MIER GALLERY is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new works by Basel-based artist Kilian Rüthemann. The exhibition will open Saturday, December 10, 2016 at 1107 Greenacre Ave. in West Hollywood, and will be on view through March 31, 2017. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, December 10, 2016 from 11:00am – 3:00pm.
Resting peacefully just off Figueroa Ave. in Exposition Park, a thick old fan palm rises up into the sky as seemingly ancient as Trajan’s Column in Rome or the Palmiform Columns of ancient Egypt. Subject of three replantings over its 150+ year lifespan, this LA monument sprouted as a desert sapling in the 1850s. It was first transported from its native spot to San Pedro Street in present-day Little Tokyo, to Central and Fifth in front of once was a train station, to its current resting place at Exposition Park. This ever-adaptable monolithic palm, now at over 100 feet tall, has stood strong throughout Los Angeles history as a movable monument of the city. It outlives us all, but its history is not stationary.
Inspired by his recent residency in Rome, Italy, Rüthemann mines ideas of architectural intervention, movable monuments, ready-mades, and permanence. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer is presented with a freestanding monumental brick wall that fell back as a whole and is therefore curving softly through its broken midsection, its feet planted firmly on the concrete floor and its head resting softly on the white wall behind. It feels equally weighty, sturdy, pliable and soft. Crooked, almost floating on the surface of the gallery wall, each brick laid one by one can easily adapt to surrounding surfaces and the ground from the moment they are cemented until long after they are dry (not unlike the almost mythical palm tree that grows with each relocation but remains itself as an object).
There is a palpable contrast between the mobile and immobile, weight and weightlessness, a fluidity in permanence: the solid becomes adaptable, with a distinct ability to grow despite its weight and rigidity. Further in the space are (floating) wall-mounted brick “canvases,” These wall pieces hang like canvases, just slightly askew on their screws, are immovable in their implied uneven weight distribution.
