Night Gallery and Los Angeles Review of Books are thrilled to announce a new reading series centered around artists and their exhibitions.
But, But…Butt is a celebration of new work by artist MPA. Series Collapsed is an exhibition of sculpture, photographs, and performance by MPA on view from July 8th – September 13th. With her artistic practice grounded in performance, MPA investigates questions surrounding power and the impact of social and political forces on the body. In Series Collapsed, the artist examines the overwhelming precarity of contemporary life, contemplating the cycles of violence that have shaped human history and perpetuate ongoing conflicts on interpersonal and collective levels.
Join us for an evening of readings from Gabi Abrāo, Agnes Borinsky, Harry Dodge, and Ruth Madievsky whose work explores concepts that intertwine with this exhibition.
Gabi Abrāo is an artist, writer, and digital creator that was born and raised in West Los Angeles. Her chapbook, Notes on Shapeshifting, is available from Not a Cult. She is also known under her Internet username, sighswoon. All of her life’s work is devoted to developing a language with the invisible.
Agnes Borinsky (she/they) is a writer, performer, and theater-maker, based in Los Angeles. Her projects include many plays (The Trees, A Song of Songs, Of Government, Ding Dong It’s the Ocean), experiments in participation (Working Group for a New Spirit, Weird Classrooms), and fiction (Sasha Masha). She lived and worked in New York for many years, where she made work in institutional theaters and outside of them, in basements, backyards, circus tents, and community centers. She leads workshops every once in a while on impossible writing.
American writer and visual artist Harry Dodge’s book of literary nonfiction, My Meteorite: or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing—which was described as “truly beautiful” by Dazed, a “high-pressure, poetic approach to narrative and language” by Frieze, and named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times—was published by Penguin Press (US) and Harvill Secker (UK) in 2020. Dodge’s sculpture, drawing, and video work have been exhibited at venues nationally and internationally; his solo and collaborative work is held in numerous institutions including Museum of Modern Art, NY. In the early 90s, Dodge co-founded the now-legendary San Francisco community-based performance space, The Bearded Lady, which served as a touchstone for a pioneering, queer, DIY literary and arts scene.
Ruth Madievsky is the author of a novel, All-Night Pharmacy (Catapult, July 2023), and a poetry collection, Emergency Brake (Tavern Books, 2016). Her work appears in The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, The Los Angeles Times, GQ, Guernica, and elsewhere. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as an HIV and primary care clinical pharmacist.
