Honor Fraser Gallery is pleased to announce our third annual performance event, Have At It. In collaboration with this year’s artists, we explore the tension between the inherent structure and chaos at work in live performance and how much more vulnerable that tension is to be being misperceived by the viewer in performance than it is in the visual arts. For example, in looking at painting, the parameters of the viewing experience are familiar, while in performance, the careful considerations and practice of ideas over time may not be as evident or discernible. As the only commercial gallery with a recurring performance program in Culver City, Honor Fraser Gallery is committed to providing time and space to investigate how performance functions and intersects with the performative acts of making and viewing art.
Tuesday, April 8, 7 – 9pm
Karla Diaz: Box and Draw!
Acting as referee and MC, Karla Diaz will run a boxing tournament consisting of a series of matches between diverse and often historically opposed individuals. The matches will take place in an inflated boxing ring with oversized gloves, introducing elements of levity and play into a traditionally violent exchange. Boxing participants include Mario Davila, Nathalie Sanchez , Raul Vasquez and Nzuji De Magalhaes, among other artists, curators, activists, teachers and community leaders.
Karla Diaz is an artist and writer born and raised in Los Angeles who often uses performance, writing and installation to explore social practices and cultural relationships. In particular she uses collaborative pedagogical methods to facilitate and create dialogue among diverse communities. She has exhibited her work in local, national and international venues including MOCA, LACMA, Darb 727 Gallery in Cairo, at the Instituto Cervantez in Madrid, the ICA Boston, MDE11 Medellin Colombia, and the Serpentine Gallery in London. She is a former co-director of exhibitions at the New Chinatown Barbershop gallery in Los Angeles and a founding member of Slanguage Studio, an artist-run space in Wilmington, California.
Wednesday, April 9, Doors at 7pm, Performance at 8pm
Sarah Petersen: Washout
An immersive ensemble work investigating planetary urgencies, interpersonal urgencies, and metaphysical urgencies through sound, script, improvisation, movement, and dirt. An installation will accompany the performance and collaborators (subject to change) include Karen Adelman, Johanna Breiding, Tyler Calkin, Conor Fields, Chiara Giovando, Amy Howden Chapman, Mireya Lucio, Chris Reynolds, Erin Schneider, Liz Toonkel and Marisa Williamson.
Sarah Petersen’s multidisciplinary practice includes installation, sculpture, painting/drawing, performance, video, writing, and the production of signs and signals that others can use to reconsider and intervene in social space. She holds an MFA in Art from CalArts (2012), and has trained in various embodiment and dance practices, cooking methodologies, and spatial articulation strategies. Her work has recently been shown at Paramount Ranch Art Fair, Los Angeles; Venice 6114, Los Angeles; the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst, Braunschweig, Germany, and the New Wight Gallery at UCLA. Sarah lives and works in Los Angeles.
Thursday, April 10, 7 – 9pm
EJ Hill: Complicit and Tacit
Through the presentation of a simple gesture, EJ Hill will conduct an open-ended experiment designed around ideas of shame, guilt, the politics of viewership, the conventions of performance, and the ever-contested space between art and life.
EJ Hill is a Los Angeles-based artist known for his durational, physically demanding performances. Hill’s performances often possess an element of institutional critique or are direct in their address of politics around constructed identity and the body in gendered, racial and sexualized terms. Hill graduated from the New Genres program at UCLA in 2013 and obtained his BFA from Columbia College in Chicago. He has presented solo and group exhibitions at Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles; Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles; Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn; RAID Projects, Los Angeles; NEXT Fair, Chicago; and A+D Gallery, Chicago.
VOLUME: Live broadcast via KCHUNG Radio
Jared Baxter, Robert Crouch, and Yann Novak create a performance sound experience and conduct a series of brief interviews with Los Angeles based performers about audience perception and consideration.
VOLUME functions as a catalyst for interdisciplinary new media work through exhibitions, performances, events, lectures, and publications. Concentrating on the nexus of music and visual arts practices ranging from the avant-garde to popular culture, VOLUME offers unique opportunities for artists to create and present hybrid works. VOLUME was founded in 2007 by Ed Patuto and Robert Crouch.