objet A.d
E + Z = objet A.D / Object 80 (LXXX)
Formed by E. Reisig (b. 1993: Los Angeles, California) and Z. Baker (b. 1991: Salem, Massachusetts), “objet A.D” marks the couple’s collaboration. Beginning in 2023 with the solo exhibition of Sinclair Vicisitud, objet A.D operates as the gallery’s curator. Positioned at the frontier between artist, exhibition, and artwork, their curatorial work functions as an extension or translation of the double form of their combined practice. Inhabiting this relational mode is a way of tracking the drifting limits of the work of art against figural, biological, institutional, cultural, economic, and political limits staked between bodies along symbolic, imaginary, aesthetic, (art) historical, and material registers. Between them, a body is found beside itself: split, holed, haunted, healed. A primordial work of rupture, repair, and revolution.
Their practice centers on indistinctions between artwork and work (labor), as well as ambiguities between psychic and material processes, resources, or economies. The work (of art) produces (art)work. At Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, their curatorial role combines their distinct backgrounds and trainings in order to advance the gallery’s program through research, writing, and documentation, as well as construction/installation of subjectiles and the gallery-space.
Their artistic practice begins autobiographically, but ends-up wandering through someone else’s dream (or someone else’s reality). Drawing on experiences ranging from psychiatric hospitalizations and arrests by police to lovers’ trysts and family dinners, their work examines (figural and material) bodies as seams between lucidity and delirium, regulation and insurrection, memory and hallucination, familiarity and alienation. But these experiences or memories are always corrupted, already recorded-over again and again. This double-transcription is echoed in the back-and-forth mark-making or recording of two bodies along a single work. An eclipse. Presence and absence.
Curatorial Statement:
“We work with positions and questions of orientations, realities, relations, and economies of bodies through whatever means possible. We follow cycles of insurrection and resurrection, of upheaval and rebirth. We organize our curatorial work around artforms that challenge regulatory, hierarchal, and oppressive systems. Through transmissions of others, we display the anatomies that deconstruct or overturn encounters with extractive forces of consumption, accumulation, and (dis)integration. Our trajectory gravitates towards practices that work against repressive forms through material, embodied, and process-driven artworks across all mediums, with a particular focus on works that disrupt normalized modes of observing, limiting, recording, or timekeeping. We work with a body as the horizon of work (with others).”
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Curated Exhibitions, Presentations, and Projects with the Gallery:
+ Claudia Rega, Frantz Jean-baptiste, Grant Falardeau, Xiao He, Daniela Soberman, Rudik Ovsepyan, Sinclair Vicisitud. Other Days. Group Exhibition. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). March 2 – April 6, 2024.
+ Saun Santipreecha. PER/FORMATIVE CITIES | A Nest of Triptychal Performances. Off-Site Solo Installation (Co-Producer: Luc Trahand). Curated by Camilla Boemio (Presented by objet A.D). AOC F58 Galleria Bruno Lisi (Rome). February 29 - March 15, 2024.
+ Rudik Ovsepyan, Suwichada Busamrong-Press, Erica Everage, Sinclair Vicisitud, objet A.D, Chris Reisig & Leeza Taylor. After. Off-Site Group Project. The Culver Hotel (Culver City, CA). Winter - Spring, 2024.
+ Ibuki Kuramochi, Marley White, Allison Arkush. A Tender Limb. Group Exhibition. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). January 27 - February 24, 2024.
+ Suwichada Busamrong-Press. Chapter 2: A Long Way Home. Solo Exhibition. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). November 18 - January 5, 2024. [Catalogue]
+ Ari Salka, Erica Everage, and Kento Saisho. Skins, Holes, and Hovels. Group Exhibition. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). October 14 – November 11, 2023.
+ Rudik Ovsepyan. Magaxat | Survey (1976 - 2023). Historical Survey. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). August 26 - Sepetember 23, 2o23. [Catalogue: (Part 1, Part 2)]
+ Saun Santipreecha. Dandelye—or, Beneath this River’s Tempo’d Time We Walk. Debut Solo Exhibition. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). July 1 - July 29, 2023. [Catalogue]
+ Daniela Soberman, Keywan Tafteh. No Plateaus. Dual Exhibition. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). May 20 - June 17, 2023. [Catalogue]
+ Rudik Ovsepyan, Sinclair Vicisitud, Chris Reisig & Leeza Taylor, objet A.D. Wake. Political-Economy Project. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (San Francisco Art Market). April 20 - April 23, 2023. [Catalogue]
+ Sinclair Vicisitud. I write on walls to talk to you (The Shape of the Throat Croaks). Debut Solo Exhibition. Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (Los Angeles). March 25 - April 15, 2023. [Catalogue]
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CV.
+ Interview with The Art & The Artist (May 2023; by Philip Johnson).
+ Interview with Art Squat (September 2022; by Laura Siebold).
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Z. Baker (B.A. Hampshire College; M.A. Comparative Arts: Indiana University, Bloomington; -Ψ Researching Non-Analyst: Lacanian Psychoanalysis.)
E. Reisig (Hampshire College; Otis College.)
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History and Material:
Using primarily oil, charcoal, chalk and clay as base materials, they work between painting, drawing, and sculpture as the basis of their practice, evolving conceptually organized bodies and experimental processes or projects. At the same time, the processes and threads that emerge through the primary materials of their practice give way to interstitial works carried-out through relational, conceptual, or contextual paths.
Their first group show was in 2020. They then began working on a collaborative project with relatives at Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (established in Los Angeles in 2020). Through this project, their work has been exhibited at international fairs while also being presented in a series of dual exhibitions. Recently executed conceptual/structural works include Cold Cuts: First Contact—or, Dozens Killed (Reisig and Taylor Contemporary: 2023), and Blue Print (Reisig and Taylor Contemporary: 2023). Current group exhibitions include Ghost Pit (PE Gallery: Taipei) and The [LA] Living Room (D2 Gallery: Los Angeles). (These two group exhibitions include painting/drawing as well as performance.)
Selected Works:
Projects with Reisig and Taylor Contemporary:
Closed Exhibition.
Blue Print
Gallery Structure (0)
Duration: May 6 - May 12, 2023.
Location: 2680 South La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034.
Type: Gallery Structure.
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Isaac Newton
Diagram associated with the Law of Universal Gravitation
From: A Treatise of the System of the World (London: for F. Fayram, 1728).
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Reisig and Taylor Contemporary is presenting Blue Print, the first installation in a series of “Gallery Structures” constructed by the gallery. The exhibit(ion), Gallery Structure (0), will be open for one week only (with special hours running Monday through Friday 12:00pm to 4:00pm).
The series of Gallery Structures is a critical and formal curatorial engagement with the structure of the gallery. Without identified artists, and without authorized “artworks,” the series situates a literal encounter with the space of the gallery as a work (of art) in itself. Habitually, the gallery is often regarded as a non-conscious or passive space where art is propped-up or placed; however, the materials, motifs, and histories of the gallery-space are always already structuring the possibilities of encountering an artwork (and pre-configuring the perspectives of observation). This series shows the ways in which the gallery circularly writes itself (writing). This is an effort to build a gallery and curated program that is capable of viewing itself… of giving an account of itself.
As the initial inquiry into the questions of the agency of the gallery-space, Blue Print is the gallery’s way of putting the (invisible or otherwise understated) act of the gallery (back) into the spaces, times, and systems at work in the physical housing and location of Reisig and Taylor Contemporary at 2680 South La Cienega Boulevard. Directly, “Blue Print” asks: What is the structure of the gallery? What is the structure of the curatorial act? And, how can these structures be deconstructed, exhibited, endured, shown, or demonstrated without repressing its underlying processes and components?
Responding to these basic questions of space, time, and exhibition, the work forms an immersive “blueprint” of the gallery by awakening latent elements and perennial forms permeating the gallery’s structure, dreaming what the gallery conceals in the silence of its sleep. This is a work with the presences and absences of the gallery-space. Marking time, each work will change form throughout the course of the exhibit.
