Through two sculptures distributed evenly between the project spaces at Susanne Vielmetter, Olga Koumoundouros makes a convincing argument for the expanded conceptual field of assemblage sculpture. Though clearly invested in a certain prevalent aesthetics of the makeshift and haphazardly compounded, Koumoundouros' work manages to stay on message, to make plain its symbolic ambitions and execute them with remarkable formal efficiency.

This is especially the case with Great Expectations, 2008 which consists of a lone, petite chandelier thrust into one gallery corner by the intersection of two aluminum beams covered in tar. Those structural beams, all muscular architectonics and force, and the chandelier, particularly delicate in its compromised state, seem mutually out of place in Koumoundouros' manufactured reality; nonetheless they combine to create a concisely impactful visual effect. What ultimately elevates them is the compelling ways in which their functional conditions in real space find surrogates in their life as art: In the gallery too the beams do all the graceless work; the chandelier reads as extraneous, decorative.

- Nico Machida

Images top-bottom:  Olga Koumoundouros,"Great Expectations" 2008, Aluminum, tar, jacks, chandelier; Olga Koumoundouros, installation view featuring "Bootstrap," 2008, Stained glass, silkscreen, gold leaf, wood, 45" x 65" and "The Wreck of the Hope, after Caspar David Friedrich," 2008, Mixed media sculpture, Approximately 43" x 70" x 27."  All photos by Robert Wedemeyer.  Images Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects)