Amir Zaki and Jesse Webber
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, Los Angeles
Amir Zaki: Spring Through Winter
Jesse Webber: Hitch
On view at the MAK Center for Art & Architecture, Los Angeles, from January 7 through February 20, 2005
For further information, the public may contact (323) 651-1510 or www.MAKcenter.org
Amir Zaki: Spring Through Winter
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, Los Angeles
Curated by Lauri Firstenberg
Los Angeles based photographer Amir Zaki renders southern California suburban landscapes and architecture into fantastical and impossible architectonic structures. Spring Through Winter presents his investigations into the entropy of architecture in a suite of photographs of swimming pools, fireplaces and cantilevered buildings. While committed to the mundane, the work is subtle and disorienting, transforming architecture into ineffectual sculptural relics.
Curated by Lauri Firstenberg, Spring Through Winter will be on view at the Schindler House from January 7 through February 20, 2005. Amir Zaki will lead an artist’s walkthrough of the exhibition on Saturday, January 15 at 1:00 p.m. A billboard on the Sunset Strip has been produced in tandem with Amir Zaki’s exhibition in collaboration with the City of West Hollywood and with Viacom Outdoor.
Zaki addresses the problem of photographically representing the improbable, de-spatializing the viewer and tweaking temporality. Zaki’s suite of photographs includes exterior cantilevered architecture, aerial perspective swimming pools, and interior fireplaces. He takes as his subject modernist homes that have been refaced and restructured due to multiple earthquakes, renovations, or redecoration, photographing the extreme underbelly of these once idyllic, now ominous and monstrous structures.
The homes, pools and fireplaces are sculpturally dynamic, dramatic, and dystopic. As such, the work investigates “poetic entropy,” which the artist views as a primary condition of Los Angeles architecture.
As part of the City of West Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission Art on the Outside Program, a billboard by Amir Zaki is currently erected on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Olive Drive, one block east of La Cienega Boulevard alongside the House of Blues.
Jesse Webber: Hitch
The MAK Center presents an outdoor courtyard project with Jesse Webber: Hitch. The Los Angeles based artist makes over-sized, fiberglass, abstract sculptures finished in condo-inspired stucco, fake wood grain, rusted polish or high gloss hot-rod patina. Webber will produce a series of new sculptures for the Schindler courtyards. The artist compares the pre-fabricated mid-century trailer homes of his native Tennessee to California Case Study houses. He creates dysfunctional elemental objects based on mnemonic translation of these highly charged forms. This project attempts to rework tropes of modernist design, tracing its origins to perverse abuses and misappropriations. Paradoxical in form and function, Webber creates a composite language that defies categorization.
Jesse Webber will hold a discussion of his work on Saturday, January 15, 2005 at 2 p.m., following the talk by Amir Zaki.
Spring Through Winter and Hitch will be on view at the MAK Center for Art & Architecture from January 7 through February 20, 2005. Public hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $5; free hours are Friday afternoons, 4 to 6 p.m. A free opening reception will be held Friday, January 7, 2005 from 7 to 9 p.m.
The MAK Center is located at the Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road in West Hollywood. Parking is available at the public structure at the corner of Kings Road and Santa Monica Boulevard. For further information, the public may contact (323) 651-1510 or www.MAKcenter.org
