Aspects of Life in the Doomsday System

As apocalyptic images stream in from Baghdad one has to question where the current system is leading us and what place art has within it. The four artists in this show: Stephen Berens, Kelly Poe, Farhad Sharmini, and Lincoln Tobier, have fairly diverse practices, however, each of them delineates an aspect of life in a system that seems hell-bent on death and subjugation.

Berens’ two books, “Out Along the Horizon” and “Here, There and Sometimes Here”, detail the space of the city as representational formats. Poe’s reworking of Eliot Porter’s, “Birds of North America”, looks at the natural world as a managed social creation. Sharmini’s ironic articulations of class and power poke fun at sculptural and graphic formalism as well. Lincoln Tobier’s ruminations on the loss of the public sphere take many forms, from temporary radio stations to the ongoing sculptural project, “(It all comes together in) Ruckus L.A.”, a delirious model of the city based on an aerial photograph.