Shirley Tse "Sink Like a Submarine" @ Shoshana Wayne

If you are in LA this month and can only see one gallery show, check out Shirley Tse's show at Shoshana Wayne. Shirley is one of my favorite LA artists as she has been able to reach beyond much of the theory that many of her contemporaries trip up on. Here work is always seductively provocative. And who doesn't love plastic?

"...This exhibition is a meditation on the materials and forms of ancient and modern militaristic objects. There are three ways in which Tse translates this process into sculptures: the literal incorporation of rejected resin machine mounts that were to be used in a submarine, the adapted form of tank tires, and the tangential use of the loom, a structure that aided the design of the first computer, todays military technologys origin. Material technology presents itself simultaneously as seductive and threatening because in itself it is indifferent to human usage.

The Jacquard loom was a marvel of the Industrial Revolution. A textile-weaving loom, it could also be called the first practical information-processing device. The punched card made possible the programmability of machines. Jack of Heart 2007, a sculpture that resembles a loom, consists of a roll of vinyl sheet that has been shredded and stretched over a white plastic structure. It can be read as constructing and destructing all at once.

Sinks Like A Submarine 2006 combines found submarine parts, their cast replicas, and their imagined ancient counterparts to form an encasement for a jade heart. The result presents a strangely figurative mutation that could also be registered as an oversized broche.

This exhibition continues her research interest in plastic: how this substance, a product of technology, shapes our contemporary mentality with regard to issues of nature, simulation, disposability and mobility. This will be the first time Tse combines natural and synthetic materials together in a single work."

via Shoshona Wayne