Still Lifes and Common Names. The duo presents large-scale digital collages and sound installations. This new body of work toys with the history of the still life genre in its acknowledgment of our innate desire to organize and control nature on a symbolic level.
For their second solo show at the Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles-based collaborative duo Simmons
& Burke will present a new body of work featuring large-scale digital collages and sound installations.
Simmons & Burke draw their material from the vastness of the Internet, wrapping their arms around
entire bodies of data and re-contextualizing images into the beautifully dense and saturated collages they
have become known for. The nucleus of this show is a list of common names of plants that grow in the
United States and its territories, initially chosen by the artists based solely off of their attraction to the
names themselves.
This body of work toys with the history of the still life genre in its acknowledgment of
our innate desire to organize and control nature on a symbolic level. These dense composites of images
and sounds re-imagine Nature Morte as a vibrantly lush and kinetic force in which the organization and
obsessive relationship to these plants developed as the artists culled and cut the images from their
original, digital source material.
Simmons & Burke's work is held in such prestigious public collections
as La Colección Jumex, Mexico City, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Me Collector's
Room, Berlin.
For further inquiry please email Laura Sumser at laura@kohngallery.com, and Lindsey Schiff-Abrams at lsa424@gmail.com
Opening: May 10th, 6-8pm
Michael Kohn Gallery
8071 Beverly Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90048
Hours:
Tuesday to Friday 10 am - 6 pm
Saturday 11 am - 6 pm