Past (but still online, please scroll down):

PATHOLOGICALLY SOCIAL

Organized with Mark Verabioff

January 22nd - EXTENDED through April 11th 2021

Online and in person by appointment

NEW: PATHOLOGICALLY SOCIAL ARTIST TALKS (click here)

With:

Monika Baer / Gerry Bibby / Juliette Blightman / Jenny Borland / John Boskovich / Bjorn Copeland / Homosexuals Anonymous, Cruise Or Be Cruised / Owen Fu / Felix Gonzalez-Torres / Michelle Handelman / Rachel Harrison / William E. Jones / Terence Koh / Duane Michals / Shahryar Nashat / Senam Okudzeto with Peter Handschin / Henrik Olesen / Pruitt-Early / Ben Rivera / Amanda Ross-Ho / Dean Sameshima / Jacolby Satterwhite / Agathe Snow / Tobias Spichtig / Adam Stamp / Brad Urman / Mark Verabioff / Hannah Weinberger / Bobbi Woods 

The exhibition, Pathologically Social, unfolds over time and across platforms. The sneak peek launched on Gallery Platform:LA is really only the trailer for the larger picture. O-Town House is open (by appointment) with artworks waiting with bated breath for brave visitors, but the show expands and flexes further - here, on this very website.

Here, even more awaits the curious gallery-goer. Pathologically Social spills out from the confines of the brick-and-mortar gallery onto these pages. The adventurous viewer can slip into THE DARKROOM and feel their way around through the exhibition’s video program.

Pathologically Social embodies a dynamic and often mutable gathering (or party?) where a motley gang of personalities co-mingle with the late arrivals and unexpected guests. Pathologically Social is an event, in the words of John Boskovich, “where drama flourishes abundantly!”

HERE’S A WALK-THROUGH:

(THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE)

(PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSH SCHAEDEL)

HENRIK OLESEN

Wearing the words of Dante Alighieri, Henrik Olesen’s 1 (2016) stands guard at the gates of Pathologically Social. Only a nod and slight sidestep is required. The dress-code here is self-awareness-casual. As a wise man once wrote, “marking the point at which a life becomes confused or where confusion becomes a sort of guide or way forward.”

GERRY BIBBY

Like a cautionary tale, Gerry Bibby’s glass poem-sculptures hover over a complex, cut-it-up-tactic of linguistic suspicion: both generous and corrupt. His unique outward model of concrete poetry reveals his humor and heart to be borne through acts of civil disobedience and steadfast optimism often cleverly disguised as fervent rancor.

… in case of emergency …

SHAHRYAR NASHAT

MARK VERABIOFF

PRUITT-EARLY

As part of Artwork for Teenage Boys - the now-legendary 1990 exhibition at 303 Gallery - these six-packs have been proudly decorated with decals of the Grateful Dead, marijuana, profanity, sex and motorcycles. These ’80s-era decals casually evoke the oh-so-trendy boredom and apathy of a generation. Oh, alas! How fashionable to be both gay and working class! *

( * insert emoji here. Did they have emojis in 1990? Did they even have sarcasm?)

BJORN COPELAND

The PSTD (short for Pop-STD) sculptures are a loose conglomerate of ideas that stem from seeing the parallel ways in which coastal and urban environments seem to assemble seemingly random objects into curious configurations. The secondary motivation behind the work, largely explores the idea of formal homogenization, and how that relates to the ways in which modern methods of communication effect art and music practices globally, and contribute to a lot of work ultimately looking very similar. - BC

DUANE MICHALS

With his book, Homage to Cavafy (1978), Duane Michals published a selection of 10 poems by Greek poet, Constantin Cavafy (1863 - 1933) alongside 10 of his own photographs. The photographs do not necessarily correspond directly with the selection of poems, but they find a beautiful affinity in their mutual embrace of melancholic desires. Both Cavafy and Michals paint a moving landscape of nuanced human experience while surrendering completely to a nebulous and entirely personal notion of LOVE (and all it’s mess).

“Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” 

    - Kenny Rogers and The First Edition

One Condition begets the other. Our current Condition is compulsive, unpredictable and obsessed with the Condition refusing to accept the abridgments put onto those habitual inveterate outings within the walls of the Western cultural arena. 

With frenetic and contemporary promiscuity, the Condition is incorrigible, yet reluctant to accept, acknowledge and adjust. Slithering across forbidden private thresholds has never been more taboo or more suspiciously delicious! 

Pathologically Social is the social proxy which our wildest dreams are made of, but also, potentially, could conjure a sig-alert into the darker rooms of our worst nightmares. But isn’t that an exhilarating state to find oneself in alignment with? 

This story is just about to get good….

Devoid of choice, we trudge on. Almost compulsively, sometimes haplessly, but often emboldened by the nebulous path that lies ahead, the journey continues forward. 

There are totems along the road, left by others traveling similar trajectories with equally uncertain destinations. These social proxies are beacons throughout, yet precariously nestled within the shifting void between abstraction and figuration. Their silhouettes, still emerging, are looking for definition by way of those passing through. 

RACHEL HARRISON

Hold on… Just because you passed the unmoved bouncer… Surprise STUD! Her leaning geometry divulges a latent yearning (aching) for her load-bearing neighbor (the wall). But not unlike a singer holding the microphone out to her singing stadium audience, Rachel Harrison’s Brown Stud stands resolute, quite comfortably holding the room. What a Stud!

MONIKA BAER

Wondering what to wear to your next costume party? Forget the powdered wigs and masks.

Find a thin tree branch somewhere on the ground and just hold it front of your face.

Others may inquire: “What are you dressed as?”

“Oh. I’m: Bad At Hiding."

DEAN SAMESHIMA

Referring to the painting, Untitled (647d)), as a ‘documentary painting’, Dean Sameshima decisively locates his impulse to document in a fear of loss - of losing something important. Social activities, no matter how circumstantially taboo, shape the physical world we live in. This new series of photographs, being alone, show (mostly) empty spaces designed and built for social activities, but also document an endangered breed of public space. While similar spaces have all but completely disappeared in the US, the photographs of being alone, taken in the artist’s new home in Berlin, document a different kind of para-technology social potential. 

Scarlet is actually a really brilliant color.

Dean Sameshima, being alone, 2020-21, unique grid of 6 archival inkjet photographs, each 11.75 x 8.25 inches (click to enlarge)

Please join us for a moment in THE DARKROOM:

WILLIAM E. JONES

Matinee idols, estranged assistants, (ex-)lovers, chronic optimists, die-hard debbie-downers, tricks of the trade, wallflowers, attention whores, couch potatoes, unmoved bouncers, hopeless romantics, hot pockets and cold fish. 

The coat check is full.

AGATHE SNOW

Agathe Snow’s Lover's Portrait series (2010) was originally shown at Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, in 2011. These sculptures are moving totems to the people who came into the artist’s life. One of the works from this series, Dash, was acquired by the Guggenheim Museum’s permanent collection. Here a beautiful pull-quote from the Guggenheim’s website: “Across this range of mediums, Snow has maintained a pointed interest in community, whether local, national, or global. She regularly engages its flaws and imagines its ultimate disintegration, but above all, she focuses on its promise and power.”

JACOLBY SATTERWHITE

JOHN BOSKOVICH

TERENCE KOH

BOBBI WOODS

We’ve all been the girl who fell asleep the party, only to wake up on the floor, make-up smeared, dignity in disarray.

Every Dean Martin needs his Jerry Lewis counterpoint.

Every Jackson Pollock painting destined for museum walls started flat on its back on the floor… just sayin…

MICHELLE HANDELMAN

…please come up:

the exhibition continues upstairs…

BRAD URMAN

BEN RIVERA

TOBIAS SPICHTIG

SENAM OKUDZETO & PETER HANDSCHIN

( NEW! LATE ARRIVAL!!! )

Works by Senam Okudzeto staged and photographed by Peter Handschin.

Performed by Peter Handschin, Thibault Lac, and others in January and February 2021 in Seltisberg, Switzerland

Music by Ozo “Bells of Anambra” (1975)

The series of watercolours by Senam Okudzeto depict a series of so-called ‘dick-pics’ sent to the artist over the years from various ‘suitors’. These paintings were recently acquired by friend, collaborator and collector Peter Handschin, who installed the works throughout his home. Okudzeto commissioned Handschin to photograph the works in-situ in his house, and Handschin in turn invited dancer and artist Thibault Lac and others over for some photoshoots. The above slideshow of photographs are the result of this inspiring collaboration.

JENNY BORLAND

Jenny Borland was originally on the artists list because she was going to sit on the sofa, smoke cigarettes and be pathologically social with everyone who would listen. Unfortunately, Jenny has since moved her gallery operation (Jenny’s) to New York City, visitors can still curl up with her likeness. The photograph was taken by Mark Verabioff at his home in Los Angeles.

OWEN FU

FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES

(WITH JULIE AULT)

Note on the Portraits

The portrait is a sequence of words and dates evenly spaced as a continuous line painted directly on contiguous walls just below where the ceiling meets the walls. The initial portrait content consists of formative moments selected by the subject to which Gonzalez-Torres sometimes added historically and culturally significant events and determined its sequence.

The owner of the work (who is not necessarily its subject) has the right to add or subtract entries with their corresponding dates to or from the portrait at any time. The owner has the ability to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to assign this right to an authorized borrower.

(taken from the publication accompanying the three-part 2016 exhibition curated by Julie Ault and Roni Horn)

ADAM STAMP

On Falling

I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything

-Katy Perry

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. 

-English nursery rhyme

Falling is something we tend not to be fully aware of, as it’s happening. It is something we can’t quite grasp until it has happened; we don’t realize we really have fallen until we find ourselves lying down, our legs up in the air or our face on the floor. 

We might fall as we are not paying enough attention to our surroundings, as much as the exact opposite, the world around us is just too marvelous to stand on both feet, without stumbling. We don’t properly experience having fallen for someone, until it’s often too late; we say we have fallen in love, only once passed the point of no return, the threshold of eternal commitment. 

Falling is magnificently elastic in its loss of control and composure: we can fall down, fall behind and fall over in prismatic nuances of movement; its variations involving a freely, usually downwards-like imbalanced maneuver. Yet falling may imply not only spatial, bodily movements, but the motions of the soul and the spirit’s mutations of state, such as falling apart, falling asleep, falling in love. 

The act of falling itself, as it happens, walks the fine line between control and the acceptance of its impending loss. In this disappearance of balance, ideas of letting go and of losing composure start bubbling to the surface. 

If one way of experiencing composure implies reacting to an excess of excitement, the act of falling and its consequent loss of control, might be a short cut away from opening ourselves up to the event in its totality. It strikes right at the feeling of letting go – a release of our self-control, an invitation to surrender. But what actually happens when we fall? What happens when we give up that vigilant self-control? And may we regain that excitement we had been refusing all along, just before the fall?

(Marta Fontolan)

JULIETTE BLIGHTMAN

AMANDA ROSS-HO

..and like sand through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives…

But just in case this wasn’t glaringly obvious from the beginning, we are dealing with a WORK-IN-PROGRESS here. So please, excuse our dust, and stay tuned for more. Picture a house party: some guests arrive early, others show up late. And there are always those unexpected guests that show up and make a scene. Pathologically Social is prepared to accommodate all of them!

We wouldn’t be here without them!

We’re glad you came.

Stick around - who knows what the night has in store…

NEW: PATHOLOGICALLY SOCIAL ARTIST TALKS (click here)

O-Town House, 672 S Lafayette Park Place, Suite 44, Los Angeles, CA, 90057