Sherin Guirguis "My Place is the Placeless"

About

My Place is the Placeless

Sherin Guirguis
Artist Lab Residency & Exhibition: April 24 - June 30, 2017
Main Gallery

Los Angeles-based Egyptian artist Sherin Guirguis uses painting, drawing, and sculpture to explore the hidden histories of places and communities. In her works, the political and social content is inseparable from formal and material considerations. In her Artist Lab residency and exhibition, she will create an environment for investigations into the intersections of art and activism through the explorations of materials made from the earth’s elements, including pigment, paper, soil, and water. Guirguis seeks to address problems of displacement, environmental destruction, and cultural and historical memory loss through conversations with local artists engaged in political activism, and through workshops with local Santa Monica youth and adult participants. For more about the artist, visit here.

A Home Anywhere

Sara Debevec, Milenko Prvački, Delia Prvački
May 11 - 26, 2017
Atrium Gallery

This exhibition ask three artists to respond to historical traumas they are assumed to share based on geographic proximity, or shared national heritage. For artists Delia and Milenko Prvački and Sara Debevec, the shared geography of the former Yugoslavia is a distant one, both physically and in time. Whether there is insight to be found in their proximity, there is likely to be comfort. In sculpture, works on paper, and video, these three artists make a home anywhere.

In the Project Room: Antoni Hervàs

May 11 - 26, 2017

Antoni Hervàs' artistic practice stems from research into the limits of drawing. At 18th Street, Hervàs will exhaustively investigate the ONE archive at USC, focused on gender and queer issues and local histories, seeking clues on how personal narratives could be intertwined with this complex network of knowledge. Hervàs is interested in following the traces of Queercore culture, which was born in LA, and other local subcultures such as "roller girl derby," reflecting the practice of minority sports as a form of resistance; and local spectacles including Tiki culture or the "Luchavaboom," where the merging of cabaret, psychedelia, and lucha libre (as in choreographed fighting) gives birth to figures like Cassandro, the queenqueer of the luchadores.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sherin Guirguis was born in Luxor, Egypt in 1974 and now lives in Los Angeles, CA. Through her work, she audits the symphony of difference and complexity heard in the politics of place. Her practice is a means to heighten her understanding of conflict and contested histories. She engages both formal and social concerns by juxtaposing the reductive Western language of minimalist aesthetics with that of Eastern ornamentation. The work attempts to problematize the history of decoration and ornamentation and its relationship with social structures, cultural identity and Women’s agency. She received her BA from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997 and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2001. She has had solo exhibitions at The Third Line Gallery, Dubai; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; and LAXART, Los Angeles, CA. Her work is currently featured in the inaugural exhibition of the Desert X Biennial and LA Exuberance at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Antoni Hervàs studied fine arts at the University of Barcelona (2006) and completed coursework in engraving and printing at the Escola de la Llotja. His most recent solo exhibitions include “Hércules en la Luna” at the Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona (2012), “Kakanoures y Kitschades” at the Galeria Sis, Sabadell (2015), Agón at the Galeria etHALL, Barcelona (2016) and “El Misterio de Caviria” at La Capella, Barcelona (awarded with the Barcelona’s visual arts grant of 2016). Hervàs has participated in many group exhibitions, including Capítol II. Fugides. La ficció com a rigor as part of the El text: principis i sortides programme at Fabra i Coats- Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2014), PUNK, It’s Traces in Contemporary Art at the MACBA (2016)and Deshaciendo Texto at La casa encendida, Madrid (2016). As part of his artistic practice, Hervàs has led Fènix (2013-2016), Sant Andreu Contemporani’s educational programme, which involves various artists from Barcelona in its different stages. He has also carried out many self-managed publishing projects like Grapandmopotheper (2009), tributo a Ray Harryhausen (Degénero Ediciones, 2014) and La Trama for Mataró Art Contemporani (2015).

Artists Delia and Milenko Prvački emigrated to Singapore in 1992. Delia Iliesiu Prvački is a Romanian-born sculptor and ceramicist with numerous public commissions. From 1970 to 1975 she studied at Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest where she earned a Master Degree in Applied Arts/Ceramics. Exhibiting professionally since 1970, Delia’s body of work since the early 1980s has been focused on establishing a new vocabulary and significance for the sculptural medium generated by available technologies and endless modalities of expression in ceramics. She often experiments with mixed techniques, and is strongly influenced by her passion for other forms of arts and archaeology as well.

Born in 1951 in the former Yugoslavia, Milenko Prvački is a painter and sculptor, and Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore. He earned a Master of Fine Arts (Painting) at the Institute of Fine Arts, Bucharest, Romania. Known for large-scale abstract works including paintings made up of multiple panels, Prvački also maintains a prolific drawing practice. Works created during his 18th Street residency will be on display.

Sara Debevec is a Serbian born, Los Angeles based multimedia artist, writer, curator, and blogger. Having spent her whole life in exile, Debevec’s performative practice explores themes of identity, migration belonging, gender and states of being, through animal archetypes. She holds a BA Sociology degree from Goldsmiths College London and an MSc in Urban Studies from University College London.