Dara Friedman: Mother Drum
Charles Harlan: Jon Boat
March 31–May 13, 2017
Opening: Friday, March 31, 6–8pm
Kayne Griffin Corcoran
1201 South La Brea Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90019
Dara Friedman: Mother Drum
Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present a new work by Dara Friedman, Mother Drum, filmed throughout the summer of 2015 on the Swinomish Reservation in Washington, Coeur d’Alene Reservation in Idaho, and Crow Agency Reservation in Montana.
The genus of this project was a 2014 archaeological dig in downtown Miami, where Friedman is based, which uncovered the remnants of the ancient, aboriginal city of Tequesta. The contemporary city, dense with high-rise developments, had for the most part ignored the history of its native inhabitants. But this sacred ground lies directly beneath the condos that populate its skyline, surrounding this site, encasing it in steel and glass.
The following summer, Friedman placed an advertisement on PowWows.com, asking Native American Fancy Dancers and drummers to take part in her project, and traveled to pow wows in the West to meet with those who replied. The film, Mother Drum, is a result of those meetings.
The people in the film participated explicitly for Friedman’s camera, separate from the larger events taking place at the pow wows. The power of the drum is the central, healing character throughout Friedman’s work. In the artist’s words, “the dusty and undeniable metaphysics of the drum embody the Earth’s heartbeat; the beats vibrate a person’s bones until they are both with and beyond themselves.”
Born in 1968 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, Dara Friedman now lives and works in Miami. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York; MOCAD, Detroit; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; The Kitchen, New York; Kunstmuseum, Thun, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Friedman will be the subject of an extensive retrospective at the Perez Museum in Miami, opening in October 2017.
Charles Harlan: Jon Boat
Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present Jon Boat, an exhibition by Charles Harlan. This will be Harlan’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and with the gallery.
For this exhibition the artist will present a new body of sculptures in a site-specific installation incorporating the gallery’s courtyard as well as the South Gallery.
The eponymous sculpture in the exhibition is installed outside of the gallery’s front doors, and consists of a jon boat standing perpendicularly like a tombstone. It is inlaid with a single piece of hardwood, which is pierced by two holes that interact with the daylight like abstract sun dials on the lawn.
Inside the gallery is a large reflecting pool installed on the floor that acts as a stage for two additional sculptures. The water reflects refracted images of the pieces–exhibited on pedestals just above the waterline. One work is a small boat filled with stone and the other is a pillar made of stone and steel. The final sculpture in the exhibition is a diving board with a stack of firewood that strikes an uncanny balance between utility and leisure. Like fishing.
Charles Harlan was born in Smyrna, GA in 1984. He lives and works in New York. Select solo exhibitions include JTT, New York; Rudolph Janssen, Brussels; Carl Kostyál, London; Karma, New York; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; Venus Over Manhattan, New York; and Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn. Select group exhibitions include Marlborough Gallery, New York; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta; White Flag Projects, St Louis; Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York; M Woods, Beijing; and Maccarone, New York.
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