Locust Projects Presents Conversations With The Artists: Christy Gast / Felice Grodin

Felice Grodin Moderated by Gean Moreno: Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 7:00pm
Christy Gast Moderated by Camila Marambio: Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 7:30pm

Christy Gast: Inholdings: Locust Projects is pleased to present Inholdings, an exhibition of new work by Miami-based artist Christy Gast. The two works in this exhibition, a full-scale textile replica of a Nike Hercules missile and a single-channel video entitled War Drums, refer to the Hole-in-the-Donut region of the Everglades. The missile sculpture, Gast’s largest textile work to date, is suspended in the main gallery as if stored in a hangar awaiting activation. Hole-in-the-Donut, the site Gast examines for Inholdings, is marked by invasions and colonizations, both ecological and geopolitical. It is a deforested pine rockland in the Everglades that was plowed for tomato fields in the early 1900’s. A HM69 Nike Missile base located there housed three nuclear warheads and was on high alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Gast’s work stems from extensive research and site visits to places she thinks of as “contested landscapes,” which exhibit evidence of conflict in human desires. She traces, translates or mirrors those conflicts through her art practice.

ABOUT CHRISTY GAST
Christy Gast’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries internationally, including MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Artist’s Space, and Harris Lieberman Gallery in New York; PAMM, the Bass Museum of Art, the de la Cruz Collection, Casa Lin and Gallery Diet in Miami; L.A.C.E. and High Desert Test Sites in Los Angeles; Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich; and Centro Cultural Matucana 100 in Santiago, Chile. She is currently engaged in an ongoing research residency in the Subantarctic forests of Tierra del Fuego, Chile. Since 2010 she has directed the Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) program, bringing artists to live and work in the Everglades for a month at a time. Gast is represented by Gallery Diet in Miami.

ABOUT CAMILA MARAMBIO
After completing her studies in Aesthetics at the Universidad Cátolica de Chile, she received an MA in Modern Art and Critical Studies from Columbia University. While in New York she held the post of Assistant Curator at Exit Art and then in 2006/2007 attended the Curatorial Programme at de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam. Participating in the construction and development of numerous residency programs (as interim-Director of New Pacific Studios in New Zealand in 2005, as founder of the educational experiment Proyecto Piloto in Valparaiso in 2008 and as resident of Sørfinnset Skole/ the nord land in 2009/2010), Camila recently initiated ENSA YOS, a research program in collaboration with WCS Karukinka Natural Park in Tierra del Fuego, Chilean Patagonia.

Project Room, Felice Grodin: A Fabricated Field: Locust Projects is pleased to present A Fabricated Field, a new installation by Miami-based artist Felice Grodin. Trained as an architect, Grodin situates her artistic practice within the realm of geophilosophy—a field of thought that considers the formations between territories.  For her installation, Grodin will fabricate a raised sub-floor encompassing the entirety of the Project Room. Gaps between the standard 4’x8’ grid of plywood sheets allow for another system to emerge. Bundles of wooden sticks rise at irregular intervals, both subverting the grid and binding it together like mycelium to create an all-encompassing installation. Grodin concludes, “If we think of the necessity of survival through migration, a movement, an interface, or a trajectory speaks of the evolution of all species in the face of extinction. This requires a sideways glance to create such abstract spaces. Rather than grasping at individual straws my work attempts to assemble fields of straws as speculative landscapes.”

ABOUT FELICE GRODIN
Felice Grodin, born in Bologna, Italy, currently lives and works in Miami Beach.  She obtained her Bachelor of Architecture from Tulane University and her Master of Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University.  Her explorations in alternative landscapes have been exhibited in Cartographies, Lost Horizon and nolo contendere at Diana Lowenstein Gallery.  Her work has been featured at the Tampa Museum of Art, Manifest Research Gallery and Drawing Center in Cincinnati, Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee, the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, Dimensions Variable in Miami and Girls’ Club in Ft. Lauderdale.

ABOUT GEAN MORENO
Gean Moreno is an artist and writer based in Miami. His work has been exhibited at the North Miami MoCA, Kunsthaus Palais Thum and Taxis in Bregenz, Institute of Visual Arts in Milwaukee, Haifa Museum in Israel, Arndt & Partner in Zürich, and Invisible-Exports in New York. He has contributed texts to various magazines and catalogues. In 2008, he founded Publications, a platform for book-based projects.

ABOUT LOCUST PROJECTS
Locust Projects is a not for profit exhibition space dedicated to providing contemporary visual artists the freedom to experiment with new ideas without the pressures of gallery sales or limitations of conventional exhibition spaces. Local, national and international artists are encouraged to create site-specific installations as an extension of their representative work. Locust Projects supports the local community through educational initiatives and programming that are free to the public.

Admission: Free and open to the public
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00am to 5:00p

Locust Projects
3852 N Miami Avenue
Miami, Fl 33127
305.576.8570
[email protected]
www.locustprojects.org

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