Ritter/Zamet is pleased to present the second solo exhibition at the gallery of Los Angeles-based artist Krysten Cunningham. This will include the presentation of her brand new video piece ‘3 to 4’ following its premiere at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds in March 2010.
Krysten Cunningham’s recent sculptures and video works continue her ongoing investigations into spatial perception and the expanded field of geometry, connecting a critical curiosity for formal structure and scientific theory in order to create a perfect balance between the physical, the intangible and the innately human.
The video ‘3 to 4’ is in many ways the continuation of her film ‘Hypercube’ (2006) where appropriated footage of a digitally animated geometric cube was used to illustrate the theoretical idea of 4-dimensional space. For this project, Cunningham has lifted the components of the Hypercube into real space and has directed a cast of dancers to physically articulate the geometrical concepts: line, plane, rotation etc. Six figures clad entirely in red, green and blue systematically create a Cartesian grid (XYZ) out of three similarly coloured wooden rods. The resulting sculpture is then passed hand-to-hand through a sequence of choreographed turning motions based on how the body interprets ideas of left and right, orthogonal space and foreign objects. Cunningham explains, “I wanted to merge ritual and physical movement to logic and scientific investigation. I had a theory that through a process of holding, passing and reconstructing the components of X, Y and Z that we might ‘touch’ or glimpse a new spatial dimension.” The use of the primary digital spectrum of red, green and blue (RGB) functions as a way of anthropomorphizing digital colour and flattening the distinction between the stylization of digital aesthetics and the natural environment.
‘3 to 4’ is about our ever-shifting experience of seeing, touching and perceiving. It is about the inversion of theoretical and real space, mirror images, co-ordination, the physical limitations of the body and collective process all perfectly unified by an ambient soundtrack by Los Angeles-based experimental musicians, Lucky Dragons.
The sculptural assemblages, ‘Axle’ and ‘Quercitron’ draw from readymade objects available to Cunningham in the studio combined with precisely worked materials such as hand-dyed yarns that are wound, woven and assembled. By arranging these objects on shelves, she continues her ongoing critical dialogue between the realms of art versus craft, between hard-edged formalism versus the softness of woven wool and the nature of sculpture as an essential means for communication. Alongside her inspiration from artists such as Eva Hesse, Rosemarie Trockel and Robert Smithson, she has recently cited the influence of Anni Albers, in particular her use of weaving as ‘text’ and her adherence to fibre and woven pattern as a kind of transfer of information or language.
Cunningham (b. 1973, New Haven Connecticut) received her MFA in 2003 from UCLA and her BFA in 2000 from the University of New Mexico. She has had solo exhibitions and projects with Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf and Dispatch, New York. She and has been featured in group shows including Bitch is the New Black at Honor Fraser in Los Angeles, Beyond Measure at Kettles Yard, Cambridge, UK, THING: New Sculpture from Los Angeles, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles among many others in Austin, Berlin, Brussels, Los Angeles and Zurich.
With thanks to the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds and the Durfee Foundation, Los Angeles, California.
