To celebrate the closing of Barbara Stauffacher Solomon’s exhibition Relax into the Invisible, L.A.-based artists Emily Mast and Barnett Cohen present an afternoon of dance and theater inspired by Solomon’s unmatched sensibility.
Barnett Cohen takes up Solomon’s artist book Utopia Myopia: 36 Plays On A Page to stage a theatrical reading of select texts, which Solomon describes as “Typography & Pornography, Lines & Lies & Clues to Use Nonsense Invents Events.” These short, pithy (and all-ages-friendly) plays have never before been staged and Cohen’s actors will, for the first time ever, bring them off the page. These absurdist plays delve into everything from mass media, Hollywood, and Anderson Cooper to European émigrés, history, ecology, angels, palm trees, and legs!
Drawing inspiration from Solomon’s artist book Read Any Good Boots Lately?, Emily Mast choreographs a group of dancers to interact with and move through the artist’s sculptural installation. In her book, Solomon—who was trained as a dancer before beginning her career as a graphic designer—describes a “flashy chorus-line [that] covers hovers a seriously silly history. Her-story. How high-heeled red boots make her feel free.” As Mast’s dancers make clear in a series of vignettes, “Red boots make the invisible extraordinarily visible.”
Barnett Cohen originally received formal theatrical training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He then embarked upon a career as a visual artist employing a wide-range of media—sculpture, painting, video, installation, and performance–-that collectively serve as meditations on the space between thought and the self and between the self and the body. His work has been exhibited at such venues as 356 Mission, Human Resources, Pieter Space, Mast on Fig, House of the Book, and The Neutral VDL House (Los Angeles, CA), Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), City Limits (Oakland, CA), Cathouse FUNeral, JDJ, The International Center for Photography (NY), and La Galerie SEE Studio (Paris). He received a BA in English literature from Vassar College, an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and was recently in-residence at the MacDowell Colony.
Emily Mast has staged “choreographed exhibitions” and presented live performances at various venues including: STUK, Leuven, Belgium (2018); The LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2018); Human Resources, Los Angeles (2018); FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, France (2017); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria (2017); The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2017); the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2016); La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel (2015); Mona Bismarck American Center, Paris (2015); Silencio, Paris (2015); LACMA, Los Angeles (2014); The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York (2013); the Galeria Luisa Strina in Sao Paolo, Brazil (2013); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2012) and Performa, New York (2009). She lives and works in Los Angeles.
These events are made possible through the generous support of Margaret Morgan and Wesley Phoa. Organized by Catherine Taft.
