Matthew Lax
Brunt Drama
October 12 - November 18 2018
Opening Oct 12, 6-10 PM
Background needed for architectural snuff film.
No small roles,
only small parts.
Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) presents Brunt Drama, a new video installation by artist Matthew Lax. Androgynous figures struggle to execute various labors within a bleak, vacuous monoculture. Addressing the inherent violence of the real and the simulated, as well as the dubious pleasure of witnessing, narratives of safety, risk and use-value are tested via 3D-rendered, plastic surrogates. Choreographed motion-studies and textual, Brechtian vignettes produce alternative translations and behaviors, both acceptable and indecent. Brunt Drama manipulates the slipperiness of affect-inducing data visualizations intended to ameliorate fear into consumption — presenting a simulation of the unrepresentable, visible from both sides of the screen.
Matthew Lax is an artist, writer, and independent curator based in Los Angeles. His film and video work has been exhibited at film festivals and galleries including the Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), MIX Brasil (São Paulo) and MIX NYC, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY). He has organized curatorial projects with venues including Human Resources (LA), the Echo Park Film Center, California Institute of the Arts, Anthology Film Archives (New York, NY), etc. in addition to numerous pop-up exhibitions with various alternative spaces. His writing has appeared in print and online publications including the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA), ArtPractical (San Francisco), and Art Observed (New York, NY). He is currently writing a catalogue essay for the upcoming Bethesda Brotherhood exhibition by artist Jonathan Molina-Garcia at the Lawndale Art Center, Houston (Spring 2019). He will be presenting, B-LA, a curated screening program of LA-based video artists, in Berlin in June 2019, in collaboration with Acud Macht Neu collective and the Torrance Art Museum.
Matthew Lax
Brunt Drama
October 12-November 18 2018
Opening Oct 12, 6-10 PM
Photo: Ian Byers-Gamber
