VOLUME @ South of Sunset
1218 W. Temple St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Opening Reception April 7 from 7:30 – 10:00PM
Gallery Hours April 9 – 10 from Noon – 5:00PM
VOLUME presents an exhibition of new work by New York based artist Tad Beck, and Composite Fields, a collaborative video by taisha paggett and Yann Novak.
Tad Beck’s work explores photography’s possibilities by exaggerating its failure to capture or mirror “the real.” He often employs rephotography (making photographs of photographs), either by having subjects reenact previous imagery or by aiming the camera at photographic prints themselves. Rephotography collapses multiple images, multiple points in time, into one, complicating what Cartier-Bresson called the “decisive moment.” His subjects and their surroundings produce initial, straightforward meanings; details (resulting from an iterative process of taking, making, and remaking) destabilize, upset, and multiply their interpretive possibilities. Photography’s possibilities are one of Beck’s primary concerns, but particular subject matter matters. Performance (as both concept and practice), art history and artistic influence, queerness, and (an often humorous) eroticism all recur in different series. The body—as object of desire and study, as an engine of unstable, context-dependent meaning—dominates.
Composite Fields is an audiovisual installation by Yann Novak and taisha paggett created with the documentation from the three performances of A Composite Field. The piece further explores their use of sensory materials as objects to be manipulated, re-framed and re-contextualized.
About the Artists
Tad Beck (b. 1968, Exeter, New Hampshire) received a B.F.A. in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1991, and an M.F.A. in Fine Art from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California, in 2003. He lives and works in New York City and Vinalhaven, Maine.
Beck has had solo exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (artist’s monograph with texts by Brian T. Allen and Michael Ned Holte); The Fisher Center at Bard College; Samuel Freeman Gallery, Santa Monica; Marisa Del Re Gallery, New York; Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York; Gleason Fine Art, Portland, Maine (catalogue with text by Kelly Wise); the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, Maine; and Spectrum Gallery, Boston. Recent two-person exhibitions include collaborative works made with the artist Jennifer Locke at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (catalogue with texts by Marjorie Vecchio, Robert Crouch, Jennifer Doyle, and Grant Wahlquist), and an exhibition with Diana Cherbuliez at Theodore:Art, Brooklyn.
His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at the Spritmuseum, Stockholm (catalogue with texts by Bill Arning and Rick Herron); the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; the Portland Museum of Art, Maine; the Worcester Art Museum; the Ogunquit Museum of Art, Maine; the Sweeney Art Gallery at the University of California, Riverside; the Sheppard Gallery at the University of Nevada, Reno; Apex Art, New York; Rupert Goldsworthy Gallery, New York; Debs & Co., New York; Castelli Gallery, New York; Dru Arstark, New York; Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles; Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles; and Krowswork, Oakland.
Beck’s work is represented in the collections of the Worcester Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Sweeney Gallery at the University of California Riverside, and the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, among others. Beck’s work has been written about in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Art Scene, LA Weekly, the East Bay Express, Art Practical, Aspect: the Chronicle of New Media Art, Art New England, The Boston Globe, Art F City, and Time Out.
taisha paggett’s work for the stage, gallery and public space includes individual and collaborative inquiries into the body, agency, and the phenomenology of race and gender. Her projects seek to expand upon the languages and frames of contemporary dance practices, and the limitations of the architecture of conventional dance spaces. Her works include solo and ensemble performance, sculptural installation, and participation as a dancer in the work of other artists and choreographers.
paggett’s work has been presented in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Danspace at St Mark’s Church (New York); in the Quadruple Consciousness exhibition at Vox Populi (Philadelphia); at Defibrillator (Chicago); and Commonwealth & Council. As a dancer, paggett has worked with artists and projects including Every House Has a Door, Yael Davids, Kelly Nipper, David Roussève/Reality, Meg Wolfe, Vic Marks, Cid Pearlman, Cheng-Chieh Yu, and with Ashley Hunt in their ongoing collaboration, “On Movement, Thought and Politics.” A recent recipient of a Headlands artist residency, a UCIRA grant and a MAP Fund grant, paggett is part of the full-time dance faculty at UC Riverside.
Yann Novak is a sound and visual artist living and working in Los Angeles. Through the use of sound, light and space, he explores how these intangible materials can act as catalysts to focus our awareness on the present moment and alter our perception of time. Novak’s work, whether conceptual or rooted in phenomenon, is informed by his investigations of presence, stillness and mindfulness. His works can be experienced as audiovisual installations and performances, durational performances, architectural interventions, sound diffusions, concerts and recorded sound works.
Novak has presented his installation work through solo exhibitions at Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; CODE 2014, Church of Santa Chiara, Città Sant’Angelo; Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles; Dancity Festival, Auditorium Santa Caterina, Foligno; Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles; Lawrimore Project, Seattle; Soundfjord, London; South of Sunset, Los Angeles; and in two person exhibitions at The Broad, Los Angeles; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Pøst, Los Angeles and Soil Art Gallery, Seattle. His sound and video works have been presented internationally as part of multiple group exhibitions, screenings and diffusions at venues and events including Aqua Art Miami, Miami; California Museum of Photography, Riverside; Call & Response, London; Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto; File Hipersonica, São Paulo; Gift_Lab, Tokyo; GV Art Gallery, London; LOOP Festival, Reial Cercle Artístic, Barcelona; Modern Art Museum of Medellín, Medellín; SFMoMA, San Francisco; Susanne Vielmetter LA Projects, Los Angeles; Suyama Space, Seattle; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Western Bridge, Seattle; among others.
