Tumult of Frozen Creatures

A Group Show Featuring Eric D. Charlton, Cait Finley & Jack Honeysett

November 5 – December 23, 2016
Artist Reception: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 3 – 6 p.m.

‘The ideas of classification, of conservation […] have little to do with delights […] I find myself in a tumult of frozen creatures,’
Paul Valéry, 1923.

Writing on his experience of museums, Paul Valéry, a French poet and essayist, expresses the aesthetic chaos created by attempts to conceptually organize the objects and narratives presented in these spaces—the science and art of the modern era. These categories and logical rationale still pervade our means of ordering and receiving information. Such as, species and race classification, the ordering of time periods and of the sorting of matter into separate states. Eric D. Charlton, Cait Finley and Jack Honeysett’s individual practices directly question the efficacy and effects of such ordering of data and narratives.

Charlton, Finley and Honeysett (All three pursuing graduate degrees at Syracuse University) have previously worked and shown collaboratively. ‘Tumult of Frozen Creatures’ will be the first time work from their individual practices will be presented together, and their first show in Los Angeles. Currently participating in the Turner Semester Residency, supported by Marylyn and Chuck Klaus, the artists share a studio and live together in San Pedro, CA. All three artists are experiencing how the act of living in Los Angeles shifts one’s perspectives and opens up new readings of art, and their everyday experiences. 

Eric D. Charlton’s sculpture examines the relationships between objects. In Tumult of Frozen Creatures he will present a re-boot of his OSCADIYO Project, where he collaborated with a data mining bot to create sculpture. Dredging the websites of ‘big box stores’, the bot, a piece of software created by the artist, chooses products and materials for Charlton to combine as sculpture. Through this collusion of human and machine, he aims to experience the affect of his sculptures from an object perspective.

Cait Finley was raised on the high desert plains of western Montana. The subject of Finley’s work is science practice; she focuses on decay and the cyclical nature of existence. Her work questions the misuse of science as didactic truth maker. In her work ‘La Loba,’ Finley creates a mythology out of cast objects and collected plastic ephemera. The story of “La Loba” is about a timeless she-wolf character that uncovers the bones of the dead and to brings them back to life. Presented here as part archeological exhibit, Finley uses the myth of “La Loba” to question the relationship between historical mythologies and contemporary science communication.

Jack Honeysett is a British artist whose fascination with history stems from growing up in the ancient man-made landscape of England, scattered with Neolithic monuments. Questioning the contemporary use of historical narratives and the romanticizing of the past, Museum Views focuses on the aesthetics of the museum environment. Through photographic composition and bringing attention to the various frames within which historical artefacts are held—in this case the interior architecture of the Getty Museum—Honeysett equalizes the status of the piece, display method and interior architecture.