{Built by objet A.D (object 80).}
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Closed Exhibition: June-August 2022
Last Evenings On Earth
The works selected for this exhibition show a subtle ambivalence between beginnings and ends through tangled forms of disfigural figures and non-linear lines. Between hard-stops and burn-outs, the conflicted strokes that form these figurative works bring out the uncertainty of a blind spot circulating in, around, and as the body (and its double) in relation to the space it reaches out to transform. By proportioning a space by a body’s unfolding around an immutable absence, these works call into question the spatial and temporal interrelations of something that is nascent and something that is nowhere, while also interrogating the limits of figuration as an act in itself—an act which, ultimately or initially, brings about the dis/appearance of a void in that which is resembled. Verging on nothingness, the figures linger in the twilight of a body arriving at the start of an end.
The title of this exhibition is inspired by the title of Chris Andrew’s translation of a collection of short-stories by Chilean Author Roberto Bolaño (the text draws from two previous collections: Llamadas Telefonicas (1997) and Putas Asesinas (2001)).
Dual Presentation (Phase 4).
Otherwise than Being
2021
Bronze
5.5 x 4.75 x 4.5 inches
Limited Edition of #1 of 13
2021
Charcoal, Chalk, Oil, and Oil-stick on Paper
14 x 17 inches (35.6 x 43.2 centimeters)
No.0001 in series: “Future A\I\nteriors” -2020-
What We Do When You’re Not Awake—or, In Want of a Warning to the Western Wold: Why We Think Getting Killed By Cannibals is a Kind of Kindness (and In Accord With All the Other Common Courtesies Concerning the Prevention, but Not the Cure of, Kuru)
2021
Charcoal on Paper
18 x 24 inches (45.7 x 61 centimeters)
No.0001 in series: “Hol(e)y Shows and Folks You Know” -2021-
On Her Majesty’s Midnight Request Line—or, Sovereign Power and Bare Life
2021
Charcoal and Oil-stick on Paper
14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 centimeters)
No.0100 in series: “The Logic of Species” -2020-
Chasing Tail, Pulling Hair, and Howling at the Moon—or, the Formative Figures of the Family Man
2021
Oil-stick on Paper
11 x 14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 centimeters)
No.0000 in series: “Blueprints for the Afterlife” -2018-
All Pent-up and on Plenty of Pentobarbital at the Peoples Temple—or, the Ballad of Jim Jones
2022
Oil-stick on Paper
24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.7 centimeters)
No.0001 in series: “Homo Sacer\Still Lives” -2020-
Tunnel Visions In 8/4 Time—or, the Angles of Social Construction and the Curvature of Popular Tradition Along the Corners of Architectural Acquiescence
2021
Oil-stick on Paper
14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 centimeters)
No.0000 in series: “Homo Sacer\Still Lives” -2020-
Watchfiends, Rack Screams, and the Parallel Positions of the Perspendicace—or, L’Ard et la Hume: an anticipatory anti-grammar against Lewis Carroll (and apposite Antonin Artaud)
Closed Exhibition: March-May 2022
And the Night is Also a Sun
You higher humans, what do you think? Am I a soothsayer? A dreamer? Drunkard? A dream interpreter? A midnight-bell?
A drop of dew? A haze and fragrance of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? Just now my world became perfect, midnight is also midday—
Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun—be gone! or will you learn: a wise man is also a fool. — Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra)
The works selected for this show play with the conscious and unconscious (super-)positions of (non-)persons, (non-)places, and (non-)things. Presenting the unrealities of realities, the dual artists of objet A.D work at the limits and interstices of painting, sculpture, and drawing in order to bring about the necessary surrealities and surreptitious signals of bodies between (recognizable) states.
Dual Presentation (Phase 3).
