Endless Song with FLAX at Tin Flats
October 13-30, 2018
curated by Anna Milone
Rebecca Bruno and Rafaela Lopez have both followed parallel paths of sculpture and performance. Each of them has travelled from one medium to arrive at another. Rafaela Lopez studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art (London, United Kingdom) and at the Villa Arson (Nice, France). Over time she has given life to her objects. They have become characters in their own right, acting independently or creating dialogue with human bodies through various performances. Rebecca Bruno trained as a dancer and choreographer at The University of California in San Diego and The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Studying the body and its movement, she investigates awareness, material, language and embodiment through dance and visual arts. From her reflections on the body and its movement, she started creating objects and sculptures, activated, or not, through performance.
These two artists, whose journeys have led them to exploit and to re-translate their mediums, meet to open new perspectives on this common ground for their practice. To build their collaboration, they decided to play a game. Together they have composed a chain verse. Each of them creating a piece or starting a thought that the other picks up to start a piece of her own. Each proposal adds a new layer which serves as as a new verse for this endless song, exploring the movement of bodies in relation to sculpture in a determined space: the exhibition space. They invited a sound artist for their pas-de-deux. Yann Novak will compose a sound piece to accompany their exploration of the space they are inhabiting.
In some dance traditions, the body is constrained and transforms itself in such a way to fit classical references of choreography. Rebecca Bruno focuses on the spontaneous movements of the body by bringing awareness on the environment the body exists in. She explores the interaction and the relation between our inner body and our movements which are perceived outside of our body. Her series of sculptures are then based on the lines the performers’ bodies create in the space where they have been recorded: the gallery space. She shapes the void around bodies, questioning the notions of fullness and emptiness, of interior and exterior.
That reflexion led Rafaela to think of the representation of a physical world perceived around the human body. By focusing on the political ambitions of the exhibition space and the art itself as a social space open (or not) to all, she drew her attention to the transitional space, between the inside and the outside of the gallery. Rafaela Lopez brings everyday objects hidden outside and having a direct physical effect inside the exhibition space – for example the air conditioning system. These objects allow her to think about bodies as external or internal elements to the social space. She creates a performance gathering a group of acrobats with air conditioning units for heads, who create human pyramids and enact perilous movements. The transitional objects enter the gallery and build new architectures as the link between the art space and the outside world.
The FLAX Projects are supported in part by the FLAX Creative Circle including The Skylark Foundation, Arthur W. Forney, Olga Garay English, John-Mark Horton, and Katharina and Thierry Leduc.
FLAX is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
Photo credit: Nilo Goldfarb
