Rebeca Mendez
dal 6/10/2006 al 6/12/2006
Segnalato da
6/10/2006
Rebeca Mendez
Andlab Gallery, Los Angeles
The subjects of Mendez’s photographic series are varied and have included industrial hotel beds, landscapes, seascapes, and natural patterning. Her works are studies in the everyday, in stillness and emptiness, as well as in isolating the temporal in phenomena.
Each Day at Noon
Since the late 1980s, the subjects of Rebeca Mendez’s photographic series are varied and have included industrial hotel beds, landscapes, seascapes, and natural patterning. Her works are studies in the everyday, in stillness and emptiness, as well as in isolating the temporal in phenomena.
Mendez completed her B. F. A. at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, in 1984. After a successful career in design, returned to Art Center to receive her M. F. A. in art and new media, in 1997. She is based in Los Angeles and travels internationally capturing images in various media—16mm film, digital video and photography.
In 2004, Mendez began her Homeland series consisting of extreme panoramic landscapes of what she calls ‘ever landscapes’--landscapes and seascapes being farmed and quarried for daily human nourishment and consumption. Mendez’s interest is to give the viewer a glimpse of these raw materials in their integrity and beauty, as well as expose cost of convenience. Her landscapes and seascapes are carefully planned images of sea or land and sky in which horizon line bisects each picture.
In her compositions, she creates new, non-existent landscapes where glaciers float puffy clouds and Nordic cows graze on top of tropical waters. Each of the six compositions has an overall dominating - red, orange, yellow, blue, green and white. The first five of those colors correspond to the United States’ Department Homeland Security’s National Alert Threat Levels. Mendez realized that “peace"—currently the most important ambition humanity—and its corresponding color, white, were missing from the chart, and it became her sixth composition. Mendez’s latest photographic work About to Happen, 2006, consists of still frames of her 16mm film shoot throughout Iceland. By isolating a single frame of an infinite repetition, Mendez images move beyond appearance and expose temporality in phenomena. In ‘Dettifoss 001’, Mendez captures an instant of Europe’s largest waterfall--500 cubic meters per second.
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 7, 7-9pm
Andlab Gallery
600 Moulton Ave., #303 - Los Angeles
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11am - 4pm (by appointment)