May 18 - June 23, 2012 937 North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069 Exhibition closed on Saturday, May 26 Opening reception: Friday, May 18, 7 – 9 PM
With his Los Angeles debut, Kon Trubkovich reveals his most personal work to date. A new series of paintings, works on paper, and a sound piece translate psychological underpinnings through elegantly complex methods. The television static, weak transmissions, and tenuous connections he depicts suggest that somewhere behind all the noise and disruption there is a broadcast confirming our existence and interconnection.
Prominent in the exhibition are a group of large-scale portraits of the artist’s mother, culled from just one second of home video, which documented the final party she threw in the U.S.S.R before the family immigrated to the U.S. Defining a transitional moment of flux, these works illuminate the difficultly of tracing the past and express our elusive connection to the concept of origin. Through oil on linen, Trubkovich visually describes the sensation of relating to a person or physical location that no longer exists, or at least not as remembered, and aims to parse latent recall into a tangible codex.
In Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving, which inspired Trubkovich’s exhibition, the author suggests that love is a refuge – a remedy for isolation and our disconnection from each other and nature. By archiving whispers of feelings and recollections, which are dangerously close to disappearing forever, the artist forms a pictorial and emotional space, simultaneously. Implied by the title, the work presented in Leap Second also aligns with the actuality of phantom time. All of the paused moments, ethos, and bits of history that Trubkovich has chosen to suspend, occurred in the matter of an instant. This work fleshes out the missing measure by developing sentiment, and in doing so, accounts for just one leap second.
“The reason I’m in this business, I assume all performers are – it’s “Look at me, Ma!” It is acceptance, you know – “Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma.” And if your mother watches, you’ll show off till you’re exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!” – Lenny Bruce
Kon Trubkovich (b. 1979, Moscow, Russia) has exhibited nationally at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY; and Artpace, San Antonio, TX. His work has shown internationally at Museum 52, London, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK; Athens Biennial of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Macro Future Museum, Rome, Italy; 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf, Germany; and at Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland. Kon Trubkovich lives and works in New York, NY, and this is his first solo exhibition with OHWOW.
