LAXART

LA><ART Gallery Two

Guest curated by Lia Gangitano

April 21 – May 19, 2012

Closing Performance: Saturday, May 19^th, from 6-8pm

Lovett/Codagnone: Hanged

LA><ART Public Billboard

On view facing North on La Cienega Blvd., from April 30 – May 27

For nearly twenty years, John Lovett and Alessandro Codagnone have worked collaboratively as Lovett/Codagnone. Their work in photography, performance, video, and installation explores power relations, both as manifested in explicit cultural signifiers, or in more clandestine practices. At once tender and violent, Lovett/Codagnone’s provocative works explore the delicate balance between private play and the inevitable negotiation of power, particularly the ways in which power comes to play within social structures – within relationships, family dynamics, and public space – to focus on intimacy and the construction of desire.

Make Anarchy and Disorder Your Trademarks further elaborates a consistent evolution in Lovett/Codagnone’s work, tracing a trajectory from the use of self-reflexive strategies, to specifically address issues of collective identity and the absorption of underground tactics of resistance. In the gallery, a group of performative objects, including bullhorns and a convex mirror, imply a fetishization of power in relation to a collective that must be controlled. The objects insinuate both protest and apathy, or an urgent yet futile proposal to act. The ubiquitous circled “A” forming the Anarchy symbol, already drained by repetition in the public sphere, is further deprived of its public history, in the form of a domesticated quilt. Outside, (on view facing north on La Cienega Blvd. in between Washington and Venice), a billboard depicts a fallen American flag.

About the Artists

Lovett/Codagnone is an artist team based in New York. They have been working together since 1995 using photography, performance, video, sound, and installation. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Museo Marino Marini, Florence, 2012; recent performances have been presented at the ICA Philadelphia, 2010, Judson Memorial Church, New York, 2010, and the ICA Boston, 2007. Recent solo exhibitions include: September Galerie, Berlin, 2011; Sculpture Center, New York, 2010; Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, 2009; MoMA PS1, New York, 2008. Their work has been shown at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, Holland; the Ludwig Museum, Cologne; De Appel Centre for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam; Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst, Berlin, and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, among others.