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sited

\\"Dead Zone End Zone"
Natalie Labriola & J Patrick Walsh III

October 27, 2012

Works Sited presents a collaborative installation by Natalie Labriola and J Patrick Walsh III, \\"Dead Zone End Zone" reinterprets various technologies and industrial objects to create a site that explores chance and discovery.


Echoing the library rotunda’s archways and domed ceiling, Labriola’s sculptural half-moons are covered in pigmented paper-mache surfaces that recall Impressionist paintings such as Monet’s Water Lilies. The work embeds the gestural marks of “painting” onto the bifurcated surface of a massive satellite dish that once functioned as a parabolic communication device providing Internet networks outside the US. Re-situating the dishes from the rooftop of a corporation to the interior of the library rotunda, they now maintain a more intimate mode of communication - by standing directly in front of the dish's center points and speaking into the concave form the viewer creates an echo chamber effect, initiating an awareness of one’s body in space.


If the satellite dishes can be thought of as a split open I Ching, an object which creates a context for chance experiences to arise, Walsh’s accompanying craps table and benches also allow for the entry of possibility and chance encounters. Inviting viewers to roll gold dice atop its popcorn-imprinted surface (for Walsh popcorn embodies both performance and sculpture), the tables seek a surge of force and energy which is tied to indeterminacy. Two seesaw benches accompany the table and are upholstered in the same acoustical foam used to create soundproof chambers. These benches require two sitters to complete its form. If the stationary satellite dishes project the viewer's voice and reference invisible wavelengths, the foam acts as its material inverse, absorbing and containing sound but generating movement and physical activity.


Natalie Labriola (b. 1987) holds a B.F.A. from New York University, Steinhardt School (2010). She has participated in exhibitions in and around New York City and Los Angeles. In New York at Josee Bienvenu Gallery, 80 Washington Square East Gallery, Apartment Show, the Brucennial 2010, Cleopatra’s, and Invisible Dog Gallery; in Los Angeles at Actual Size and in Berlin at Atelierhof Kreuzberg. In the summer of 2009 she received the Ellen Battel Stoeckel Fund Scholarship and attended the Yale Summer School of Art and Music residency. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.


J. Patrick Walsh 3 holds a B.F.A. from the The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005) and an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California (2012). He has exhibited and performed in and around Los Angeles and New York. In Los Angeles at Las Cienegas Projects, Wildness, Actual Size, and The Action Bureau and In New york at MOMA P.S.1, D’Amelio Terras, Elk Gallery, and Cleopatras. He is a member of the band WetRopes and the editor of Busters Magazine, he currently lives and works in Los Angeles.


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