Open Walls # 2: Lisa Anne Auerbach, Kara Hearn, Amy Robinson, Heather Rowe, Josh Shaddock, Gibb Slife

White Columns is pleased to present the second installment of our “Open Walls” exhibition series. “Open Walls #2” is an exhibition of new work by six emerging artists based in Los Angeles, San Francisco/Bay Area, and New York. The artists are Lisa Anne Auerbach (Los Angeles), Kara Hearn (Bay Area), Amy Robinson (Los Angeles), Heather Rowe (New York), Josh Shaddock (New York), and Gibb Slife (New York). Taking the gallery’s existing architecture as its starting point – White Columns’ main space consists of six distinct walls, which are interrupted by five separate entrances and exits – “Open Walls #2” will consist of six autonomous, and unrelated installations. With each artist’s work occupying one of the gallery’s six walls/spaces, the “Open Walls” series might be thought of as a response to White Columns’ ongoing “White Room” series (1983 – present) which presents an artist’s work in a singular, isolated context. “Open Walls” instead seeks to foreground six distinct projects within the framework of a shared environment. “Open Walls” might be thought of as an “anti-group show” – in so much as no consideration has been given to the relationships between the six artists, or the work that they might display. “Open Walls” attempts to foreground difference, privilege diversity, and ultimately, resist homogeny.

Lisa Anne Auerbach is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Her presentation includes seven recent knitted sweaters that address the ongoing conundrum that is the recent ‘war on terrorism.’ Additionally she has produced a knitted commemorative banner to celebrate the opening of ‘Open Walls #2.’

Kara Hearn is an artist based in the Bay Area, CA. Her presentation consists of 14 recent short films, each of which shows the artist re-enacting movie scenes that – at various stages in her life – made her cry. The project originated from a misunderstanding of an ‘assignment’ originally set by the artists Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July on their ‘Learning To Love You More’ website.

Amy Robinson is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Her works take the form of watercolors based on the designs of book covers for a number of science fiction classics. Adopting a uniform font Robinson has created a cryptic alphabetic and numerical code that disrupts the books original texts.

Heather Rowe is an artist based in New York. Her work takes the form of a quasi-architectural installation that is in part derived from an original design by the early 20th Century visionary architect Bruno Taut.

Josh Shaddock is an artist based in New York. His works include a video that show a jazz drummer accompanying – via headphones – a recording of a comedians act; and an altered clock, whose title ‘Second Hand’ is both self-reflexive and self-referential.

Gibb Slife is an artist based in New York. His work ‘Slow Burn’ scrambles, across six screen-printed mirrors, once current events – in turn creating new, elusive historical narratives set across space and time.