Out at the Elbows at metro pcs

Up the stairs of 422 Ord Street in Los Angeles’ Chinatown lies artist-run space metro pcs. Inside, the small three-piece exhibition, Out at the Elbows, occupies the fluorescent former Cambodian Consulate interior. Objects include a stained glass sculpture titled A Stain, A Cage, A Window by Rochele Gomez, a painting in a similar size to the window, titled Light Outlines by Daniel Ingroff, and a single five-page printed publication–loose writings in a diary by the artists intended for observing the show. A Stain sits adjacent and parallel to the gallery’s front facing window, echoing its formal architectural qualities–specifically, the salmon colored caged walkway–of the building.

But how does the publication function in the exhibition? As a prosthesis or an addendum? In the publication, loose descriptions of early mornings, fragmented texts by Roland Barthes (”the body is a shaggy raveled thing, a clown coat” he writes), and spatial/metaphorical darkness, Out at the Elbows seems to capture the loneliness of studio practice and the negotiation of the body between interior/exterior spaces. In the supporting text by Litia Perta, she writes: “What if writing art art writing arts, writing, could be a second sight, another way of being with–that was the proposition I laid out before them and they flew it back to me like a song.”

If Out of Elbows allowed for that second sight Perta describes–an afterthought, a place for research away from the exhibition space–we would have the autonomy to get lost in the shadow play of the 2pm salmon colored sunlight created by Gomez’s window. With Gomez’s window reflecting onto the floor and bouncing off Ingroff’s painting, we would see the architectural elements of our mundane spaces slightly different. Without any explanations needed, the spatial nature of Out at the Elbows is about the interior spaces and sentimental spans of time–where light is sometimes kept out of architectural structures and emotional moments bubble into 4am loose renderings into journals, journals evolving into a ragdoll of lonely words.

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Out of Elbows was on view at metro pcs in Los Angeles, CA from January 31 – March 1, 2014

Images courtesy of metro pcs. Photo: Daniel Ingroff