"Per Huttner: About Weddings and Commodities"
2002-06-01 until 2002-06-29
Raid Projects
Los Angeles, CA, USA United States of America

Raid Projects is proud to present Swedish artist Per Huttner's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. The new work in the exhibition has been producedduring his residency Raid Projects and include a series of photographicself-portraits and a sculptural object made from a wedding dress.

In the booklet which accompanies the current exhibitions at Raid Project, Los Angles based artist and critic Charles LaBelle writes:

'It takes a moment before you realize that the crumpled white form on thedeserted stretch of road isn't trash but a person in a wedding dress. Aspindly arm juts out. A tangle of blond hair catches the sun. Look closerand in the shadows you can distinguish the person's features, somewhatghastly in white face powder and smeared red lipstick. Even more disturbing: the eyes stare back at you. [. . .]

In his iconoclastic white attire, Huttner makes an unseemly, hysterical(simultaneously funny and out of control) spectacle of himself as passers-by gawk and snicker. Like Nijinsky, who called himself "God'sClown," H¸ttner is a performer who aims to enlighten rather than titillate. His work is infused with a sense of urgency and occasional recklessness. Abandoning whatever authority and power he might possess, flirting with rebellion and infantilism, his quest is for something truer and more human. In this sense it would be misleading to discuss H¸ttner's images in relation to "marginalized subjectivities" or "post-colonial geographies" though we could easily do so. For H¸ttner himself is interested in stripping things down, getting to the heart of the matter. Eschewing rhetoric and convoluted theorizing, his work speaks of good old-fashioned loneliness, the nobility of suffering and the struggle to find a place for oneself in the world and just be happy.'

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in Los Angeles