Honor Fraser

Ry Rocklen is presenting solo exhibition L.A. Relics at Los Angeles’ Honor Fraser, opening September 10 and running to October 29.

A new body of sculptural works, casts of clothes and other found objects, evoke the memory and nostalgia of the Los Angeles landscape, where the artist was born and raised, as well as conceptions of idealized, collective spaces where “people congregate to better their lives through communal activity and civic engagement”.

Producing two-sided sculptures in which pieces are “flattened, given form, and flattened again via photography, clay, and mirrors,” Rocklen celebrates “the public, open-ended nature of his objects and imbues them with a presence at once dignified and peculiar”.

See the Honor Fraser website for details.**

Ry Rocklen, 'Study for L.A. Relics' (2016). Courtesy Honor Fraser, Los Angeles. — Ry Rocklen, ‘Study for L.A. Relics’ (2016). Courtesy Honor Fraser, Los Angeles.

Alexis Smith is presenting solo exhibition The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, with Amy Gerstler at Los Angeles’ Honor Fraser, opening July 16 and running to August 27.

The LA-based artist takes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s late-eighteenth-century poem of the same name —via Walt Disney Studio’s musical interpretation in 1940 animated feature-film Fantasia —as the focus of an investigation into cultural memory across time and place. Combining Smith’s collection of idiosyncratic second-hand brooms, pop cultural references and wall drawings with LA-based poet Gerstler’s moving, circuitous texts responding to the work, the exhibition explores the the “violent connotations of the verb ‘to sweep’.”

Using the surreal, familiar and the funny —a thing the press release describes as a quality that’s “uniquely Californian” —Smith’s layered temporal and cultural references continue her ongoing work dissecting “the motivations and anxieties that constitute everyday life in America”.

See the Honor Fraser website for details.**

Alexis Smith, The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2016). Exhibition view. Installation view. Courtesy Honor Fraser, Los Angeles.. — Alexis Smith, *The Sorcerer’s Apprentice* (2016). Exhibition view. Installation view. Courtesy Honor Fraser, Los Angeles.

Ry Rocklen @ Honor Fraser, Sep 10 – Oct 29

Alexis Smith + Amy Gerstler @ Honor Fraser, Jul 16 – Aug 27

default @ Honor Fraser reviewed