Re-Iterative II

Work by

Wendy Adest
Edgar Arceneaux
Stephen Douglas
Joshua Holzmann
John David O’Brien
Rebecca Ripple
Steve Roden
Shirley Tse

This exhibition is about the ways in which Los Angeles-based contemporary artists move between different iterations of an artwork to explore an interconnected set of thoughts about art making.

Historically, sketches of various types (often drawings or scale models) were used as a way of previewing a sculpture, preparing for a painting, or for creating document after an art object was completed. As art has evolved and technical processes have multiplied, from moving images to digital technology, sketching as a sequential step in an artist’s process has ceased to be central to art making. Today artists are free to explore various techniques to observe, examine and document their work, carrying with them a series of considerations that then become visible in entirely different ways.

Reiteration has long been the core of all creative practices. Taking a nucleus of ideas, sentiments or sensations and re-elaborating them over and over again, in an attempt to hone in on their meaning, is at the core of a work of art. Just as its title hints at, Re-Iterative II is a different version of the exhibition re:Iterative, which was presented at LAX in 2018. In both exhibitions, the featured artists present sets of interrelated works in two- and three-dimensional formats. In Re-Iterative II, some of the artists created works that are sequentially connected in low relief formats, their work straddling a middle ground between being completely flat and having some depth. While each work is distinct, the connections between an artist’s different iterations is visibly and palpably clear.

Re-Iterative II presents these artifacts to illustrate the various formal modalities artists employ in their work and to awaken a viewer’s attention to forms and objects and the unique ways in which they are visually and spatially registered.