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16/5/2012

Robert Schwan & Morgan Grace Kibby

Here is Elsewhere, Los Angeles

Artist Robert Schwan recalls his first encounter with art in high school, when he was given an assignment to create a collage. "I found a clock in the basement and reconstructed it into a human face. I got my only A+ ever in school and never looked back."

As an outsider to the L.A. art scene, Schwan brings to visual arts what the beat generation brought to post-war literature: a tabula rasa originality and the capacity to perform beyond the views dictated by academic instruction.

For this exhibition, Schwan revisits the practice of collage and photomontage. "I read the newspaper every morning pretty much cover to cover. For years I have cut things out that interest me as part of an anthropological narrative that runs through my head, and I always have my camera on me," explains the artist. Inspired by the wild text and photo fusions of Peter Beard but also referring to pioneers from Picasso to Rauschenberg's "Combines," Schwan depicts a rising mono-culture wherein the sacred and profane are collected on the same page.

The collages are framed in light boxes that channel the mysticism and beauty of medieval cathedral windows. The artist adds: "I find it interesting to take something created for a commercial application and apply it to an abstract thought. Some of the photographic collages have much more detail and accidental visual flourishes when illuminated." Meanwhile, an unmistakeable ecological tension informs Schwan's photography and sculpture, for which he culls materials and subjects directly from travels through California's deserts, forests and wrecking yards.

Schwan's power is to deconstruct modern myths and beliefs, mining the universal and isolating its desires. Schwan shares that he is "interested in the rise and fall of our icons in the way that they form new mythologies through the ritualistic sacrifice that takes place in the ever-expanding group media."

Robert Schwan was born in Chicago in 1952. After graduating high school, he traveled North America, living in communes in Berkeley and the rural midwest before settling in Los Angeles. He established himself as a musician and restaurateur, at one point had a night club on the Santa Monica Pier. Reflecting on his unorthodox journey, he observes: "The focus is now on my work and the life lived that I express through it."

Morgan Grace Kibby, a Southern California native known by her stage name White Sea, is a versatile young artist that bridges the space between sound and image. For this exhibition, Kibby has composed an original soundtrack to Robert Schwan's video collage, Stained Glass. Photographs of the musician by Anouck Bertin will also be shown.

Kibby's extensive musical background includes scoring for indie films (most notably Daniel Stamm's first feature "A Necessary Death"), joining Franco-American group M83 as composer and singer, and remixing and producing artists, from Britney Spears to School of Seven Bells. Her new solo project White Sea released its EP This Frontier in 2011.

Kibby has long been intensely engaged in the visual arts. The way she composes her songs derives from a collage of images - the cosmos, Terrence Malick, deserted highways, and enchanted creatures. "The more I started layering vocals, the songs seemed to take on a very cinematic vibe," Kibby recalled in a recent interview. "It was very visual for me."

When Here is Elsewhere Gallery director Yann Perreau discovered Kibby's skills for composing music based on visual elements, he immediately thought of teaming her with Robert Schwan. Together, Schwan and White Sea propose an approach already articulated in electronic music, based on cutting and sampling rather than shape or theory.

For more information on this exhibit, press inquiries, or interviews, please contact Ellen Newton at enewton@hereiselsewhere.com.

The Pacific Design Center is located on the northeast corner of San Vicente Boulevard and Melrose Avenue in the heart of West Hollywood, one mile east of Beverly Hills. Self and valet parking @ PDC. Complementary parking for press. Street parking available.

Image: Robert Schwan, Junk Angel, 2012, mixed media

Opening Reception : Thursday, May 17th, 5:30 - 8:30 PM

Here is Elsewhere Gallery
Pacific Design Center
8687 Melrose Ave., Suite B 231 - Blue Building, Second Floor - West Hollywood, CA 90069
Hours: Monday through Friday, 10:30 am - 5 pm
and by appointment

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