See Line Gallery presents Bari Ziperstein’s solo online exhibition ‘Perk.’ In her current photographic series, Ziperstein continues with the investigation of America’s consumer society and its material surplus. Particularly in the way domestic objects, retail and storage spaces reflect socioeconomic strata.

In the photographic series “Perk,” Ziperstein visually complicates images of a Rose Bowl Flea market lamp vendor’s storeroom by using techniques of collage in order to produce uncanny and fantastical images. The storeroom is cluttered with images of piled up colorful second hand lamps, dusty disembodied lamp parts, and endless rows of hanging chandeliers – these images are used as source material for intricate collage based photography. Ziperstein not only is interested in the vendor’s storeroom as a photographic site but also purchases lamps for many of her sculptures thus creating a 
relationship between her photographic and sculptural objects.

Ziperstein’s previous series of photographs of site-specific sculpture in her apartment (2006), replicated the quality of a high-end magazine spread thus was a 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 series ‘Perk,’ does not rely on the architecture of the home as a platform of intervention.It’s as if domestic lamps themselves found a way to mutate and collide with out relying on the host of architecture as a support. Resulting in photographs which waver between the fantastically absurdist and the consumers comfortably commonplace with domestic objects.

Bari Ziperstein, lives and works in Los Angeles, is a site-specific sculptor, photographer, collage, and ceramic artist who is interested in activating spacethrough 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 CalArts and double majored at Ohio University to receive a BFA inpainting and a Women’s Studies Degree. Ziperstein currently has works featured in “Drama of the Gifted Child – The Five Year Plan” at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena and “Bitch is the New Black” curated by Emma Gray at Honor Fraser Gallery, Culver City.

“Perk” will be presented as the inaugural exhibition at the new See Line Gallery space at the Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood. September 24 – November 21, 2009.