compactspace

work by Tristan Shone and Gretchen Mercedes

August-Sept 2009

curated by Glenna Jennings

Red Requiem (2002) by Gretchen Mercedes • Drone Machines by Tristan Shone

Drone Machines • Saxon S (2007) by Gretchen Mercedes

Tristan Shone and his Dub Machines (2009)

From the Indonesian Archipelago to the local machine shop, we ourselves flash and yearn, presents the work of two artists whose disparate mediums (and pedestals) collide in the white cube of LA’s compactspace. Curator Glenna Jennings takes the title from poet John Berryman’s Dream Song 14 and describes Shone’s work in the show-titled essay: “The skilled machine shop artist has come a long way since the first crucifix he welded as an undergrad back at RPI in Troy, New York. Though his drone ‘sculptures’ are arguably more Marxist-esque than religious in their industrial connotation, their singularity and performative utility mark them as celebrated escape convicts from the world of commodity fetishism – convicts that themselves celebrate a kind of nostalgia for the simplicity of an Enlightenment-era human interface. When Shone performs with his creations, one wonders if Mary Shelly could have at least thrown in a climactic and conciliatory love scene between the doctor and his disgruntled monster.”

Mercedes’ selected videos from her Oceanic series deal with escapes and convergences of a different breed. These de-peopled oceanscapes are presented from the ‘predator’s’ perspective, as Mercedes wields her lens from the hulls of various shipping boats throughout the South Pacific on voyages into the semi-forgotten worlds that bring food to your table. Both Shone’s and Mercedes’ works exist in contemporary dialogs with the Sublime, Boredom and the relationship of these tenuously related territories to man and ‘his’ machines – whether they be hulking vessels roaming the open sea or polished and streamlined instruments housed in the art studio.

Image from Gretchen Merededes’ Red Requiem (2002)

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