BEDTIME FOR BONZO
Curated by Matthew Porter
December 11 - January 29, 2011
Artists' Opening Reception
Saturday, December 11, 6-8 PM
Arthur Ou, Test Screen 4 (Point Reyes), 2008
MORES McWREATH
Between Everywhere
December 11 - January 29, 2011
Artist's Opening Reception
Saturday, December 11, 6-8 PM
Mores McWreath, You Have Never Been There, 2010, 90 minutes, digital video
M+B
612 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, California 90069
310 550 0050
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BEDTIME FOR BONZO
Curated by Matthew Porter
M+B is pleased to present Bedtime for Bonzo, a group exhibition curated by Matthew Porter with participating artists Walead Beshty, Gil Blank, Matthew Brandt, Andrew Bush, Eduardo Consuegra, Moyra Davey, Arthur Ou, Matthew Spiegelman, James Welling, Hannah Whitaker and Mark Wyse.
Like a river that returns every year to its floodplain, our politics and entertainment can be expected to return to the preceding decades for material. In particular, much of the recent rhetoric from the mid-term elections echoed the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Viewing Jimmy Carter’s famous 1979 “Malaise Speech” as a herald of the 80s, this show presents a selection of images that, when stripped of their original contexts, serve as both index and icon for a decade best defined by a sententious leader. They can also be seen, in the decade before the Internet, as a late-century analog swansong. This is the Eisenhower era in color, with a technological upgrade. The confection-coated green and silky whites of the suburbs look saccharine next to rust-belt towns in decay—evidence of the simultaneous achievement and dismantling of the American dream.
Bedtime for Bonzo is a 1951 film starring Ronald Reagan as a moralizing pedagogue intent on meliorating a chimpanzee’s understanding of right and wrong. If the images on the walls feel equally didactic, remember that this is a show about the 80s, when subtlety was traded for over-dramatic hyperbole.
For further information, please contact Shannon Richardson at M+B at (310) 550-0050, shannon@mbart.com, or visit our website www.mbart.com.
kunsthalle M+B
MORES McWREATH: BETWEEN EVERYWHERE
M+B and François Ghebaly Gallery are pleased to announce their second collaboration for KUNSTHALLE M+B with Between Everywhere, an exhibition of video and images lingering on transitory moments and interstitial spaces by New York based artist Mores McWreath. As our world plunges deeper and deeper into a state of ecstatic and continuous communication, where even brief private moments are churning with the all-consuming, superficial chatter of reigning networks, McWreath’s work seeks out rapidly diminishing liminal space by employing imagery from our media culture while denying specificity. Following the success of his solo show curated by Andrea Zittel at the CUE Art Foundation in NYC in the fall of 2009, this will be McWreath’s debut solo exhibition on the West coast.
Between Everywhere focuses on the neutral; moments apart from and between the endless harassment of communication networks whose daily bombardment works to exterminate interstitial space. McWreath's work seeks to access the recesses of the mind, balancing somewhere in the state between waking and dreaming. Culled together over the past year in a process based on digital cataloging, researching and most importantly visual consumption, the exhibition centers around a feature length video, You Have Never Been There. Composed entirely of scenes lacking people from 120 apocalyptic movies, it is an ambient film of silent landscapes, seething seas, glowing moons, and panoramic rubble. Very much a self-portrait of Western culture delivered through the envisioned landscapes of it’s imagined destruction, McWreath’s film perpetually wavers in a state between horror and beauty, science and fantasy, suspense and relief. Using scenes that fil mically function as establishing or transitory shots and that deny the viewer specificity, the final product exists almost exclusively as an in-between state, representing an idealized space of potential and projection.
Mores McWreath (American, b. 1980) received his BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and an MFA from the University of Southern California Roski School of Fine Arts. He attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in 2008-09. In 2009 he had his first solo show in New York at CUE Art Foundation curated by Andrea Zittel. Recent group exhibitions include Video Art: Replay at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2010; Theoretical Practice at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, 2009; Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2008; Ghosts of Presence at the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2007; and Flex Your Textiles at John Connelly Presents, New York, 2006. His work has been screened in festivals and exhibitions both nationally and internationally including Videomedeja Serbia, the Athens International Film and Video Festival, 700IS Iceland, and the Jakarta International Video Festival. He currently teaches at The Cooper Union.
For further information, please contact Alexandra Wetzel at M+B at (310) 550-0050 or alexandra@mbart.com.
ABOUT kunsthalle M+B
M+B and François Ghebaly Gallery are pleased to announce their new relationship expanding collaborative dialogue within the Los Angeles art community with KUNSTHALLE M+B. Following the success of its first year in Chinatown, with exhibitions by Joel Kyack, Matt Mullican, Marie Jager, and Channa Horwitz, KUNSTHALLE will be moving to M+B on Almont Drive in West Hollywood.
Following the success of its first year in Chinatown, with exhibitions by Joel Kyack, Matt Mullican, Marie Jager, and Channa Horwitz, KUNSTHALLE has moved to M+B on North Almont Drive in West Hollywood. KUNSTHALLE M+B presented the work of English painter Robert Fry earlier in the year, and the new exhibition will present a video and installation by New York based artist Mores McWreath.
According to the dubious lights of Wikipedia “Kunsthalle is, generally, in German speaking regions a term for a facility mounting temporary art exhibitions.” German is off-putting and tough. To American ears, it sounds stern, well-built, and foreign. Sturdy makes the modest sound mighty. Even if the vision is broad the project is simple: a facility for mounting temporary art exhibitions. KUNSTHALLE is a gathering of friends and colleagues, a network of like-minded people who are in need of a room. It’s not for everybody, but art never is. –Andrew Berardini
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