FOCA (Fellows of Contemporary Art) presents Water Marks Seeping Through Concrete
On view from October 5, 2024 – November 30, 2024
Water Marks Seeping Through Concrete challenges conventional narratives on marginalized identities by delving into spaces, languages, and everyday lives shaped by Western hegemony. These historical narratives eliminate the specificities of individuals, cultures, and histories that don’t belong to “the norm,” leaving space only for further marginalization. The proposed exhibition brings together a collection of creative, adaptive, yet persistent practices that critically examine how those false perceptions about othered beings, such as immigrants and queer individuals, have been perpetuated by authorities. The featured artists interweave layers of power dynamics surrounding naming, physical labor, and institutional space. The exhibition presents creative and poetic approaches to reappropriating remnants from the past and scaffolding alternatives to the concrete norms of contemporary American society. Through video, sculpture, and installation, Jisoo Chung, Woohee Cho, and jinseok choi intricately merge their own experiences with historical accounts. Jisoo Chung playfully incorporates her voice, body, and personal encounters in a video that traces the origins of the plant, Miss Kim Lilac. This experimental documentary explores the dynamics of geopolitical agents involved in the plant’s importation to the US from Korea, delving into the complex aspects of naming. In Looking For Museum Fun, Woohee Cho explores queer intimacy while reimagining a museum space as a queer cruising site. A bathroom stall, constructed from insulation foam, houses the artist’s intimate memories, participant’s handwritten reflections on relationships, and documentation of an uninvited performance. In the Creatures series, jinseok choi sews together scrap fabrics collected from Los Angeles garment factories to create creatures that embody collectivity while preserving the fabrics’ original shapes, textures, and colors. The soft sculptures’ distorted forms, shaped by the irregularities of the fabric pieces, are animated by breathing movements, evoking the everyday labor and bodies of the factory workers. By unearthing tactile and intimate stories from the past, these artists and works challenge dominant historical narratives and shed light on the marks and traces left by overlooked yet resilient voices.
About FOCA
Fellows of Contemporary Art (FOCA) is a non-profit, membership-based organization that is devoted exclusively to California contemporary art with more than 45 years of archives. Founded in 1975, FOCA was associated with the Pasadena Art Museum. Today, completely independent and well respected in the art community, FOCA continues its 50-year tradition of funding influential exhibitions for California curators, contemporary artists, and their exhibitions.
Curator Bio
MOTOR is an artist-run initiative operating within and around the greater Los Angeles area. Applying experimentation as its point of ignition, MOTOR explores unconventional approaches to artistic presentation while embracing practices of temporality, modularity, and play. MOTOR encourages the overlooked and complex by cultivating communal engagement and collective experience through micro-programming. MOTOR was founded in 2021 by jinseok choi, Alberto Keossian, aol, and Alan S. Tofighi.
Contact
MOTOR
Email: motor.losangeles@gmail.com Website: motorla.online
Instagram: @motor.losangeles