Charcoal, Chalk, Oil, Oil-stick, and Oil-pastel on Paper
17 x 14 inches (43.2 x 35.6 centimeters)
No.0000 in series: “Future A\I\nteriors” -2020-
What the Thunder Says to West End Girls—or, “We who were living are now dying… With a little patience”
Unavailable (Private Collection: Seattle)
Charcoal, Chalk, Oil, Oil-stick, Oil-pastel, and Gesso on Hardboard
36 x 36 inches (91.4 x 91.4 centimeters)
No.0000 in series: “Cocoons and Concubines” -2022-
Why There's Never Any Shade At Night—or, What Worms Weave Only Counts for Thieves
Unavailable (Private Collection: Los Angeles)
Gesso, Charcoal, Chalk, Oil, and Oil-stick on Hardboard
29 1/16 x 23 3/16 inches (73.8 x 58.6 centimeters)
No. 0000 in series: “Manifest Ecstasy and the Way-Out West (Vitruvian Colonies)” -2019-
Girls Gone West—or, When America Went Wild: the Lost and Fawned-Over of the Filthiest Frontier
Charcoal, Chalk, Oil, Oil-stick, and Oil-pastel on Paper
24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.7 centimeters); framed: 30 x 23.75 inches
No. 0000 in series: “Hol(e)y Shows and Folks You Know” -2021-
The Queen's Two Bodies—or, An Anachronistic History of Rumor and Gossip Since the First Recorded Cleavage
Unavailable (Private Collection: Los Angeles)
Gesso, Charcoal, Oil, Oil-stick, and Oil-pastel on Hardboard
24 × 30 inches (61 × 76.2 centimeters)
No.0000 in series: “This Little Blue Doll" -2020- (series title inspired by line from poem by Alejandra Pizarnik)
All Night I Make Night In Me—or, the Record of a Cliff and the Ribbon of a Dream
Gesso, Charcoal, Chalk, Oil, Oil-stick, and Oil-pastel on Hardboard
30 x 24 1/8 inches (76.2 x 61.3 centimeters)
No.0000 in series: “Madmen and Specialists” -2021- (series title inspired by play by same name written by Nigerian author Wole Soyinka)
The Thirteen Series of the Superstitions of the Young Girl; or, What it Means to be Moonstruck When it’s Always Already Night
2021
Gesso, Charcoal, Chalk, Oil, Oil-stick, and Oil-pastel on Paper
24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.7 centimeters)
No.0001 series: “The Logic of Species” -2020-
Biting Time and Being Bidden In Search Of Something To Be Scared Of—or, the Abomination of the Act and the Assimilation of Substance through the Lack of a Lapse of Symbolic Logic in Latin (which is to say, “Cervux Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi…”)
Charcoal, Chalk, Oil, Oil-stick, Oil-pastel on Paper
14in. x 17in. (35,6 x 43,2); 22.5in. x 28.5in.: framed
No.0000 in series: “Late Suppers and Last Meals” -2021-
Opiates and Masses--or, that's Why I'll Still Be Sick From Stone Fruit When It's the Second to Last Evening On Earth
2021
Charcoal, Chalk, and Oil-stick on Paper
11 x 14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 centimeters)
No. 0010 in series: “Green Dahlias” -2020-
Deerly Beloved ‘Till Debt Do Us Part—or, What the Corinthians Said to St. Paul When They Couldn’t Read His Writing (and All the Other Reasons Why We Are Gathered Here Today)
2021
Charcoal, Chalk, and Oil-stick Paper
14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 centimeters)
No.0000 in series: “Blank Dahlias” -2020-
One Might Make You Smaller, But A Bunch More Makes You Tall—or, the Non-Sequential But Nevertheless Consequential Arithmetic of the Two Ways Alice Never Wandered Down the Rabbit Hole Once She Started Wondering How She Wound-Up In Another Wor(l)d
Charcoal, Chalk, and Oil-stick on Paper
14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 centimeters); framed: 27.5 x 23.5 inches
No.0010 in series: “The Logic of Species” -2020-
Hunger, Thirst, and How to Receive Your Daily Dead--or, Why We Only Eat What We Want (Once We've Been Weighed)
“We begin with an exhaustively studied gesture, pose, or image (often working from life and photography), but we always end-up misremembering, dismembering, and reimagining a subject through each other’s superpositions. Whatever image we begin with always becomes something else, somewhere else. We pick-up the traces, remains, and residues the other leaves behind as the ever-changing subject of a piece. Eventually, the work refers only to itself. Splicing dreams, fantasies, and realities, we tend to mix what we are told not to combine: the familial and the erotic, the sterile and the filthy, the ornamented and the unadorned, the living and the dead…. Æffectively our work operates as a circulatory system between stranded strangers, families, children, lovers, animals, objects, impulses, and ghosts. Between figural renderings and gestural imprints, our marks form postictal, dreamlike spaces and bodies, appearing disfigured through blurred shifts—and frozen stand-stills. Suturing our split actions and doubled perspectives, we string parallel worlds together, realizing drifting figures and non-orientable views of the physical room or psychic reality a body takes-up.”