Aleksandra Domanovic, Turbo Sculpture, (2010-13), all photos courtesy The Mistake Room

The Mistake Room Los Angeles presents Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue, the second chapter in a series of four exhibitions, featured as part of a long-term research initiative launched by the space. This multiyear project spotlights the experience of millennial generation artists from the Global South who, through a lens of postmemory, explore the media through which the past is transmitted across time and space. The exhibition investigates how traumatic histories play out in the practices of contemporary artists, often whose experience of these histories is indirect—inherited through the images, narratives and objects of preceding generations. Curated by Cesar Garcia and Kris Kuramitsu, A Prologue features video pieces from four artists situated in non-western cultures, chronicling both events, relations and practices not typically included in the art historical canon.    In animating the enduring consequences of colonization, nationalism, ethnic wars, globalization and the legacy of racism, these artists engage in a complex meditation on their cultural heritage and identity politics, and embrace history as a site of reflection and reinvention.

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Oscar Murillo, Distribution Center (Installation View), via Art Observed

The newly opened Los Angeles Gallery The Mistake Room is inaugurating its downtown space with Oscar Murillo’s Distribution Center, a show of recent works by the artist.  Murillo, who is only 28, is perhaps best known for his large-scale paintings, if not for his young age and recent rise to the upper echelons of the art market. Here, his signature style is quickly noted, with canvases bordering on sculptural assemblage, debris and ephemera from his studio and travels are directly transplanted on to the canvas. Even in their installation, very few works happen to hang directly on the wall. Instead, they litter the floor and table surfaces like large, mis-matched carpet tiles, creating a kind of multi-layered horizontal work across the length of the room.

Oscar Murillo, Untitled (2014), via Art Observed (more…)