Project Row Houses

Curated by Los Angeles Artists Edgar Arceneaux (Director of L.A. Watts House Project) and Nery Gabriel Lemus, Round 33 focuses on themes of cooperation, dialogue and sharing and their relationship to three generations of Los Angeles based artists: Edgar Arceneaux, Andrea Bowers, Charles Gaines, Olga Koumandourous, Nery Gabriel Lemus and Rodney McMillian.

With a long history of collaboration with one-another, each of the participating artists attended CalArt (California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA) and studied under Artist, Charles Gaines. Their art has been influenced by Gaines’s interest in the postmodern sublime and the figure of metonomy. Their practice has been shaped by CalArts training, which emphasizes bringing different art forms together, allowing them to cross-pollinate while fostering collaboration. With CalArts as the starting point, these artists’ work have developed as their relationship with one another has evolved from student/teacher to assistant/mentor to collaborator.

Six of the Artist Project Houses will be dedicated to the artists own personal projects and the “seventh house” will display the ideas generated by their interaction. As a matter of coincidence, the Seventh House is also significant in astrology as the house of COOPERATION and OPPOSITION. It encapsulates the challenges and conflicts arising from a close one-on-one relationship of any kind: how you relate in one-on-one partnerships, relate to those who openly oppose you and intimate relationships which require cooperation and compromise with another’s needs.