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 works in Inholdings shift the focus between natural, cultural and desired histories by appropriating craft traditions to document a place.
The missile sculpture, Gast’s largest textile work to date, is suspended in the main gallery as if stored in a hangar awaiting activation. It is constructed from botanical textile designed and printed by the artist, which overlays images of tomato bushes, Brazilian pepper trees and lovegrass. Remnants of agriculture, invasive species and native flora compete for surface space and reference particular moments of conflict in the landscape.
The single channel video installation War Drums was shot in one of the few existing stands of pine forest in Dade County. The camera pans the horizon in a continuous circle once per minute, moving like the second hand of a clock. At 12 o'clock the camera passes a woman playing traditional Afro Cuban rhythms on a conga. At 6 o'clock, the camera pans another drummer playing snare cadences, military drum corps style. Embodying the cultural conflicts of the Cold War, the drummers pass beats between themselves as the listen deeply to, and interpret, the sounds of the forest.
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. The base closed in 1979; the farms foreclosed decades earlier. Brazilian pepper invaded the fallow fields, and eradication required scraping the fields to the fossilized limestone bedrock. Lovegrass is the first native plant to recolonize this moonlike terrain.
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.
Opening Receptions: Christy Gast / Project Room: Felice Grodin
Saturday, March 8, 2014
7-10pm: Opening Reception s
Christy Gast: Inholdings
Project Room: Felice Grodin, A Fabricated Field
Saturday April 12, 2014
7pm: Conversation with the Artists
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm
Through April 12, 2014
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.
Special Thanks: Bizzarro Design; Everglades National Park; Funding Arts Network; Gallery Diet, Miami; Gesi Schilling Photography; Tom Tom Magazine; and University of Oregon Printmaking Department.
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.
The clumped formations rise like beanstalks or cypress knees through the space, creating a visual contrast between the machined plane and the organic bundles that belies an inter-territorial tension. This tension serves to bind, or speculatively fold in the outside, considering edges beyond the anthropocentric. 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.
Special Thanks: Ackert Studio, New York; Diana Lowenstein Gallery, Miami; Pearl Paint; Robert Soldo Design; and Roxana Matticoli.
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.
Locust Projects’ exhibitions and programming are made possible with the support from: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Cowles Charitable Trust; The State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; Funding Arts Network; Galt & Skye Mikesell; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; The National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Grant.
Special thanks to Locust Projects Exhibitionists: Linda Adler, Jeanie Bonner, Charles Coleman, Debra Frank, Jorge A. Garcia, Evelyn & Bruce Greer, Amy & Harry Hollub, Nina Johnson, Steven Lanster, Alex Menendez, Miriam & Marc Milgram, Mr. John & Dr. Lynne Richard, Jorge Rosso, Faye & Jeffrey Roth, Debra & Dennis Scholl, Mary & David Solomon, Dale Chapman Webb, Debi & Jeff Wechsler.
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