Torrance Art Museum is pleased to announce CO/LAB III - an international, emerging artists collaborative project which presents eight artist-run gallery / spaces in Los Angeles partnering with eight artist-run spaces in Berlin. Sixteen spaces create eight curatorial projects!

BBQLA / Axel Obiger
Dalton Warehouse / COPYRIGHTberlin
Durden and Ray / HilbertRaum
ESXLA / Scotty e.V.
Monte Vista Projects / Å+
PØST / LAGE EGAL
Elevator Mondays / ZK/U
Tiger Strikes Asteroid / oMo artspace

Embracing Reception, Depth Perception: Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles and oMo artspace

I used to teach at a college that offered its gym free to faculty. It was quite convenient. For far too long I was puzzled by the lack of locks on the bathroom stalls. Finally, it dawned on me that rampant bathroom-sex and not laziness was the most likely motivation for making the doors lock-free. Removing the locks seemed like an overreaction to me and impractical. It was quite difficult to have a stress-free toilet experience as the door would open unexpectedly while you tried to complete your no business.

Now, I use a YMCA gym which caters to elderly people and families. They have locks on the stalls. Recently, they put signs up in all the areas used by kids which say “NO BODY CONTACT!”. How strange. Soon after, I began seeing the same signs at the progressive elementary school my children attend. NO BODY CONTACT. I guess that means: no leapfrog, no fighting, no licking, no hugging. I must have been asleep when the transformation happened. What could this mean for the future? Might we be the last generation capable of sincere collaboration?

Mergers are difficult. Even with familiar collaborators and the best of intentions, the output can be tepid or scattered. Really sincere collaboration requires crossing personal boundaries, invading each other’s space, manipulating each other’s creations. With this exhibition we have a collaboration between a museum (TAM) and artist-run spaces from Berlin (oMo gallery) and LA (TSA LA), if anything exciting will emerge -it will not be through gentle persuasion and consensus building. Full contact will need to occur. Bodies working in tight spaces, creative adaptations like strangers hurriedly making magic as if in a gym bathroom.

In this confined space we have combined artists with noticeably different PH levels. Sarah Oh Mock’s previous work creating PHASO (Post Human Archaeological Studies organization) is decidedly acidic, as it involved a postantropocine species investigating the ruins of mankind. She collaborated with archeologists to imagine how our successors would interpret our cultural residue long after we stopped producing any of it. The results of her investigation are wistful and pointed.

Bongjun Oh (also acidic) isn’t waiting for our total destruction to find the utility in human-made debris; it is his material and muse. He is a repurposer, creating new contexts for the production surrounding us in the sunset years of the anthropocene. I imagine his work would confuse our postanthroposcene cousins as its objectives are counterintuitive and subtle. His methods can be an illustration of the idea that what we put out into the world might return to us changed.

Liz Nurenberg is our base, her work is rooted in the present. Her sculptures are sound in form and designed to integrate with the human body. How they are ‘supposed’ to integrate is not immediately clear. You need to probe them to uncover their potential. The pieces really come alive when more than one person is exploring them. You are forced into close contact. You might get intertwined with your partner nearly face to face, speaking low, trying to tie some strap around each other. Together, gently, you figure out how the almond shaped padding could be used.

I anticipate a steamy, highly-charged brine produced when the individual elements are combined. Through instigation and intercourse new forms will generate and be supplanted. And then, the space will be bleached clean. Yet those who were there will have carried off smears of residue out into the big cold world.

Claude Heale
Island of Ponza, December 2017

More info at torranceartmuseum.com/colab-iii

The Torrance Art Museum (TAM) is located at 3320 Civic Center Drive in Torrance, CA. You can get more information at www.torranceartmuseum.com or email them at torranceartmuseum@torranceca.gov