Alejandro almanza pereda biography of martin
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There’s something fun and funny about live houseplants in contemporary artworks.
Live plants takes the edge off of self-serious contemporary art. By growing or dying, plants challenge the static condition of art-hood and the illusion of timelessness. Their standardized pots clue the viewer in to their status as ready-mades. By referencing consumer culture, decoration and domestic life, there is an appealing familiarity. Houseplants strike me as unpretentious and welcoming.
Won Ju Lim. Ruined Traces, 2007. Installation with projections, vitrines and artificial houseplants. Patrick Painter Gallery, Santa Monica, CA. Image Source: Art Rabbit, feature on LA art by Courtney Shermer, Oct. 16, 2007. (Granted, these aren’t live houseplants, but I included them because they function the same. Plus, live plants wouldn’t survive an exhibition run such a dark space.)
Simon & Tom Bloor: As Long As It Lasts. Installation view, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK.
Mos
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Issue 39 February 2025
PST ART
Cai Guo-Qiang’s WE ARE
—Chelsea Shi-Chao Liu
Grief is a Filipino
Boxing Match
Adaptive Theory
Ecofeminism
—Ashlyn Ashbaugh
Interview with
Dashiell Manley
Reviews
at Art + Practice
—Allison Noelle Conner
Jonathan Casella
at Gross! Gallery
—Tina Barouti
Scientia Sexualis
at the Institute of
Contemporary Art,
Los Angeles
—Ashton S. Phillips
Demetri Broxton
at Patricia
Sweetow Gallery
—Taylor Bythewood-Porter
Post Human
at Jeffrey Deitch
—Zoey Greenwald
Evan Apodaca
at Grand Central
Art Center
—Aaron Katzeman
Issue 38 November 2024
(Re)claiming Sanctity
Black Backstage
—Shameekia Shantel Johnson
To Live and Work in L.A.
Alternative Art Spaces
—Keith J. Varadi
Collective Memory and
Coded Histories at the sextionde
Venice Biennale
Interview with
Andra Nadirshah and
Ste
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Chert Gallery is pleased to present ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword, or by third hand smoke’, the first solo exhibition in Europe of Alejandro Almanza Pereda.
Alejandro Almanza Pereda’s practice questions objects of common use and their ability to overturn aspects normally connected with their production, consumption and use, and consequently their potential to overcome their idiosyncratic nature.
Almanza’s work displays a set of interacting objects forming an improbable balance system. In his universe, no definition or connotation is taken for granted.
He constantly plays with the moment before disaster, that time of illusory balance that reminds us of the vulnerability of things. The viewer is confronted with a suspended reality – an eternal second doomed by a sense of fragility perceptible in his work as well as in the outside world.
One of the most interesting aspects in Almanza’s installations is the context in which he runs his investigation of the limi