RUN FOR THE HILLS

NEW SCULPTURE FROM L.A.

In the project room: ADLER GUERRIER

January 24th-February 28th, 2004

Opening reception: Saturday, January 24th @ 8 pm

In the main space: LOCUST PROJECTS presents the work of five young sculptors from Los Angeles: Jedeadiah Caesar, Mauricio Espinosa, Alice Konitz, Jeff Reed, and John Williams. All transplants from different parts of the country, they have literally run to the hills of Southern California. But their actual displacement to an edge of the country is only a metaphor for their displacement to some strange regions of the imagination. They all produce hybrid objects that marry materials and forms that come from incompatible realms. Biomorphic abstraction meets adolescent car culture meets the tackiness of suburban interiors in a strange sculpture that is as much about the embarrassment of public hard-ons as about anything else (John Williams); an ancient boulder is scientifically split to reveal the resin-encased knickknacks of indeterminate origin (Jed Caesar); taqueria architecture meets the loftiest aims of modernist design, negotiating a truce between earnestness and parody (alice konitz), car alarms morph into Aphex Twin beats (Mauricio Espinosa); Texas trashiness and death metal angst ooze out of what seem like the props for some b-movie on futuristic cavemen (Jeff Reed).

In the project room: Miami-based, Haitian-American artist Adler Guerrier will present a new video. Known for his explorations of the non-places--backyards, the shady spot under a tree, bike trails--that are somehow so central to our everyday lives, Guerrier continues along these lines, unfolding his quiet critique of the colonization of our quotidian.

LOCUST PROJECTS is sponsored, in part, by The Dade
Community Foundation with support of The Miami-Dade
County Dept of Cultural Affairs, The Cultural Affairs
Council, The Mayor, and The Miami-Dade Board of County
Commissioners.