Plum Pudding Peanut Island (Gilligan’s
Squaw Fire Island II)
Closing Reception w/Performance: Friday, November 22, 2013. 6-9
PM
Performance begins at 7:30
Elephant is pleased to present new work by Vincent Ramos. For
this exhibition, the artist has created a new installation and performance
piece that is inspired by the collective sense of loss and confusion
surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, fifty years ago
this month.
Using popular media as his primary resource, Ramos researched
and collected over a dozen prime time network television shows that were
preempted as a result of the tragedy. From this material, he has created a
performative piece that will be intertwined within a site-specific installation
inspired by various facets of Kennedy’s biography. It is a body of work steeped
in a disjointed pictorial and verbal language: a
labyrinth of non-linear actions, narratives, and emotions.
A second, alternative version of Plum Pudding Peanut Island
(Gilligan’s Squaw Fire Island II) will be taking place simultaneously in
Dallas, Texas at the Brazos Gallery at Richland College, from November 22nd
until December 20th, 2013.
Vincent Ramos (b. 1973, Santa Monica,
California) received a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2002 and an
MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2007. Solo and two-person
exhibitions include, Pachuco Cadaver or
There Are No Heavies in America, Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles, Outsider Art: Others from Elsewhere Doing
Something Altogether Different…Sort
Of, 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, and Motown Took Us There and
Motown Brought Us Back, Crisp London/Los Angeles. Group exhibitions
include, Made in L.A. 2012, Hammer
Museum and LAXART, and, In the
Good Name of the Company, ForYourArt, Los Angeles and See Me Gallery, NY. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Curatorial projects include, Le Vent d’ Est, Actual Size and
Elephant, Los Angeles, After The Gold
Rush: Reflections and Postscripts on the National Chicano Moratorium of August 29, 1970, Vincent Price Art
Museum, ELAC, Los Angeles, River,
Elephant, Los Angeles, Chasing Shadows,
The Onion (The Church of the Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society), North
Hills, and The Sharon Show & 1969, Dan Graham, Los Angeles.
Related Programming
The Poet, Blinded by the Sun
Date
and Time: Saturday, November 23, 2013. 6-9 PM
A one-night exhibition within the current gallery installation
and around the premises of the Elephant compound that investigates broader
notions of memorials and mourning, as they relate to the erasure and subsequent
retrieval of memory, both collective and personal.
Participating Artists:
Merwin Belin
Alice Clements
Stephen Lapthisophon
Lauralee Pope
Konrad Smolenski and Vincent Ramos
Sue Tompkins
Artist Bios:
Merwin Belin (b. 1949, Norwalk, California)
received a BA from California State University, Long Beach in 1973 and an MFA
from California State University, Long Beach in 1975. Solo exhibitions include,
Frontpages, 1984-Present, Assembly, Los Angeles, Merwin Belin, Emeritus
College Gallery, Santa Monica, and School of Belin: A Mid-Career Survey,
1973-2010, Warschaw Gallery, San Pedro. Group exhibitions include, Shangrila
2013: Burrito Deluxe, Joshua Tree, Group Show, Las Cienegas
Projects, Genre Studies, Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art, Culver
City, and Radical Past: Pasadena Art in the 1970’s, Armory Center for
the Arts, Pasadena. He Lives and works in Los Angeles.
Alice Clements (b. 1973, Berkeley, California) received a BA
from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2005 and an MFA from Art Center
College of Design in 2008. Solo exhibitions include, In the Basement, Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles, and Stillness, POST, Los Angeles. Group
exhibitions include, Dig the Dig, LA
MART, Los Angeles, Chockablock, University
Art Museum, Cal State University, Long Beach, Candor: In Honor of Mike
Kelley, Long Beach City College, and Unit/Constellation,
Dan Graham, Los Angeles. She Lives and works in Los Angeles.
Stephen Lapthisophon (b. 1956, Elkins, West Virginia) received
an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979. Recent solo
exhibitions include Isolation, A Slender
Gamut, New York, NY, The Construction
of a National Identity, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, and Las Palabras en la Sombra de Esta Fecha,
El Escaparate, Barcelona, Spain. Recent group exhibitions include, Variations on Theme: Contemporary Art
1950’s-Present, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, The Café, SHOW Studio, London, UK, and Archival Impulse, Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago,
Chicago, IL. He currently has a solo exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art, as
part of their Concentrations series, entitled, Coffee, Seasonal Fruit, Root Vegetables and “Selected Poems”. He
Lives and works in Dallas, Texas.
Lauralee Pope (b. 1980, Tulsa, Oklahoma) received a BFA from
Otis College of Art and Design in 2002 and an MFA from the California Institute
of the Arts in 2013. Group exhibitions include, Keep in Touch, New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, Ex. 11, Brazos Gallery, Dallas, Texas, Show and Tell, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, and The Sharon Show, Dan Graham, Los
Angeles. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Konrad Smolenski (b. 1977, Kalisz,
Poland) Exhibitions and performances include Was ist ist ..!!, Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium, Intense Proximity, La Triennale Paris, Palais de Tokyo, Paris,
France, The End of Radio, Manhattan
Gallery, Lodz, Poland, and IT’S ON,
Leto Gallery, Warsaw, Poland. Most recently, he represented his native Poland in
the 55th Venice Biennale with the exhibition entitled, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More
and has just completed a series of performances entitled, Tribute to Errors and Leftovers with the artist Radek Szlaga for
PERFORMA 2014, New York, NY. He is based in Warsaw, Poland and Bern,
Switzerland.
Sue
Tompkins (b. 1971, Glasgow, Scotland) graduated from the Glasgow School of Art
in 1994. Solo exhibitions and performances include, Expressions, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Skype Won’t Do, Diana Stigter, Amsterdam, It’s Chiming in Normaltown, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, SEA DEEP, Galerie Micky Schubert, Berlin
and Elephants Galore, Scottish
Pavilion, Venice Biennale. Group exhibitions include, Repertory, Palazzo Cavour, Turin, SOUNDWORKS, ICA, London, Sáo
Paulo Biennale, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Learn
to Read, Tate Modern, London, and Art
Now Live Work, Tate Britain, London. She lives and works in Glasgow,
Scotland.
