March 15 – April 20, 2013
When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the very act of attention may lead to our involuntarily sinking into the history of that object. Novices must learn to skim over matter if they want matter to stay at the exact level of the moment. Transparent things, through which the past shines!*
Steve Turner Contemporary is pleased to present Transparent Things, a solo exhibition by Gabrielle Ferrer which will consist of three related series of work that result from the artist’s process of archiving objects as a method of investigating their history and essential character. In each series, she allows the subject to determine the medium.
The Navajo Blanket is made up of every black and white reproduction of blankets in The Navajo Blanket, a 1972 catalogue published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the exhibition of the same title. Ferrer removed and hand-colored in watercolor each page of the catalogue using the catalogue description and her imagination to determine the final design.
Prop Houses, Los Angeles consists of black and white photographs which the artist made during several trips to prop houses that rent every imaginable object to film crews. She then hand-tinted and framed each print.
Cones consists of medium format photographs of pyrometric ceramic cones that were used in the process of firing ceramic ware. Positioned within a kiln, cones serve as a visual indication that a work is ready to be removed. Once the work is removed from the kiln the cone is usually discarded.
Born in Los Angeles in 1983, Gabrielle Ferrer earned an MFA from University of Long Beach in 2010 and a BA from Amherst College in 2005. Her work is currently in Made in Space at Night Gallery, Los Angeles.
——–
*Nabokov, Vladimir. Transparent Things. New York: McGraw-Hill International, Inc, 1972. p. 1.
