exhibition can be better approached as a suggestion of “blowing your mind” rather than “just the facts.”
Krysten Cunningham received her BFA degree from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque and MFA degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (Sculpture, 2003). She burst onto the international scene in THING: New Sculpture from Los Angeles at the UCLA Hammer Museum (2005), followed by a solo project with LACE (2005), and solo exhibitions at Ritter/Zamet, London (2006, 2010), Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf and Thomas Solomon Gallery (2008), and Dispatch, New York (2009). This fall she will be included in Undone: making and un-making in contemporary sculpture, at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, England. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.