De Soto Gallery introduces Pascual Sisto's Everything Must Go, an exhibition of video installation, photography, and sculpture. This will be Sisto's first solo show with de Soto.

Pascual Sisto presents a methodology for investigating the process of transformation utilizing repetition, manipulation and interruption to dislocate an object from its usual purpose. The title, Everything Must Go, stems from a multiplicity of implications, touching on subjects ranging from preoccupations with commercialism and consumerism to the theoretical plausibility of a second or recurring Big Bang. Using looped video collages and sculptural and photographic iterations, Sisto attempts to challenge expectations by shifting internal assumptions and questioning the apparent significance of an object when viewed outside of its original context.

With the proliferation of media in postmodern culture there is an increasingly pervasive presence of "things," especially visually, and a complexity of relationships among these things. Sisto considers the sublime in recurrent images that are a part of daily life and the impact of editing, both technically and conceptually, in a media-saturated society. By either successive duplication of an object or suspension of that object during a moment of transition, Sisto visualizes the psychological displacement involved in distinguishing the real from the imagined.

Salamander, a multiple channel video installation, compiles stock images and modified audio of explosions appropriated from the film industry. The explosions on their own are easily recognizable - what Sisto identifies as a "ready-mades." Layered one on top of the other and played in a continuous loop, their impossible arrangements take on an organic quality, literally illuminating the darkness and eliciting new import. This unexpected version of over-the-top Hollywood special effects is both dazzling and disorienting, and it hints at prospects of apocalyptic proportions.

Alternatively, Sisto's other works such as the photographs Untitled (Red) and Untitled (Yellow) seem less menacing with clouds of vivid color curiously hovering over open ground. The smoke, a signaling device created by smoke grenades, is suspended at the moment in time before it disperses and disappears into space.

Pascual Sisto holds a BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and a MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. His film and video work has been shown widely, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) in Buenos Aires and TVE (Spanish Television). Recent exhibitions include LA Freewaves at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Viper festival (Basel), 12th International Media Art Biennale WRO 07 (Wroclaw), MAK Center for Art and Architecture (Los Angeles), Bitforms Gallery (New York) and Telic Gallery (Los Angeles).