"of Intricacy (LAX)"

curated by John David O'Brien

with work by

Nena Amsler, Daniel Brodo, April Durham, Jacqueline Freedman, Erika Lizée, Cielo Pessione, Joseph Santarromana, Elizabeth Saveri, Hoàng Vu

            This was an exhibition of artists who all make artwork that is carefully, painstakingly and intricately built up through accumulation, layers and additions. Rather than privileging the idea(s) at the source of their work, they allow the physical results of their art to leave us dumbstruck, without a language or narrative to precisely describe what is happening before our eyes.

            Collectively, their philosophy is distant from a reductive or minimalist credo. Their efforts are highly personal, utterly distinctive and persistently unique. Likewise their forays into intricacy represent a moment in time, not a movement over time. I appreciate them allowing me to collect them as a group, with the sole intent of watching my elaborate curatorial mes-en-scène collapse happily into their far more astonishing and elusive (ungraspable) artworks.

            The Los Angeles World Airports Arts Exhibition Program is housed in the halls and display cases of the LAX Airport. This busy facility is filled with travelers moving to and fro, back and forth. This exhibition afforded them the luxury of a brief pause in their flow. It offered those in transit a motive to step out of their reasoned trajectories and programmed movements, to engage the imagination and to delve into these studies of intricate and complex visual meanders.