22/9/2010
Glenn Kaino
Laxart, Los Angeles
Kaino's show includes a major sculptural installation, a series of new objects and performances. For Safe/Vanish the artist creates a site-specific installation featuring a safe filled with recorded secrets collected from a range of art world and celebrity personalities.
LAXART presents Safe/Vanish, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Glenn Kaino, and one of the most ambitious projects of the organization's anniversary year. Safe/Vanish includes a major sculptural installation, a series of new objects and performances, as well as a publication produced specifically for the exhibition.
In Safe/Vanish, Kaino will create a site-specific installation featuring a safe filled with recorded secrets collected from a range of art world and celebrity personalities, among them actresses Pamela Anderson, Jodie Foster, Lisa Ling, fashion and art photographer David LaChapelle and A&M Records founder Jerry Moss, to name a few. By amassing these secrets, which range from the personal to the professional, and from the benign to the criminal, Kaino explores his interest in the archiving of conceptual power and the inherent power in brokering secrets.
Over the past year, Kaino has embarked upon the study of magic and has virtually transformed his studio into a magic shop. The exhibition at LAXART will act as an extension of his studio, providing the viewer with a behind-the-scenes view of the artist's experiments and the magic conceptual and performance pieces being developed. While technology has broken down the wall of secrecy behind many of the techniques and methods of magic, it has also served to expose the art to a much wider audience, creating a crisis of belief that is a mirror of the postmodern crisis of meaning. In juxtaposing performance space and studio space, Kaino brings the conflicts between method and effect, preparation and performance, and object and ephemeral into full view for public assessment and reinvention. The artist's preoccupation with magic also extends to his interest in the dialogue between art and entertainment.
Using the history of the renegotiation between magicians and their audiences that took place in the late 19th century as a departure point, Kaino has created a wide array of both performance and conceptual deceptions aimed at exposing, interrogating and reformulating the value of art in a theoretical environment outside of the singular commodity of the object. Safe/Vanish marks an ongoing investigation into the restructuring of the social contract between art and audience. To Kaino, this exhibition marks the end of a journey that can be characterized as, "an artist learning how to believe again through magic while questioning value through the brokering and archiving of secrets."
About the Artist
Glenn Kaino received his MFA from the University of California, San Diego and his BFA from the University of California, Irvine. His work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA; the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA; and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, amongst others. Kaino was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and in the 2009 edition of Performa, the internationally renowned Biennial of Performance in New York. He will also be included in the upcoming exhibition, The Artist's Museum, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
About LAXART
Celebrating its 5th Anniversary in 2010, LAXART is the leading independent nonprofit contemporary art space in Los Angeles, committed to the production of experimental exhibitions and public art initiatives. Responding to Los Angeles' cultural climate, LAXART produces and presents new work for all audiences and offers the public access to the next generation of artists and curators. LAXART supports challenging work, reflecting the diversity of the city and stimulates conversations on contemporary art in Los Angeles, fostering dynamic relationships between art, artists and their audiences. LAXART has produced and commissioned over 100 projects in five years.
LAXART's programs are made possible with the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the James Irvine Foundation; Danielson Foundation; the G.L. Waldorf Family Fund; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon LLP; City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Glenn Kaino: Safe/Vanish is made possible with generous support from the James Irvine Foundation.
The exhibition is supported by LAXART's Producers Council; Stefan Simchowitz; Esthella Provas and Lauren Taschen; LAXART Collectors Circle; Linda and Jerry Janger; Catharine and Jeffrey Soros; Gil Friesen; Ben Bourgeois; Deutsche Bank.
The exhibition is made possible with additional support from Eve Steele and Peter Gelles; Pasadena Art Alliance; Benchmark Scenery; Cirrus Editions Ltd.; Maryam and Josh Lieberman; Karyn Kohl and Phil Lord.
Special thanks to our publication partner Paper Chase.
Media Contact:
Elizabeth Reina or Deirdre Maher, Blue Medium
T. +1 (212) 675-1800
elizabeth@bluemedium.com
Opening Thursday, September 23, 2010 6 - 8pm
LAXART
2640 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm
Free admission