Locust Projects hosts five Miami- based artists in “People Under the Stairs” and
“Vacuuming Gave me Carpal Tunnel” by Kerry Phillips in the LP Project Room

(Miami, FL December 15, 2006) LOCUST PROJECTS is pleased to announce a new exhibition this month, People Under the Stairs featuring Miami-based artists Manny Prieres, Ali Prosch, George Sanchez-Calderon and Jen Stark, that exposes their inner wackiness. In the LP Project Room, Miami-based artist Kerry Phillips brings us Vacuuming Gave me Carpal Tunnel, an installation of used brooms that overtakes the space. Locust Projects will host an opening reception, sponsored in part by Peroni, Italy, January 13, 2007 from 7-11pm. Both exhibitions will be on view to the public Thursday- Saturday 12-5pm and end February 28, 2007.

In January, Locust Projects will present People Under the Stairs, an exhibition that brings together the work of four artists—Manny Prieres, Ali Prosch, Jen Stark, and George Sanchez—that turn the emblems of our comfort into slightly alien things. All these artists tinker with mundane objects and images until they start to reveal their wicked weirdness. Jen Stark, who works like some home-bound kid with an endless supply of X-Acto knife blades, produces sculptures that begin through a simple process but manage to grow into complex structures. Looking at them, one begins to think of multiplying fractals, unstoppable rhzamomatic growths, unregulated viral spreads and the feared gray goo that scares nanoscientists. Manny Prieres’ drawings begin with the menacing objects that haunt us after our overexposures to sadistic teachers and slasher films. Paddles and hacksaws are rendered in his drawings as beautiful Roccoco objects. It is almost the work of some basement-bound sex fiend, slaving over beautiful drawings of the instruments that will torture him so deliciously. George Sanche-Calderon takes the wishful architecture that eventually filtered down into our suburban houses--from Le Corbusier's clean lines to our propensity for tacky front lawn wishing wells--and places them in the "wrong" contexts. Ali Prosch produces videos in which the straight photo shoot meets the mental breakdown, the fashiony twentysomething shakes hands with the primal beast she carries inside. Head-splitting screams eventually settle into a kind of secret music of the suburbs.
 
In the project room, Miami-based artist Kerry Phillips presents her new project Vacuuming Gave Me Carpal Tunnel. In response to the dependence of man on technology, Phillips uses a traditional object to create her installation. Her collection of old brooms is bundled into a gigantic, impossible-to-handle pile that will occupy the space like some weird object-creature or alien presence. Overtaking the space, this bundle will force the viewer to navigate through the exhibition with care. Aside from engaging certain sculptural issues, Phillip’s work has always been interested in notions of domesticity, women's work, feminist practices, and the ideologies that drive a wedge between new technologies and traditional practices.

Both exhibitions open on Saturday, January 13, 2007, 7-11pm as part of the Wynwood Art District Walk and end February 28, 2007 and are on view to the public Thursday- Saturday 12-5pm. For 300 dpi color corrected images please contact 305 576 8570 or director@locustprojects.org.