January, 2003

Current Exhibit

Unnatural

featuring:

Brian Cooper (Installation)

Julia Latane (Installation)

Inyoung Kim (Installation)

Alison Smith (Painting)

Four young artists who's work has links to the Organic via artificial, man-made materials.

January 4 - 25, 2003

Opening reception Saturday 4, January 7-10pm

Los Angeles is stereotypically seen as a city of illusion, of fakery. It is a place disconnected from reality for many people, most of whom have never been here. The reality of LA is that it is a major 21st century metropolis with all the benefits and drawbacks that entails. It IS different from other cities, but there is a similarity too. Urban dwellers everywhere are separated from direct experiences of 'nature', whatever the term may mean, with few exceptions. We live our busy lives in a constructed environment, an artificial oasis in the desert.

The artists in this exhibition -- Brian Cooper, Julia Latane, Inyoung Kim and alison Smith- all share many of the same concerns regarding the constituents of the artifcal. Using seemingly organic forms the line between natural and unnatural is blurred. Notions of Real and Fake start to become problematic. These works are enthusiastically in-between states of being, positively ambiguous. Using scale, color and materials they thread their way between the abstract and the figurative, often crossing over in the other's territory, oscillating from one to the other. Mimicking the organism while proclaiming they're artifice, embroiled in the contemporary (with a dash of Retro thrown in to verify it's contemporaneousness).

The evolving entropy of the natural becomes frozen in time, sealed in the plastics of this age and preserved like a young Judy Garland on celluloid, forever young in the Land of Oz.

From the erotic juiciness of Smith's paintings' orgiastic excesses of paint, through Kim's quietly whispering and glittering shards, to Latane's Alice in Wonderland stems, sensously licking the air above them and Cooper's multiplying couch spores spreading througout a Brady Bunch den -- these artists have created playful, ebulliently sexual and visceral objects which snarl when they giggle and bite when they kiss.

-Max Presneill

Gallery Hours are 12 - 5pm Saturdays, or by appointment.

Raid Projects

602 Moulton Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90031

Tel: 323/ 441-9593