Los Angeles, CA...Terpicooniteen: (Please) Give Until Gone, a group show featuring the work of Jacob Melchi, Matt MacFarland, Tom Norris, and Jesse Benson will open ...... at Sixteen:One gallery in Santa Monica.
Despite their seemingly disparate art practices, the four artists brought together for the group show, Terpicooniteen, each in their own way address the problematic of intention versus reception. While the work of Melchi and MacFarland represents a portion of this polemic that is said to favor a reception-based practice, Norris and Benson often utilize strategies that privilege the artists' intention. Terpicooniteen (Please) Give Until Gone represents an attempt at finding a productive space between these two tropes of describing how meaning is produced. At the opening, Jacob Melchi will read short fictional stories from his project "SFP (stories for projection)" which is simultaneously an investigation of his own childhood memories and the contemporary art landscape in Los Angeles, taking the form of sculpture and photography. For this show, Melchi has cast himself as a component of his sculpture/photography installation. Also at the opening, Matt MacFarland's ice sculpture (an excerpt from his project "The Lost Artworks") will be on display amid the refreshments. Tom Norris will be showing his project "The Found Bird Drawings", which is a response to an earlier piece by MacFarland. Norris touches on the notion of sentimentality with a humorous book composed entirely of different people's interpretations of what a "lost" bird drawing may look like. In a project titled "Packaging", Jesse Benson will be displaying props from previous projects in a form that mimics minimalist sculpture and also alludes to painting and conceptual histories. This piece will be rearranged throughout the duration of the exhibition. Benson will also present "What Is Meant for Who Is Meant for Julio?" which consists of drawings on dollar bills inspired by a message that the artist came across during his daily life as a consumer.