Trisha Baga
at 356 Mission

Trisha Baga, BIOLOGUE (2017) (installation view). Image courtesy of the Artist, 356 S. Mission Road, Los Angeles and Greene Naftali, New York. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Globs of paint sat atop a saccharine hologram image of golden retriever puppies, creating an odd flatness atop the hokey 3D simulation; the trick revealed. A row of these painted holograms led down the wall into a dark cavernous gallery, becoming increasingly shrouded in darkness. Trisha Baga’s mammoth exhibition Biologue, at 356 Mission, reveled in oppositional interplay: shadow and light, flatness and dimensionality, sociopolitical understanding and total, unfettered bewilderment.

The first video projection encountered in the space, Treez of a Beez (all works 2017), grounded the installation in the artist’s studio. A video projection picturing the artist’s desk glowed behind (and on top of) an actual desk plopped into the space. Littered across the table were the familiar frenetic tools for coping in our recent whirlpool of American politics: a myriad of newspaper pages about Trump’s election; an Arts & Leisure article titled We Will Not Be Ignored; a half-eaten Danish; a jar of Tums; a Mac computer. Bumper stickers that read “procedure,” “graph,” “results,” and “conclusion” sat towards the edge of the desk, awaiting use. This slew of smattered objects might inform the artist’s work in the studio, but more likely, they stilt it; one can imagine Baga seated at her desk computer, scrolling through Trump’s Twitter feed, neglecting a canvas sitting nearby.

Past this glowing still life, in the main space (where you’d be armed with 3D glasses), multiple projected videos fought for attention. Baga described her installation as “theatre in the round,” and it certainly demanded 360-degree awareness; the rolling office chairs sprinkled throughout the gallery could hypothetically be put to practical use, spinning about so you would not miss a thing.

Trisha Baga, The Voice (2017). 3D video, single channel with sound, 25 minutes and 22 seconds, edition of 5. Image courtesy of the Artist, 356 S. Mission Road, Los Angeles and Greene Naftali, New York. Photo: Brica Wilcox

Virhanka Trail uses tourists at a famous Japanese beach as its subject matter. Projected across a pile of crumpled brown paper, and at panels that pull sections of the video out into the space, the tourists throng along a large, sandy stretch. Some stop to pose for photos, most look travel-tired but committed. The endless stream of passersby was much quieter visually (and audibly) than its neighbor, a 3D video titled The Voice. And it certainly was loud.

The Voice added a palpably frenetic and looming quality to the room. The 25-minute video is a marathon of attention grabbing clips: snippets of news footage, fictional characters, and YouTube videos. The sound editing is chaotic and assaulting. Palpably though, the piece embodies a deep-seated panic that has been looming since Trump’s inauguration, or maybe, more simply, since the coining of the phrase FOMO.

Baga’s exhibition is at once playful and political, resolute and spaced out, swapping political didacticism for unabashed foolery. Moments of terror are met with gorgeous aesthetic choices and a hefty dose of levity. Try though we might to read all of the latest New Yorker articles, or keep NPR on a soft din as we go about our days, there is a sort of manic reality that sets in. While it’s imperative to stay abreast of our current political landscape, with so many competing news outlets and social channels, our frantic political FOMO may simply lead to more confusion. Instead of clarity, we are often left with only a jumble of flashing images and nothing concrete to show for it but a half-eaten danish and some Tums.

This review was originally published in Carla issue 8.

Lindsay Preston Zappas is an L.A.-based artist, writer, and the founder of Carla. She is an arts correspondent for KCRW. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), OCHI (Los Angeles), and City Limits (Oakland).

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