When Hangover Becomes Form

Featuring the first time collaborative installation between Scott Lyall and Rachel Harrison.

LACE is pleased to present When Hangover Becomes Form, a collaborative installation project featuring Toronto-based artist Scott Lyall and New York-based Rachel Harrison, curated by art critic and scholar Dan Adler. This project marks the first time either artist has ever collaborated and is the first time Harrison’s work will be shown in Los Angeles.

When Hangover Becomes Form incorporates found objects and handcrafted sculptural elements arranged in an expansive, environmental manner with Harrison and Lyall each contributing distinct sculptures as well as creating jointly conceived elements. This site-specific, collaborative work is directly informed by each artist’s penchant for blending fictional narratives with popular historical references as well as their respective Canadian and American cultural identities. Dan Adler, art critic, scholar and the exhibition’s curator, selected this pairing to find merging and overlapping points in their creative practices.

RELATED PUBLIC PROGRAMS
22 June 2006 | 7:30 – 9:30 PM

Artist Talk with Rachel Harrison and Scott Lyall, moderated by Dan Adler.

BIOGRAPHIES
Dan Adler is Assistant Professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Guelph. He is currently working on two book projects : a theoretical study of contemporary installation art and a historical critique of formalist art writing. He has published in the London-based academic journal Art History and regularly contributes reviews to Art in America magazine. His education includes a doctorate in art history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a fellowship in Critical Studies in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. He has taught previously at Hunter College, RISD, and the New School in New York. He was formerly senior editor of the Bibliography of the History of Art at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Since graduating from Wesleyan University in 1989 with a B.A. in Fine Art, Rachel Harrison has had solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2004) and the Milwaukee Art Museum (2002). Her work has been included in the 4th Berlin Bienniale (2006), and Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, 2004), the Venice Bienniale (2003), and the Whitney Biennial (New york, 2002). She has participated in exhibitions at the Migros Museum (Zurich, 2005), Westfalischer Kunsteverein (Munster, 2005), Brooklyn Museum of Art, (2004, 1997). PS1 Contemporary Art Center (2002, 200, 1998), and the Museum of Modern Art (2001, 1998). Her solo exhibitionChecking the Tires, Not To Mention The Marble Nude opened at Galerie Christian Nagel (Cologne) in May 2006. Harrison is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

Born in Toronto in 1964, Scott Lyall studied Commerce at Queen’s University (Kingston, ON) before enrolling in art school. In 1993, he received a Masters Degree from CalArts (Los Angeles). Since then, he has exhibited in Canada and internationally, most recently at the Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto). Other exhibitions include Oklahoma at York University (Toronto, 2002), and Washington Square and Plugged/Unplugged at Greene Naftali (New York, 1996 and 1998). He was the recipient of a PREA research award from the University of Waterloo (Canada, 2004) for a paper proposing his approach to the subject of abstraction. Named the episcene, this subject informs his participation in the current show, and culminated in a lecture for Scorched Earth (New York, 2005) to be published in Fall 2006 as a retrospective edition. Elements from a new project of work called an aaliyah are currently on display at the Susan Hobbs Gallery.

When Hangover Becomes Form is a co-presentation between Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver and LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions).