Something

May 6th –June 11th

Locust Projects offers Something, a group show by four artists:
Leyden Rodriguez Casanova, Norberto Rodriguez, Tom Scicluna and
Frances Trombly.

Something is this: work that becomes the space, and is walked on,
walked into, seen through and unseen.

By presenting works that disappear, and which by disappearing cause
the gallery space to become more prominent, the artists encourage the
show to become a viewer-directed experience. Something proffers a
noetic engagement with the artwork.

Something is also this: a reflection on labor, class, process, value
and the slapstick tragedy called infinity.

The artists are concerned with making things, buying things, placing
things and using things. The fabrication of an environment in which
the things are invisible allows the situation of things to be seen.
This show stands out in an art culture in which artist-made
environments are both commonplace and commonly an aesthetic riot. In
Something, the artists have restored the conceptual formality of the
white box space to itself through the installation of minimally
invasive sculpture.

The artists in Something exist as a quiet subculture, each making
works which seek to camouflage themselves within our aesthetic
preconceptions.

Each of the artists in Something lives and works in Miami, FL.
Leyden Rodriguez Casanova and Norberto Rodriguez were each recipients
of the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, in 2003 and
2000, respectively. Norberto Rodriguez, Tom Scicluna and Frances Trombly have each
exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. Tom
Scicluna has also exhibited at the Miami Art Museum, and Leyden
Rodriquez Casanova is included in an exhibition there currently on view.
All of the artists have exhibited nationally, and some of them
internationally. The artists also each have had significant attention
from both the local and national press.

In the project room, Chicago-based artist William J. O’Brien will produce one of his all-out environments, which often include black and white murals, abject altars, shamanistic trash sculptures, Xerox prints, psychedelic lo-fi videos and homemade music. Drawing lessons from the example of folks like Jack Smith and Paul Thek, O’Brien marries the unwanted with the mystical, the cheap with the sublime, in gestures that refuse to acknowledge the difference between original and reproduction, authentic and appropriated, invented and stolen. In his work, overproduction and desire drive things to the point where all the discarded materials he employs take on an erotic appeal and the sheer quantity of things begins to coalesce into a closed universe with its own symbolic structures.