Duet: Saturday, 16 November 2013

Duet: Ruben Ochoa and B.J. Vogt
November 16, 2013 – February 15, 2014
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 16, 6pm-9pm

Announcing new exhibition space Duet and the inaugural opening with Ruben Ochoa and B.J. Vogt on Saturday, November 16, 6pm-9pm. Duet is an exhibition series and curatorial endeavor devoted to meaningful pairings between an artist from St. Louis and a carefully chosen complimentary artist from another city, offering up both a comparison and contrast of the cultural landscape that influences each of the artist’s work. Located in Grand Center, the series will include artists working in a variety of media and exploring subjects unique to their geography. This curatorial project underwritten by Ken and Nancy Kranzberg; whose support of local artists has been a sustained commitment for over twenty-five years, allows artists valuable exposure to new audiences within and beyond the region.

Ochoa’s forms rise like the skeleton of the tripods from a War of the Worlds machine. One of L.A.'s most notable young sculptors, Ochoa employs a grittily vernacular formal lexicon (walls, fences, concrete, the materials of road building, manufacturing and construction) -- though instilled with elements of playfulness, elegance and grace rarely achieved by, say, the Missouri Department of Transportation. The piece is a beautifully nimble concoction of pallet and rebar, suggesting the gleeful liberation of a construction yard.  B.J. Vogt’s narrow shelf of sandwiched 2x4 beams present a horizon line that cuts the exhibition space in two, unhooking the ceiling from the floor.  Between the 2x4’s layers of color ooze out like the exhalation from empty space as painterly ectoplasm. This disorientation is partly due to the loss of a stable horizon. With the loss of horizon also comes the departure of a stable paradigm of orientation, which has situated concepts of subject and object, of time and space. Our traditional sense of orientation—and, with it, modern concepts of time and space—are based on a stable line: the horizon line. Its stability hinges on the stability of an observer, even if in fact he is not.

Duet
3526 Washington Avenue
Suite 300
St Louis, MO 63103
www.duetstl.com