Desire Encapsulated: Make Room's Inaugural Group Show @ Their New Location In Los Angeles

Desire Encapsulated features a slate of more than fifteen artists working between painting, sculpture and installation to expand on the theme of desire—how it is perceived across different psychological spaces and artistic practices, and how it is "encapsulated" through different artistic practices across time, medium and space. The exhibition presents a group of artists' work that considers desire as part of the fundamental human experience, a shared experience and the driven power of humanity.

The artists participating include Andrew Sendor, Catalina Ouyang, Guimi You, Lior Modan, Bambou Gili, Miguel Angel Payano Jr., Joeun Kim Aatchim, Lita Albuquerque, Yuri Yuan, Sula Bermudez-Silverman, Yanyan Huang, Yifan Jiang, Yesiyu Zhao, Ruby Leyi Yang, Chris Oh, Hiba Schahbaz, and Claire Colette.

Desire Encapsulated is on view through July 31 @ Make Room Gallery 5119 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles

Xin Liu's Living/Distance @ Make Room in Los Angeles

“Is breeding a physiological instinct for women? I put my life (time, effort, intelligence) into an inorganic, ruthless mechanical system, and then place my bone and blood (teeth) in the center. It is part of me, my avatar. We will never be alive in the same space, it will break into pieces before returning to Earth. It came to life in the absence of gravity, but I am standing here firmly. I speculate that "humanity" will not break through the interstellar space-time distance in the form of organism. If we acknowledge our limits as biological species, how can human beings face the others, who are created and feared by us?”

— Xin Liu

Living/Distance is on view through Feb 1, 2020 @ MakeRoom 1035 N Broadway, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Lani Trock

Catalina Ouyang: Marrow @ Make Room In Los Angeles

Ouyang’s oeuvre is situated in a framework of revisionist storytelling that resists essentialist metrics for navigating social space. In marrow, Ouyang builds on previous works to elaborate themes that confront language, space, and the power relations embedded within them.

Leaning on cross-cultural myths about stone and stoning—including the Gorgons, Biblical punishment, the Waiting Stone, and Ahalya—Ouyang develops a visual landscape of characters that instigate unfamiliarity and uncertainty. Ouyang carves stone as a way to feel into mythologies in which bodies are cursed or frightened into petrification, calling up questions of agency, resistance, and loss. Ouyang repeatedly returns her inquiry to the question of language and its departure from a body transformed. marrow is on view through November 30 at Make Room 1035 N Broadway, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Catalina Ouyang's Death Drive Joy Ride @ Make Room

Death Drive Joy Ride is Catalina Ouyang’ s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. The exhibition features a new body of sculpture, installation and video. Taking East Asian fox spirits as a departure point, the work positions mythic desires for immortality alongside a contemporary endeavor to find joy and community amid a seemingly inexorable drive toward planetary destruction. Death Drive Joy Ride speaks (or wails) honestly from the positionality of its maker: a lonely Chinese-American girl clawing her way through our Wicked Problems. Death Drive Joy Ride is on view through August 8 at Make Room 1035 North Broadway Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock