Renee Petropoulos | Fodder
Chicken Coop Contemporary
March 11, 2018, through May 1, 2018
Opening reception: Sunday, March 11, 2018, from 12—3 PM
Chicken Coop Contemporary hours are during openings & by appointment only. Address can be found on their website. Call or email to make an appointment.
EXHIBITION INFORMATION
Fodder - readily available material used to supply a heavy demand: hay, soldiers, students, etc…
In the 30’s a family flees Europe for the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. They become egg farmers. Their friends who fled Europe—former lawyers, businessmen, etc…—also become farmers. Their social life, formal and bourgeois, has a strange opposition to their new lives as immigrant farmers.
In the 80’s a young artist in Los Angeles makes paintings. As the artist paints, they sense the American dream turning into something else. The artist paints mouths in moments of prayer or scream—the ambiguity of the form is of interest.
In the present day, the artist is invited to create work to be displayed in a chicken coop. The artist comes across her old work while moving studios. Memories of growing up on her grandparent’s farm resurface. Associations bubble up. How certain sounds operate. How certain turmoils reappear. How certain dreams evaporate. How certain forms carry us through.
Chicken Coop Contemporary is excited to present Fodder by Renee Petropoulos: an exhibition of 16 watercolors and a sound piece. The watercolors re-investigate a form Petropoulos worked on 30 years ago: mouths in moments of prayer or scream as well as images of barriers. The audio is composed of tap dancers moving through different spaces. To Petropoulos, the way the un-camouflaged tap reveals a space is not unlike the way the scratch and peck of the chickens reveals their space. Throughout her career, Petropoulos has explored the contours of space in immediate, human terms. Recent performances and exhibitions have taken place with Hauser & Wirth, The Hammer Museum, LACMA, LAMOA, Commonwealth & Council, and The Arts Club of Chicago.