TEXT / The Eyes Have No Cash / Galerie Yukiko Kawase, April 29th - May 29th 2010
For his second solo exhibition in Paris, Andres Laracuente has created a rhythm of kinesthetic thought in a new series of photographs and sculpture. The artist grounds light-weight objects and procedures which are disassociated with the physical by marrying them to an especially earthly form of Juju. Throughout the exhibition Laracuente leans heavily on the word "model" taking it for many turns, cross pollinating hand models, the prototype, and social models of technology, communication, fashion and desire.
The four photographs of the hand modeling series feature human hands saturated with pigments of RGB. They are unexpectedly paired with their intimate counterparts of interface in the form of printed images. Images of specialized wipes used for cleaning wood, leather, and steel are modeled alongside keypad components removed from the interior of mobile phones. Without picture making abilities, Photomodel is like a haptic camera. The artist replaces micro-processors with red clay leaving only the optics, the LCD, and the camera's armature. This work would suggest the photographic image is crude, base and modeled like an object, while emphasizing the memory of the body.
Ford Tracer, implicit of foot worship, Henry Ford's Model T, and the fashion model is a fragile clay form shaped from the underside of the high heel shoe. With this work and throughout, Laracuente creates an underlying relationship to the earth and the ground. In the work Extended Vibration: Intercourse two twin mobile phones vibrate continuously, spinning slowly like the minute hand on a clock. Of a make and model from the recent past, the perpetual motion of the mobiles begin to create a choreography of human relationship and communication. The work is an unanswered endless call from a familiar void, and absurdly persistent.
Andres Laracuente, (b. 1982) is a New York based artist working primarily with moving image, performance, sculpture and photography. He has presented works internationally at venues including P.S.1 MoMa in New York, Autocenter in Berlin, Projet Midi in Brussels, the National Gallery of Arts in Albania, and Brown Gallery in London. An advocate of the strange, he continues to drop in on unexpected spaces. Laracuente graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.