Gallery Hours: Wed- Sat 2-7pm
Conversation with the artists: Thursday June 27 7:30pmThen zoom became drone, a two-person exhibition with Los Angeles-based artists Patricia Valencia and Emmett Walsh, will present a new three channel video installation, a publication, and sculptural works. The exhibition takes its title from a line in Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf’s final novel published in 1941 after her suicide. It is the artists’ first project with Tropico de Nopal Gallery.
Serving as the central core of the exhibition, the video installation – titled 12/21/12: Illuminations – documents the sunrise of the 2012 winter solstice projecting a column of light through the interior of a Mission in northern California. The church’s purposeful architectural alignment and presumed motives are investigated through slow, detailed shots of light and shadow playing on the man-made construction.
The accompanying publication is hinged upon a written essay that collects together circumstantial histories and notes on celestial alignments that revolve around the annual event of the sun dissecting the building. Themes discussed include the apocalyptic misreading of Maya cosmology, Western enlightenment tactics of religious conversion, the advent of computer-generated imagery alongside experimental film works of light and colour, and the uncovering of both ancient and contemporary attitudes towards mortality.
Then zoom became drone will draw together works that deal with light and the abstraction of imagery both mundane and profound, raising questions about the human preoccupation with gathering mineral and spiritual wealth.
Patricia Valencia is an artist working in film, video, and installation. She obtained her MFA from Hunter College, New York in 2008, and was accepted into the prestigious Skowhegen School of Painting & Sculpture in 2003. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles, Mexico, and Glasgow, Scotland. Her first solo show, Without End, is currently at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, a result of the 2013 Feitelson Arts Fellowship Award. Upcoming projects include a two-person exhibition with Emmett Walsh at Pøst Gallery, Los Angeles.
Emmett Walsh is an artist working in video, sculpture, and writing. He obtained his MFA from the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland in 2008, and completed a Triangle Arts residency fellowship in South Africa in 2010. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in England, Scotland, Germany, France, Portugal, Israel, South Africa and the USA. Upcoming projects include a two-person exhibition with Patricia Valencia at Post Gallery, Los Angeles, and a group exhibition at MK Gallery in England, both in summer 2013.
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday June 15 7-10PM
CONVERSATION WITH THE ARTISTS: Thursday June 27 7:30PM
WHERE: Tropico de Nopal Gallery Art-Space 1665 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90026