Involution and Atmosphere + Wreckage Upon Wreckage

Land of Tomorrow (LOT) is pleased to present a pair of exhibitions that will open on the 25th of March with a reception at 7pm at our Lexington location. The exhibitions will include Involution and Atmosphere by Michael Young and Wreckage Upon Wreckage an exhibition curated by Dan Lorraine including works by Ariel Erestingcol, George Kontos, Stephen Miranda, Adrian Paules, Ryan Taber and Gideon Webster. The two exhibitions are linked through themes of design and will run through the 15th of April. For Involution and Atmosphere, Michael Young created seven drawings that utilize parametric software as a drawing platform. In an essay that corresponds with the exhibition, Young explores similarities between Terry Riley’s In C. and Bridget Riley’s Op Art. The artist discusses the fact that both Rileys create work that requires variation within set constraints or parameters. Their works necessitate outside influence as In C. is incomplete until the work is played and an assistant executed Bridget Riley’s work. For both, the removal of the artist’s hand instilled their work with innate motion, change, and flux. This is provocative in its own rite, and it is this addition of the expressive without the artist’s hand that Young is exploring in Involution and Atmosphere. The drawings in Involution and Atmosphere were created with software using a process of parametric regulation. Young used the software to create a set of constraints, or parameters, within which a series of lines could be placed. With the addition of each line, the surface becomes more painterly, more varied. The artist is able to control the variation of the lines within the set parameters by defining specific constraints. In this case, the constraint is that all of the lines are straight with variables including density, length, and color along the gradient. The result is images with patterned surfaces that appear to move, and lines that seem to be anything but straight. The title for the show, Wreckage Upon Wreckage, derives from a portion of a Walter Benjamin Quote in which he is describing an angel in a painting by Paul Klee: "This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." For Dan Lorraine, the works involved in the exhibition each embody some aspect Wreckage Upon Wreckage. It can describe the process of the work, the evolution of the work, or the conceptual architecture of the work. By this notion, design is the force that propels the angel into the future. The works of art are relics or artifacts of progress, past or present. The work created in the past is the wreckage the present work is built upon, in the same way that one genre is often the response of a previous genre. Each artist included in the exhibition utilizes design in his or her artwork to embody an aspect of the notion of ‘Wreckage’. Lorraine will be including works by six LA based artists: Ariel Erestingcol, George Kontos, Stephen Miranda, Adrian Paules, Ryan Taber, and Gideon Webster. For further information please visit our website at www.landoftomorrow.org.