MUST SEE
Fawn Rogers GODOG - curated by Michael Slenske
September 15 - October 15, 2023
Reception: Friday, September 15th, 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm
At this interactive exhibition, visitors check out art supplies used to create a pair of nail-studded figurative sculptures and two large oil paintings of 18th century grotto chairs as live-feed cameras monitor their dilemma: create or destroy?
Lauren Powell Projects is thrilled to present GODOG, an interactive exhibition by Fawn Rogers, organized by Los Angeles-based writer and curator Michael Slenske. A year before the pandemic, Fawn Rogers began noticing all the canned oysters and sardines she was consuming—“They looked like humans tucked into a coffin,” she says—and began making paintings on the packaging, which led to a series of works on paper and then another series of bronze figurative Venus sculptures depicting creatures—half-human, half-sex organ—who are meant to evoke a future with less sexual repression. She would later evolve that body of work into a pair of slumped, cybernetic figures hewn from clay, steel mesh, and nails. "Nails represent 5000 years of the creating and destroying we have done," says Rogers. "We have used nails in every way, shape and form to build our civilizations, which brings us to this current geological era, this time period where humans have affected change we can no longer reverse."
For GODOG, Rogers' interactive exhibition at Lauren Powell Projects, the artist will invite visitors to the gallery to either create or destroy the sculptures with the same tools and materials she used to make them. Rogers will also exhibit two large oil paintings depicting 18th century grotto chairs, which were hand-carved in the shape of scallops in Venice, Italy. In Greek mythology scallops were thought to be a symbol of pilgrimage, protection, rebirth, and fertility. Aphrodite, who was born in sea foam, reached the shores of Cyprus riding on a scallop shell. The paintings, titled Room With a View, serve as a counterpoint to the sculptures, a vantage from which to view this space of destruction or creation. As with the sculptures, Rogers is inviting visitors to the gallery to intervene on the paintings with spray paint, paint thinners, oil paint, markers, clay, nails and a hammer.
The show runs September 15 through October 14th 2023 and is open Thursday, Friday & Saturday, noon-6pm, or by appointment.
FAWN ROGERS (b. 1974, Portland, Oregon) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Galerie Marguo (Paris, 2023); Burn, Gleam, Shine, Galerie Marguo at K11 (Hong Kong, 2023); Your Perfect Plastic Heart, Wilding Cran Gallery (Los Angeles, 2023); Violent Garden, The Lodge (Los Angeles, 2017); and Subject, Museum of Art and History (Lancaster, CA 2016). Select group exhibitions include Beach, Nino Mier Gallery (New York, 2023); L.A. Woman, Phillips (Los Angeles, 2023); My Body, My Business, Sotheby’s (New York, 2023); Art Paris 2023 Presentation, Galerie Marguo, (Paris, 2023); Solitude, Nexx Taipei (Taiwan, 2023); Boil Toil & Trouble, Art In Common (Miami, 2022); You Me Me You, Nicodim Gallery (Los Angeles, California, 2022); Holy Water, Eric Firestone Gallery (East Hampton, New York, 2022); Don’t Give Me Flowers, Praz-Delavallade (Los Angeles, California, 2022); Everything Has Its Place, Sevil Dolmaci (Istanbul, 2021); and Yes Yes it is Burning Me, Mykonos Biennale (Mykonos, Greece, 2019) among many others.
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