Cortex Athletico

Nicolas Garait-Leavenworth

11 Apr - 25 May 2013

Exhibition view
NICOLAS GARAIT-LEAVENWORTH
I See A Stream Of Cars Where No Man Has Dared To Drive Before
11 April - 25 May 2013

Guests Guillaume Landron and David Malek.

The third and last part of a research cycle dedicated to history, fiction and space, I See A Stream Of Cars Where No Man Has Dared To Drive Before takes its title from a piece whose pretext and subtext are the Los Angeles River and the images it carries. Here, the river is used as a stream of consciousness — driving through the city to only catch glimpses of the water from one freeway to another. The piece aims to explore the different L.A. ecologies and the layers of narration they create within our lives and as well as the cultural objects that surround us. From the dried-up Owen Lake to West Ocean Boulevard, from gender to crime, from design to video game, I See A Stream Of Cars... crosses the no-nonsense laboratory for contemporary transactional realities that L.A. has become — through its architecture, homelessness, well-being, medication, sp ort, violence, self-sufficiency and green living, light and fiction, desert and attention, horrid roads and stunning outlooks, fame and the Tarpeian. Becoming by extention a mental construction of a labyrinth where everything seems scripted in advance.

A number of other works surrounds this hollow portrait of cities, including Home, shown for the first time in its entirety and dedicated to London one year after the 2005 terrorist attacks. Garait-Leavenworth has further decided counterbalanced overflows of images by inviting two artists to exhibit alongside him: American artist David Malek who plays with abstraction to both a total and fragile effect; and French artist Guillaume Landron, whose architectural sculptures are both mysterious and expressionist.

Performance Thursday 11 April 20.00, with Lucy Lovelace
It Was Very Saint Laurent As Seen Through a Laurel Canyon Haze

Low and high, bad or good, this performance will appropriately stage the ghost image of the River and aerial views of the city; clips from 24, Gerry, Flashforward, Mad Men, The Living End, Crash, Heat, Drive, Them!, A Bigger Splash, Mulholland Drive, The Shield, Southland, Terminator 2, Far From Heaven, Chinatown, To Live and Die in L.A., Inland Empire, L.A. Zombie, Zabriskie Point, Grease, Somewhere, hip hop and skateboard videos and family movies; as well as readings from Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, Michael Connelly’s The Narrows, Reyner Banham’s America Deserta, Romain Gary’s White Dog, Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man or James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning.