Lovett/Codagnone "Common Errors"

Sara Meltzer Gallery

poster for Lovett/Codagnone "Common Errors"

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Sara Meltzer Gallery presents Common Errors, an exhibition of new works by Lovett/Codagnone. Common Errors marks Lovett/Codagnone's first solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition is on view Saturday, October 24 - Wednesday, November 25.

The work of artist team Lovett/Codagnone combines literary, cinematic, and discursive citations -- circling around the latently violent dynamics of lust, dominance, subjugation, and resistance. New works expand on their ongoing interrogation of the political ramifications of conflating public and private, departing from self-reflective strategies to specifically address issues of collective identity and the absorption of underground tactics of resistance by mainstream consumerist culture. Taking its central citation from Gilles Deleuze's stated mantra affirming the necessity to "say something new to create something new," the exhibition embraces repetition as an assertion of difference.

While the actual media varies, the conceptual thread that binds Lovett/Codagnone's new work reflects on the current political situation in the United States and addresses issues such as social isolation, disorientation, and powerlessness. Text-based neon and sculpture, as well as installation, music, video, and graffiti convey a performative quality that implicates the body, be it a voice of protest or apathy. The repetition of motifs in the exhibition - sound, language, displaced urban remains - accumulate to form an urgent proposal to act.

In the main gallery, When Darkness Falls Again, a gritty ruinous urban architectural scene is accompanied by a soundtrack recorded by the band Candidate; formed by Lovett/Codagnone and musician Michele Pauli. Lyrics drawn from the Deleuze citation are repeated in hardcore punk style by the artists, while the title, It's Necessary, is layered in a call-and-response pattern, speaking to the necessity and urgency of repetition. In the upper level gallery, REPEAT, an installation of black painted mirrors bears the phrase "To Say Something New To Create Something New." Formally presented in a combination of arrangements, the phrase is repeated, interrupted, broken up, or rendered upside down. Repetition is inherent in the phrase, suggesting that the articulation and re-articulation of the words propel thought into action, however, these mirrors also function like an alphabet for a negative visual language driven by subversive energy. While the gesture of blacking out a mirror implies obfuscation, the formal duplication acts as a foil for the linguistic repetition in which mirror reflection plays a necessary role in the investigation of identity.

Lovett/Codagnone's work ranges from photography and video to sculpture, installation, and performance. In their earliest works, the artists as protagonists performed role-playing games aimed at unmasking socially defined power dynamics. The work referenced S&M practices, repositioning the aesthetics of gay subculture into suburban and domestic environments or everyday public spaces. The citation of philosophical, literary, and musical work is not intended as an intellectual exercise nor appropriation, but as a translation of ideas, complicating their source materials through a confrontation with the present. The work of Lovett/Codagnone exists within a genealogy of attitude, presenting a constellation of notions that provide interpretive possibilities in lieu of the political as an aesthetic experience.

Working together since 1995, Lovett/Codagnone live and work in New York. Their work has been exhibited at institutions internationally including P.S.1/MoMA, New York, NY; ICA, Boston, MA; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Museo Nazionale Del Cinema, Fondazione Adriana Prolo, Turin, Italy; Centres Georges Pompidou, Paris, France and at the Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, Netherlands, among others. Lovett and Codagnone have had solo exhibitions in New York, Milan, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris and Palermo. Common Errors is their first solo exhibition at Sara Meltzer Gallery. A monograph on Lovett/Codagnone was published by Charta in 2006.

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Schedule

from October 24, 2009 to November 25, 2009

Opening Reception on 2009-10-24 from 18:00 to 20:00

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