RELAX MOBILE ANXIETY

Video Installation by Pascual Sisto as part of the Los Angeles Art Show

At LAAS 2015, Volvo Cars of North America has collaborated with Freewaves to highlight the work of Pascual Sisto, an artist living in Los Angeles and representing the digital edge of contemporary art.  Freewaves has repeatedly shown his videos, including during How Can You Resist at the Hammer Museum and during Hollywould on the boulevard; as well as a permanent piece in the Bradley Terminal at LAX’s See Change in the International Arrivals area. Shown at the LA ART SHOW are his video installation Push/Pull (my luck is your misfortune) and latest video works on monitors from his Expanded Series. Sisto has created a site specific multimedia installation inside the booth to function as expanded environment in which to experience the connections between the two works.

Pascual Sisto
Push/Pull (my luck is your misfortune)

Two video projections face each other in a darkened room. A never-ending, tunnel-like flow of automobiles passes from one screen to the other, approaching in white and receding in red. These opposing, kaleidoscopic images create a suspended state for the viewer, neither coming nor going, in the space in between. These seductive automobiles that overwhelm L.A. are complemented with digitally enhanced plants, tranquil in the aftermath. The video animations, printed carpet and custom painted set walls match the color and patterns of the plants to allure viewers into an expanded synthetic environment. The photographic and the synthetic co-mingle, asking the viewer to sort the realities from the forgeries so easily combined.

Pascual Sisto
Expanded Video Series

About Pascual Sisto

Pascual Sisto is an internationally recognized artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Highlights of his recent noteable international commissions include: a commission by Michael Tilson Thomas, former conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, to create a unique video scenography for the New World Symphony in Miami; a commission by architect Thom Mayne to create multiple video works at the Centre Pompidou; and a commission by the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department to create a permanent installation of 29-channel video at LAX airport.

Recent other exhibitions include: Smart Objects (Los Angeles), Five Car Garage (Los Angeles), Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena), Prism Gallery (Los Angeles), Garage Projects at the 54th Venice Biennale  (Venice) and Seventeen Gallery (London). Sisto holds a BFA from Art Center College of Design and a MFA from UCLA. In 2011 he was selected to attend the summer residency in Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was the recipient of the 2012 California Community Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship.

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN HERE AND NOW
Curated and introduced by Suzy M. Halajian
A video screening & conversation
Produced by Freewaves
Thursday, November 20, 8-10 pm
Hollywood Hookah Lounge
6512 Hollywood Boulevard, LA 90028, next to LACE
As part of the Los Angeles / Islam Arts Initiative (LA/IAI)
Free Event

Freewaves presented Somewhere between here and now, an evening of video works and conversation curated by Suzy M. Halajian as part of LA/IAI. Artists included Basma Alsharif, Marwa Arsanios, Marwan Hamdan, Joe Namy, Christine Rebet, and anthropologist and filmmaker Joanne Nucho. LA/IAI was a first-of-its-kind city-wide initiative on Islamic Art.

As one of the concluding events of the LA/IAI series, Freewaves offered a situation cultivated for deep viewing and dialogue of artists’ videos exploring complex layered histories and locations far from Los Angeles, but seen daily through the news and media sources. Simple views of distant societies mask the multi-faceted, significant, and profound. History builds layers and angles on the famous corniches, common roadways, café lives, and nighttime paths. Raconteurs come out and tell their confidential stories, whether true or false.

Somewhere between here and now included:

Christine Rebet (Paris/New York) A Lullaby, 1:48, 2012
The screening starts with Rebet’s appropriation of John Cage’s A Lullaby (1993), mimicked by a parrot, whose recital strips the words of their specificity while urging the viewer to listen carefully to what is being said. The story begins.

Joe Namy (Beirut) Dive, 5:24, 2014
Facing the sea on a shimmering afternoon, young divers take their chances with each other, waves and choices over and over, resurfacing and disappearing, diving, and climbing.

Marwan Hamdan (Beirut/Amsterdam) Separation Anxiety, 16:46, 2013
A disapproved marriage between a Christian and Muslim is personally conveyed and compared to larger divisions: the Communist Revolution, the Green Zone of Beirut, and the Berlin Wall.

Basma Alsharif (Los Angeles/Paris) Farther Than the Eye Can See, 12:56, 2012
A departure is retold forward and backward and in multiple languages to re-assess the facts, sequence, and significance from manifold positions.

Marwa Arsanios (Beirut) Have You Ever Killed a Bear? or Becoming Jamila, 26:19, 2013-14
An actress recounts her questions while preparing to play a famous Algerian freedom fighter in a new film. The word “act” grows in its number of meanings and female import.

The 62-minute screening was followed by a 20-minute contextual talk with Joanne Nucho. She showed a clip of her work and then discussed visual strategies in which ethnographic video is a locus of conversation and creation that always includes the imaginary amongst reality.

To read curator’s statement, please see: http://laislamarts.org/events/somewhere-between-here-and-now-freewaves

Image: Basma Alsharif (Los Angeles/Paris) Farther Than the Eye Can See, 12:56, 2012.

About the LOS ANGELES / ISLAM ARTS INITIATIVE (LA/IAI):

Launching this fall, the Los Angeles / Islam Arts Initiative (LA/IAI) brings together nearly 30 cultural institutions throughout Los Angeles to tell various stories of traditional and contemporary art from multiple Islamic regions and their significant global diasporas. LA/IAI is the first-of-its kind, wide-scale citywide initiative on Islamic arts producing and presenting programming such as art exhibitions, panels, discussions, and performances.

Learn more here: http://laislamarts.org