Stephen Neidich Presents New Kinetic Sculptures @ Wilding Cran In Los Angeles

Two years ago, at the end of the summer, Stephen Neidich set about creating a new kinetic sculpture, Wake Me Up When It’s Over for the L.A. On Fire group show at Wilding Cran Gallery. The piece was constructed from a fully fabricated Venetian blind, rendered in steel with exposed motor sprockets, roller chain, and backlit by a fiery red light. When Neidich began thinking about five more minutes please, his second solo show with Wilding Cran—his 2019 debut with the gallery, oikkm56, which featured a single kinetic installation fit with over a dozen steel chains affixed to 14 camshafts that monotonously smashed the chains against rubble sourced from construction sites around the artist’s Frogtown studio—he wanted to reexamine the movement of kinetic blinds, this time using the chain as a more painterly line within the works.

“Without the light you only see the movement, but with the light you get this eerie flicker, the shape and projections of fire masked by these sharp, simple movements that are a result of the shapes and shadows of the blind. The kinetics of the sculpture become the fire. But it’s not fire, it’s this hollow idea of a fire…. Ultimately these are machines, and the integrity comes not from their obsolescence, but from the grace of their intended performance,” says Neidich. “I started to think about the movement of this often dysfunctional object and how best to enhance it to the point of being performative.”

The gallery is lit only from the glow of each work and visitors to the space activate the dozen works in the exhibition (each varying in blind orientation and size, from 24 x 24 inches to 9 x 16 feet) by tripping a motion sensor upon entry that sets off a subtle symphony, placing each visitor inside a surround sound panopticon, a voyeuristic platform with a vantage upon a series of abstract horizons.

five more minutes please is on view by appointment through April 3 @ Wilding Cran Gallery 1700 S. Santa Fe Avenue, unit 460. photographs by Lani Trock

Mika Rottenberg Presents "Easy Pieces" @ The New Museum In New York

Employing absurdist satire to address the critical issues of our time, Rottenberg creates videos and installations that offer subversive allegories for contemporary life. Her works interweave documentary elements and fiction, and often feature protagonists who work in factory-like settings to manufacture goods ranging from cultured pearls (NoNoseKnows, 2015) to the millions of brightly colored plastic wholesale items sold in Chinese superstores (Cosmic Generator, 2017). The exhibition presents several of her recent video installations and kinetic sculptures, and premieres a new video installation, Spaghetti Blockchain (2019), that explores ancient and new ideas about materialism and considers how humans both comprise and manipulate matter. Together, the works in the exhibition trace central themes in Rottenberg’s oeuvre, including labor, technology, distance, energy, and the interconnectedness of the mechanical and the corporeal. Easy Pieces is on view through September 15 at the New Museum 235 Bowery, New York. photographs courtesy of the gallery