curated by
Hackermann Ines Virginia
private view: Friday, 25th November 2005, 7pm
25th
November 2005 – 5th January 2006
Opening hours: Wed – Sat, 2 – 7pm
PLAY_gallery for still and motion pictures
i proud to present the first Berlin solo
exhibition of the young American artist Lauren Lavitt.
Blameless and Shameless. Thus the sight of a flower
reveals, it is true, the presence of this well-defined
part of a plant, it is though impossible to stop at this
superficial observation; in fact, the sight of this
flower provokes much more significant reactions, because
the flower expresses an obscure vegetal resolution. What
the configuration and colour of the corona reveal, what
the dirty traces of pollen or the freshness of the
pistil betray doubtless cannot be adequately expressed
by language; it is, however, useless to ignore (as
generally done) this inexpressible real presence and to
reject as puerile absurdities certain attempts at
symbolic interpretation.
Flower Album
is a collection of works, that celebrates and
embraces colours and compositions, figures and
landscapes and material relating and inspired from the
artist’s floral experience “I make paintings, videos,
photography and sculptural installations. I basically
use what ever medium best articulates my ideas. I see
painting and video as hunting and cooking – one can’t
live without the other”.
In this show Lauren Lavitt reveals all the
contractions of her work between poetry, love, joys,
horror, Los Angeles, sexual identity, pop culture,
garlic and health. In fact, if Lavitt wouldn’t be an
artist reflecting on the erotic vomit, she would
definitely be a nutritionist. The works in the show
embrace a personal and fragmented narrative about the
anxiety and joy of existing in a modern automobile
driven in a metropolis such as L.A. Lauren Lavitt
likes to drink kombucha tea, she lets herself be
overdosed by ginger and garlic and green. She likes to
explore the actions of religious sacrifice and erotic
fusion. Like an Acéphale (the headless), she is
fascinated by human sacrifice to love and hate, but
she’s not a physical executioner, Lavitt executes only
the mind of the voyeur, by generously giving the
homogeneity’s need for deviance, as a breathtaking act
of self-delimiting.
In Lavitt’s videos the voyeur is left with the idea of
something rather than having the smell or touch of it.
Lavitt is interested in showing the limits of vision
through video, the majority of her video work is about
activations, whether that activations derives from video
itself of a person watching it. It is good to talk about
voyeur rather than public, since voyeur is the
contemporary definition of spectator nowadays,
especially when it comes to visual arts or TV, or porn.
The more desperate the eroticism, the greater the
attraction.
Flower Album is an overview of the young LA artist and
her attention on deficit disorder, grotesque, sexual
identity, haptics, love, nature, contractions, and
voyeurism in this body of work...and flowers and their
infinite misinterpretations. Men have linked the
brilliance of flowers to their amorous emotions because
on either side, it is a question of phenomena that
precede fertilization. At stake here is clearly not the
divination of the secret meaning of flowers, and one can
easily make out the well-known property or adequate
legend.
One would look in vain, moreover, for parallels that
strikingly convey a hidden understanding of the things
here in question. It matters little, in fact, that the
columbine is the emblem of sadness, the snapdragon the
emblem of desire, the waterlilly the emblem of
indifference… It seems opportune to recognize that such
approximations can be renewed at will, and it suffices
to assign a primordial importance to much simpler
interpretations, such as those that link the rose or the
spurge to love.
LA PEINTURE EST LE MAL, LES
FLEURS SONT LE FLEURS DU MAL
THE LANGUAGE IS THE LANGUAGE OF THE FLOWERS.
IL
MALE E’ IL MALE SOCIALE (ESSERE CADUTO COME GLI ANGELI)
IL MALE MORALE (UN CERTO GUSTO PER IL CRIMINE E IL
SADISMO)
IL MALE FISICO
IL MALE METAFISICO (DIO NON C’E’)
Thank Britney that Lauren Lavitt is from LA. Britney
saves Lauren from all the bad.
Britney über Gott.
Hackermann Ines Virginia – HIV
Lauren Lavitt
Born in 1980, in Los Angeles, California (USA).
Education: ‘02 –‘05 M.F.A. University of California,
L.A. / ‘98–‘02 B.FA. Otis College of Art and Design.
Recent exhibition (a selection):
Fair play
Play_gallery for still and motion pictures, July ’05,
Berlin (Germany); Genderosity 4F gallery July
’05, L.A. (USA); Anarchy Slamdance film festival
July ‘05;
Super Sonic
Los Angeles Design Center, June ‘05, L.A. (USA); The
path of the moons and planets Crazy Space, March
’05, Santa Monica CA (USA); MFA thesis shows UCLA
March ‘05, UCLA L.A. (USA); Gea’s Sweets Bologna
Flash Art Fair, January ’05, Bologna (Italy); 1234
Thing Studio, Venice CA (USA) December ’04; Blanking
The Smell L.A. (USA) June ’04; Summer show Anna
Helwing gallery L.A. (USA), July ’04; Where the art
stops and starts The Latch gallery L.A. (USA)
January ‘04
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"Flower Album" |
