Los Angeles-based artist Jennifer Pastor reinterprets strangely common yet unexpected subjects through her exquisitely rendered work. This three-part installation features a large, luminescent sculpture inspired by the water circulation system of the Hoover Dam, as well as a magnified sculptural rendering of the human inner and outer ear based on the artist’s memory of a model in a medical museum. The third component is a projected line-drawn animation depicting a cowboy performing what would be a perfect, but literally impossible, rodeo ride on a bucking bull. Linking these seemingly disconnected forms are ideas about balance and circulation, and how various organizing “armatures,” or skeletal structures, direct systems of movement. Through her references to popular phenomena, Pastor also alludes to man’s conflicts with-and mastery over-nature, whether in the engineering, medical, or athletic realms, and the attendant notions of awe that such spectacular displays of these “triumphs” seek to inspire. Image: Jennifer Pastor The Perfect Ride (Dam), 2003 Steel, aluminum, and plastic, 102 x 108 x 153 in. (259.1 x 274.3 x 388.6 cm) Collection of the artist; courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, Photograph courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles