See Line Gallery presents for the first inaugural exhibition at the new location, a solo exhibition Perk by Bari Ziperstein. Ziperstein will premiere a site-specific installation that transforms an empty design showroom into an uncanny quintessential model domestic space. Influenced by found objects, she will debut a collection of handmade altered slip cast ceramic sculptures displayed in conjunction with reconstructed domestic furniture, as well as a series of collage-based photographs.
Ziperstein is known for re-assembling once functional domestic objects and creating tableaux that waver between the fantastically absurd and the uncomfortably commonplace. In varied ways, her work engages in our time directly, mining the sites of Los Angeles local thrift stores and design stores, to create uncanny visual choices that address current and precarious relationships between domestic spaces and economies by exploring specific ideas of place.
Ziperstein’s previous series of photographs of site-specific sculpture in her apartment (2006), replicated the quality of a high-end magazine spread, and thus was meant to comment on the utopian lifestyles proffered by home decor magazines. The photographs illustrated decoration consumed by architectural outgrowths – an interior design gone very much awry. The new work Perk uses the domestic end tables, ceramic figurines, and lamps themselves as a way to mutate and collide without relying on the host of architecture as a support. The politics of space are highlighted when she offers an alternative to the proffered lifestyles that the surrounding showrooms at the Pacific Design Center display. In addition, she has created a site-specific immersive environment in an enclosed mirrored space. A photograph of a cluttered Rose Bowl Flea Market lamp vendor’s backroom will envelop a mirrored room creating an environment that is overgrown and illusionary.
Bari Ziperstein is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She works as a site-specific sculptor, photographer, collage, and ceramic artist who is interested in activating space through intervention and organization. Her artistic practice is engaged with the architectural history of Los Angeles and can be read as an investigation of how urban landscapes are defined by consumerism. Ziperstein holds her MFA from Cal Arts and a BFA in painting and Women’s Studies from Ohio University. Recently Ziperstein’s work was featured in two group exhibitions this summer: Drama of the Gifted Child – The Five Year Plan at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena and in Bitch is the New Black at Honor Fraser, Culver City.