FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Charles LaBelle – Fieldworks September 7 – November 3, 2007 Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 11 am-5 pm
Abstract and formally beautiful from a distance, up close the pieces reveal a wealth of detail. Each work focuses on a specific site where LaBelle has obsessively photographed the ground beneath his feet, literally mapping the “field.” The sites themselves are significant. In “Fieldworks- Silverlake,” for example, the images are taken from the interior of a house in Los Angeles where LaBelle spent a month’s holiday with his girlfriend. In contrast, “Fieldworks- Koreatown” and “Fieldworks- Lower East Side” focus on sites in the city- a stretch of sidewalk and urban park, respectively- where murders took place. Together the two series present dichotomies of interior and exterior, private and public, horror and ecstasy, love and death. However, they are ultimately joined by an overarching interest in the human body and a fascination with locating traces of our subjective passage through the world. Looking closely at the individual works we discover close-ups of such things as used tissues, socks, underwear, shoes, latex gloves, cigarette butts, plastic spoons, Q-tips, bits of food, chewed gum, used condoms, urine and blood stains- signs and signifiers of the body dispersed through space. Combining aspects of the flaneur, the tourist and the crime-scene photographer, LaBelle’s “investigation” is both an index of a given space and a chronicle of a specific, fleeting moment. As LaBelle has stated: “I’m interested in the way the events that happen at these sites are so quickly erased. Bloodstains are washed away and passion fades. These pieces are about holding on to those heightened moments but also about reconciling their loss.” Widely exhibited, LaBelle’s work has recently been seen at The Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, Artist’s Space, New York, Anna Kustera Gallery, New York, ArtPace, San Antonio, Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley and Chisenhale Gallery, London. This will be his third exhibition with the gallery. |