PRESS RELEASE: HOUSE MUSEUM
Office Kovacs and Alex Reed are pleased to present their curatorial project, House Museum, a group art exhibition spanning sculpture, painting, and domestic intervention.
House Museum takes place in a recently renovated home in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The home, originally built in 1924, has been renovated by Andrew Kovacs and Erin Wright of Office Kovacs. House Museum proposes a contemporary type of mixed use, as private space becomes public space for the duration of the show.
The exhibition brings together a number of works that use the home as a point of departure. Jackie Rines monumental work in ceramic and mixed material, “Curtain” renders a 1:1 scale window covering in glazed ceramic. “Curtain” is rooted in the domestic interior, while it’s sculpted folds evoke the rich history of classical heroic sculpture.
Eric Benjamins site specific project, a series of 8 painted suns collected from locations (including a pizza menu, a marble wall in Verona, Italy, a folk art textile from Alexander Girard's collection, etc.) then painted on 8 interior doors in Benjamins custom paint color, Cathedral City Grapefruit. Benjamins “lets the sun in”, readying this house for its next chapter.
The artists of House Museum all live in greater Los Angeles and collectively work between genres. House Museum includes work from Erik Benjamins, Ari Brice, Melissa Chhan, Doug Crocco, Alvaro Ilizarbe, Amelia Lockwood, Alex Reed, Jackie Rines, Ben Sanders, Amy Santoferrero, Robbie Simon, and Erin Wright.
House Museum is located in a residential neighborhood of Highland Park at 327 Livermore Terrace and will be open Saturdays 12-6pm and Sundays 12-4pm, and by appointment via , through December 1st. info@o-k-o-k.net
Ben Sanders is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, as well as commissioned by clients including Nike, Dropbox, Louis Vuitton, Bloomberg, and The New York Times. Sanders is an avid cook and gardener, and has worked extensively with people who have disabilities for over a decade. He attempts to fold these aspects of his life into his practice as much as possible.
Jackie Rines is a Los Angeles-based artist who primarily works in clay at a large scale. Her recent work addresses status symbols and power dynamics through the use of humor, opulence, and various genres of home décor that span from McMansions and ‘Dictator Style’ to home goods readily available at the outlet mall. Prior to attending UCLA for her MFA, Rines lived in Detroit. She has been awarded a Jerome Fellowship at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis and has been a resident at Henry Street Settlement in New York City.
Doug Crocco is an artist and curator based in Los Angeles, California. He has exhibited his work in New York, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Miami, Boston, and Melbourne Australia. He received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2003. He is currently producing artworks and operating the project space Big Pictures Los Angeles
Amy SantoferrAro born in Akron, Ohio, is the progeny of a carpenter and retailer. She received her M.F.A in Ceramic Art from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, New York in 2012. Amy is the current Lincoln Visiting Professor of Ceramics at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.
Erik Benjamins is a LA-based artist and writer. His work adopts textures and languages from visual art, performance, design, and writing to celebrate our relationship to place and its messy frictions. erikbenjamins.com / avoidingthebummerness.com
Erin Wright is a designer and curator living in Los Angeles, California. She earned a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M.Arch from The University of California, Los Angeles. Erin is currently an adjunct professor of Architecture at Woodbury University in Burbank, California. She also is co-founder of Binder Projects, a curatorial project based in Memphis, Tennessee.
Alex Reed earned his BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2011. Upon graduating, he was awarded the Fogelberg Fellowship from The Northern Clay Center. Alex’s work spans independent studio production and ceramic design for industry, having worked at Rookwood Pottery and Heath Ceramics. Alex’s work has been exhibited at the MAK Center Los Angeles, The Craft and Folk Art Museum, The Future Perfect, The American Museum of Ceramic Art, Big Pictures Los Angeles, and Marta.
Alvaro Freegums Ilizarbe born in Lima, Peru, is currently based in Los Angeles. Coming from an advertising and graphic design background, his work has a systematic approach to patterns and themes. His influences range from Yayoi Kusama to Keith Haring, with a parallel to pre-columbian linework.
Ari Brice is an artist who makes objects and installations that explore the territory between sight and touch. When he's not driving or looking for parking, he lives, teaches, makes, works, runs, and eats in Los Angeles - a real work in process.
Robbie Simon is an artist and designer working in Los Angeles, CA. Simon's career has its most notable origins in the music world where he's worked with artists such as Allah Las, Kevin Morby, Wilco, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, Sharon Van Etten, SURVIVE, Tinariwen, Max Richter, Django Django among many others. His work has crossed over to a wide variety of paths and clients including Stussy, Standard Hotel, Vans, Barbican Centre London, Pitchfork Music and Afar Magazine to name a few.
Amelia Lockwood is a visual artist whose use of ceramic processes, privileges trace, growth, mutation and chance. Lockwood received her BFA from Syracuse University (2012), completed post-bac studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder (2016),and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Melissa Chhan lives and works in Highland Park, Los Angeles. She works across printmaking, print media, artists' books/book arts, zines, natural dyes and textiles. B.A., Book Arts at University of California, Santa Barbara
Office Kovacs is a design studio based in Los Angeles, California. O.K. works on projects at all scales from books, exhibitions, temporary installations, interiors, homes, speculative architectural proposals and public architecture competitions. The mission of O.K. is not to bring people to architecture, but rather to bring architecture to the people. In other words, we aim to design for a broad appeal to a broad audience, while still engaging issues within the discipline of architecture. The recent design work of Office Kovacs includes a proposal for a network of parks in the downtown Los Angeles alleys, a large scale art installation entitled Colossal Cacti at the Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival and an experimental camping pavilion in the Morongo Valley Desert.