Surface Tensions

Jemima Wyman                                                        Liz Nurenberg

an evening of performance with works 

by Brian Getnick, Kate Hoffman, 

Liz Nurenberg, and Jemima Wyman

Thursday June 19th, 7-9pm 

ILGWU 346 E 3rd Street, Long Beach, CA 90802

Surface Tensions features works that address gender through body and process-based performances that explore tactile and sensory experience, skins and surfaces, narratives expressed through materials, and the intersection of fashion and performance.

Liz Nurenberg’s work counteracts the isolation of modern technology by engaging the full body and senses of her audience. She explores intimacy, awkwardness, and the boundaries of personal space through soft sculptures that act as props for viewers to use or inhabit. Nurenberg creates situations that allow the body or multiple bodies to become material for the performative outcome of the work.

In a series of body-based works, Kate Hoffman focuses on daily routines that accumulate into a combined mass of body memory and consumption. In these works, her sculptural moldings of the negative space (which her body has created through small repeated gestures) results in abstract objects which reference artifacts and the decorative objects of pop culture. In this iteration the project, the artist invites you to exchange and experience these interior spaces as they merge with your own.

Brian Getnick creates arenas for performance through a process of sculpting architectural set pieces and hand sewn costumes which evolve in relationship to a constant dialog with the performers. Getnick explores how we both resist and are shaped by cultural forces such as collective memory, education and nationalism. 

By wearing a crazy quilt of masks Jemima Wyman will embody, rearrange and reconfigure the face of protest - her face pushed to face the ‘in-between’ and hybrid masks of recent protests. These ‘in-between’ masks where found through Wyman’s research and include the commercialized Guy Fawkes mask of Anonymous painted black (by black bloc), appropriated Waq’ollos mask (by Free Pussy Riot protestors that appear to merge the colorful knitted balaclava with the public face of Anonymous) and more. Wyman shifts her voice to occupy each mask inviting you to witness the various modes of resistance needed to wrestle with power.

                                                                                                               Kate Hoffman

About the artists:

Brian Getnick received a BA in art from Vassar College in 1998 and his MFA in Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. In 2008 he was nominated for the fourth annual performance prize through the Galleria Civica in Trento Italy. Getnick's performances have been seen at Station Independent Projects in New York City, at Honor Fraser Gallery, Red Cat, and Machine Projects in Los Angeles and at Croxhapox in Gent Belgium. He currently co directs Native Strategies, a journal and performance art platform with Tanya Rubbak, and is the director of PAM, a theater space and artist residency in Highland Park.

Kate m.s. Hoffman is a visual artist living and working in Los Angeles. She received her BFA in Fibers from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and an MFA in Visual Art from the University of California, San Diego. She has been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre in Banff, Canada, Birch Creek Ranch in Utah and at Centre Est-Nord-Est in Quebec. In 2012, she had solo exhibitions of her project Black Gold-Liquid Gold, the Golden Age of Whaling at the Greenleaf Gallery at Whittier College and at the ATA Gallery in San Francisco. Most recently she has participated in the performance and exhibition events of Squaring the Circle in Llano del Rio and Art School at Human Resources.

Liz Nurenberg is a Los Angeles based artist who received her MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2010. Primarily working sculpturally, her interactive objects are props for experiences in which viewers can form relationships both to the work and to other viewers. In her work, interactivity explores intimacy, awkwardness, proximity, personal space, and touch.

Jemima Wyman is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2007, she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from The California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles. Wyman’s individual practice spans various mediums and 
focuses on the politics of fabric in conflict and in protest. She has exhibited at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Japan), the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) and Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles). In 2012 for The Unexpected Guest: Liverpool Biennial, Wyman was commissioned by FACT to make a large-scale public engagement project. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Effacing Power at Steve Turner Contemporary in Los Angeles and Pattern Bandits at the Gallery of Modern Art in Australia. For the past nine years she has also collaborated with Anna Mayer as CamLab.