April 3 - May 1, 2010
Opening Reception April 3, 7-10 pm

Laurel Beckman
New Vowels New Fools! (13 times to feel you)

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to announce the exhibition of a new project by southern California artist Laurel Beckman. New Fools! presents 13 characters derived from the empathy-eliciting body gestures of classic clowns. The typographic-like characters, mutant offspring of international logotypes and street writing, are noble fools.

The exhibition presents a suite of thematically linked works- clown clusters buoyed atop beach balls, an animation in three acts, souvenir felt characters, and the debut of the “Anamorphic Tuner”, with its related graphite drawings; and fancies the 13 lead characters as speculative vowels that encourage silly and messy behavior in the face of scary times that may otherwise prompt reserve.

At the conceptual heart of the exhibition, the animation in three acts presents a sad clown head with no body, a slapstick-paced middle act where the clown/character bodies (with no heads) perform with props that provide narrative possibilities for our identification with them, and finally, the characters drift in space with their props trying to keep up. The characters (fools!) and their props are poised between the grounding of a stage floor and the fickle protection of the curtain in everyday actions that evoke sustenance, pleasure, support, violence, recognition, and shelter.

Inspired in part by Caleb Coppock’s Graphite Sequencer, the “Anamorphic Tuner”, is a turntable rigged to play graphite drawings of the 13 characters rendered in anamorphic distortion. The turntable’s cartridge has been replaced by wires that track the electricity-conducting graphite to signal an audio feed. In the center of the turntable is a reflective cylinder that corrects the anamorphic distortion of the drawings.

In each of its parts and taken in whole, New Fools! furthers the artist’s investigation of strategies of display, language, propriety and empathetic relations, while playfully enlisting the space of the stage, screen, and street.

“Laurel Beckman has been making, what she calls, “public” and “wall” works throughout her career. These parallel practices inform her unique voice…By using these modes of public display, Beckman makes her sentiments accessible, her dialogue public and her personal expression political…. It’s challenging to work with digital media. We associate it with its commercial use as an information system or a source of entertainment…Beckman’s approach has different intensions than many. Her penchant for scientific systems makes her ideas clear, while lessons learned from signage contribute to user-friendliness. The flatness of the screen’s grid, the shakiness of the mouse drawn line...are wholeheartedly embraced. This confounds any of the slickness associated with the medium. But her use of collage with these techniques leads to abstract thinking. What’s fascinating is how these disparate elements breathe together in her compositions, the warmth of her hand and the awkwardness of the machine married in a naïve elegance.” (Ryan Hill, Curatorial Research Associate and Manager of Interpretive Programs, Smithsonian Institution Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; excerpt from essay on Beckman’s “The Biggest Seed Fruit Nut in the World: On Coconuts and Housing”, 2008)

Laurel wishes to thank Jay Lizo, Joel Sherman, Megan van den Bergh, Alejandro Casazi, Kevin Kelly, Andy Weinberg, Michael Schmitt, Terri Parker and Terri Zitnik for their invaluable support and assistance realizing the project.