LACE announces its selection for the second Emerging Curators program, The Ecstasy of Mary Shelley, curated by Virginia Broersma, Nick Brown and Kio Griffith. As Los Angeles’ premier experimental non-profit exhibition space, LACE created this program to discover and promote curatorial talent. The three curators have worked collaboratively since 2014. Their project was selected from a pool of 48 proposals that reflect the diversity of perspectives of the arts community. The jury comprised Helen Molesworth, MOCA chief curator, and artists Ken Gonzales-Day and Simon Leung. The exhibition will take place in January 2017.
This intriguing exhibition will feature work by artists who are inspired by the split second insight when transformation begins. The title alludes to the striking parallel between the moment when an idea hits and the moment life is conducted into Dr. Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Shelley’s tale. Whether employing media in alternative methods or toying with history through proxy languages, each of the artists works in a space of ecstatic conductivity, a state of flux. Their subjects include ecstatic religious experiences, Satori or enlightenment, transmogrification, race, gender and sexual identity.
According to juror Ken Gonzales-Day, “The Ecstasy of Mary Shelley was selected in keeping with LACE’s long history of providing the Los Angeles community with exhibitions that showcase the experimental, the political, and the provocative. Unlike other exhibitions that have considered the issues raised by borders and boundaries in explicitly physical or political terms, this exhibition will expand and complement such inquiries by foregrounding the generative force of transition itself. More poetic than prescriptive, the exhibition suggests that we consider anew those states that might have been historically characterized as “monstrous.” The curators have selected artists who consider mutations, riffs in identity, revolutionary moments, and ecstatic longing as transformed into precious and potentially liberatory moments of change. “
Virginia Broersma is an L.A.-based artist, writer and curator. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at The LODGE and Autonomie in L.A. and at Fermilab, the nation’s premier particle physics laboratory in Illinois.
Nick Brown is an L.A.-based artist and curator who was born in England. His work has been exhibited at galleries and museums nationwide, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and The Drawing Center, N.Y.
Kio Griffith is based in L.A. and Japan. He works as a visual and sound artist, independent curator, writer, and producer. He has exhibited in the U.K., Japan, Germany, Croatia, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Turkey, Belgium and the U.S.
