A POSTURE OF LATENCY

October 7 – January 22, 2015
leeds college of art

A Posture of Latency, rephrases our established history of art and serves as a gesture of innovation in our ingrained culture. Whether through classical motifs, artifacts of the banality in the everyday, or our self-reflexive obsession with the moving image – we are stimulated through reactions to familiar objects by which we have been conditioned through society. These sensorial moments are not only how we perceive art, but our reality as a whole.

haseeb ahmed &
daniel g. baird
chris bradley
owen kydd

daniel g. baird &
haseeb ahmed

For the past five years artists Haseeb Ahmed and Daniel G. Baird have worked on the project Has the World Already Been Made? In October they will show the seventh iteration of their project. This frieze is a fragment of a façade from a structure Ahmed and Baird are realizing that is at least as big as the world– the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The artists have digitized all the elements in their archive by a 3D scanning process. By bringing these elements into the virtual realm their physical properties and scale are freed to morph and reproduce anywhere and anytime rather than be tethered to their place of origin. Each of their artworks collapses large geographic and temporal distance.

Daniel G. Baird lives and works in Chicago, IL. He has recently shown work at Hedah Gallery in Maastricht, Netherlands, The Institute of Jamais-vu in London, England, and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York, NY. He received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011.

Haseeb Ahmed is originally from the US, however he now lives and works between Brussels and Zurich. He has lectured on the methodologies of the hard sciences into his art production and exhibited internationally. He received his MFA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010.

This artwork was produced during the Penthouse Art Residency, generously supported by Hotel Bloom, a Harlan Levey Project in Brussels, Belgium.

chris bradley

Chris Bradley creates traditional cast bronze works of the familiar. Combining prankster instinct with serious craftsmanship, Bradley arranges prosaic objects in uncommon ways. Through elevating their importance, the objects become referential of themselves. The works are positioned to reflect the humor in our own nature and transpose themselves into the classical vernacular of sculpture-making.

Chris Bradley is represented by Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, IL. His most recent shows include Material Art Fair in Mexico City, Roberto Paradiso in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, North Carolina. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010.

owen kydd

Owen Kydd manifests a realm between the mediums of photography and cinema through the extension of time and movement. While capturing a studio built moment in apparent stillness, his films, or “durational photographs,” rely on motion– limited within the frame. With technology playing a larger role in the production and context of contemporary art, as well as our daily lives, Kydd aims to create a screen that holds our attention.

Owen Kydd, originally from Canada, lives and works in Los Angeles. He is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York. Recently, he completed an outdoor courtyard installation at Los Angeles County Museum of Art . He received his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2012.

“The search is what everyone would undertake if he were not stuck in the everydayness of his own life. To be aware of the possibility of the search is to be on to something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

WALKER PERCY, THE MOVIEGOER

A Posture of Latency, reveals research into the visual paradigm of our human consciousness. Whether through classical motifs, artifacts of the banality in the everyday, or our self reflexive obsession with the moving image – we are stimulated through reactions to familiar objects by which we have been conditioned through society. These sensorial moments are not only how we perceive art, but our reality as a whole.

The artists presented in A Posture of Latency share an interest in both archaic and contemporary views. Daniel Baird and Haseeb Ahmed utilize architectural motifs as the historical and physical basis for their sculptural work. Context, driven by location and “the moment,” create parameters for their work to exist. Much like the photographer Eugene Atget, who captured everyday life and architecture while historically documenting nineteenth century Paris on the cusp of modernism, Owen Kydd is fascinated with the landscape of Los Angeles storefronts. His “durational photographs” are a nod to the history of cinema and our fixation with the photographic image. Chris Bradley’s humorously rendered cast bronze work is a study on the everyday mundane. A few potato chips stuck in the wall are hidden beside full scale replicas of truck doors with finger markings in dusty surface detritus, as if to say, “Yes, I was here.”

The exhibition acts as a mode of understanding the current state of cultural production. Through the rethinking of the known, we are able to see beyond historical constraints and towards innovation.

kirsten harkonen

Kirsten is an artist, curator, and video producer who lives in San Francisco. She opened HungryMan Gallery in San Francisco during 2010, after her role as Director at Hyde Street Gallery. She has shown her work and participated in residency programs across the United States.

robin juan

Robin is an artist, curator, and designer who currently lives between New York and San Francisco. In 2008, she was a founding member of HungryMan Gallery in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. The project later expanded to San Francisco until 2012. She has participated in exhibitions across the United States.