Baik + Khneysser is pleased to present In Flux, a group exhibition at the Little City Farm LA, in collaboration with Namu Home Goods and GOBI.
In this exhibition we invite the viewer to explore the relationship between the artist and the material they choose. How does material transform the artist's work, how does this change starting points and ideas? In Flux presents artists who work as negotiators, as listeners, rather than independent genius creators. The creator succumbs to the agency of nature and allows the material to transform their work. The material defines the work and the process, while the artist responds. What emerges is a fluid relationship in which the artist and the material surrender to one another.
Lies Kraal cites her meditative practice as a conceptual root within her painting. She focuses on the poetic implications of fundamental art historical qualities within minimalist painting and utilises motifs such as repeated haptic gestures and analog processes of sourcing pigments to convey deeper relationships between the artist and her environment.
Polly Chu's work is influenced and shaped by her Buddhist practice. Continuous-line net and grid drawings allude to the interconnectedness of humans with nature and all things living, while the "field series" of egg tempera paintings on found wood are inspired by topographic and metaphoric views of fields and the sustenance they provide, including fields of consciousness—our mental, emotional and spiritual landscapes—as well as the physical fields of our lives.
Ross Rudel uses carved wood as the core of all of his sculptures, enabling him to mine the organic and animate quality inherent to this natural resource. The carvings, made from a single piece of wood, are intimate and show a certain vulnerability - cracks and rings that disrupt an otherwise perfect structure.
Michael Brewster's acoustic sculptures in the garden invite the viewer to experience multi-sensory installations that explore the shape of sound. 'You can't make sound become hard and solid; but you can make it seem to stand still as if hovering in place...' The artist succumbs to the agency of nature and relies on the viewer to activate these sculptures, to become surrounded by them, and physically explore them.
GOBI artist Jinseok Choi works with his surroundings and life situations as conceptual materials that prompt him to transform the unavoidable byproducts of fabrication into something that is constructive and breathable. He collects and uses sawdust and plywood scraps and uses them as materials for art-making. With these materials Choi creates platforms, structures, frames, and sculptures. The byproducts are the negative space created from Choi's physical labor and time he spends to sustain his life and art practice. Transforming this negative space into positive space is not only an adequate representation of the struggles emerging artists face but it also subverts the alienation of labor and reclaims the true value of physical labor.
Namu Home Goods artists observe and listen to the wood to reveal the rings of its age, its seasons, and the beauty and vulnerability that comes from its most bitter winters. Wood changes colour and warps as it ages – it grows old as humans do.
Press release courtesy Baik Art.
1148 South Victoria Ave
LA CA 90019,
Los Angeles
United States