Spirit of the Times Walkthrough
with Alicia Piller and Scarlet Cheng
Saturday, November 23
3pm
Lowell Ryan Projects
4851 West Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
Space is limited, please RSVP at alicia-piller-walkthrough.eventbrite.com
Los Angeles-based artist Alicia Piller’s first solo exhibition Spirit of the Times features an expansive installation of several large-scale, intricate sculptures throughout the gallery. Alicia Piller uses sprawling and knotted fields of latex and vinyl in her installations and wall works. The combination of raw materials, photographs, and news clippings twist together to form a kind of fragmented mirror of the current state of America. Her work references the trials and tribulations of this country’s history and offers optimistic glimpses of a possible future with bright colors that show signs of life and proliferating forms that show signs of growth. Piller weaves into the work references to nature, family, capitalism, colonialism and industrial production in pieces that span the personal and the political. For additional information about Spirit of the Times, please visit www.lowellryanprojects.com/alicia-piller-spirit-of-the-times
Los Angeles based artist Alicia Piller envisions historical traumas, both political and environmental, through the lens of a microscope. Her sculptures and installations conceive of past atrocities, suffering, and accomplishments as biological forms–broken down to a cellular level. A variety of materials including vinyl, latex balloons, and photographs, are employed to examine the energy around wounds societies have inflicted upon themselves and others. Her subject matter is often informed by her studies in anthropology and her sculptural process by her time in fashion and leather-working. Alicia Piller received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in the spring of 2019.
Scarlet Cheng is an arts writer and college professor of art and film history. Currently, she is a columnist for Artillery Magazine and a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times, as well as other print and online publications. Previously, she has been an editor at Time Life Books, managing editor of Asian Art News in Hong Kong, and film festival programmer. For the Smithsonian Institution she programmed “China’s New Cinema,” their first Chinese film series. She has been a judge for San Francisco International Film Festival, and has authored a number of monographs and exhibition catalogs. She teaches at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA, and ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA.
Street parking is limited, ride sharing is recommended.
