Kristin Cammermeyer
at Outside Gallery

Kristin Cammermeyer, big wheel, 2 chairs, and a tray (2015). Mixed media with found objects, dimensions variable. Photo: Kristin Cammermeyer.

In a small backyard in Lincoln Heights, discarded objects have been organized into a menagerie of inviting sculptures—Kristin Cammermeyer’s big wheel, 2 chairs, and a tray. Amid the flowering bushes and large tree of Outside Gallery, the four sculptures are quietly in conversation with each other and the landscape, their personalities reminiscent of playful, uncanny Dadaist readymades. Cammermeyer assembled them from nearby found materials: a broken toy, iron pipes, wood paneling, a chair. As complex architectural forms, they are combination robot, distant cousin, wind chime, jungle gym and puzzle. Although they stand serious and somber on their black, shiny platforms, they also take turns swaying, shining, and whirring; their soft sounds mingle with voices, barking dogs, and the neighborhood’s white noise of cars and birds. At night they become formidable glowing specters, illuminated by multicolored fluorescent lights.

big wheel, 2 chairs, and a tray shares its space with other work by Cammermeyer—a stop-motion video and set of mixed-media panels, titled Accumulation at 12th & Marion: May 7 – June 19, 2015. The bright and intricately-designed panels run across a wall facing the sculptures; the sculptures and panels will weather the elements together at Outside Gallery. These panels could be the still images of the looping stop-motion video, which is the result of a precise accumulation and layering of myriad colors and textures into a lush, pulsating, electric-geometric garden. This mesmerizing piece is explicitly indicative of the care that Cammermeyer takes in her considered approach to transforming materials and spaces into strangely familiar and exciting pieces that become personified as a hodgepodged family. This show’s aggregation of organic and inorganic, magical and potentially toxic, looks and feels both eerie and beautiful—as our Los Angeles often does.

big wheel, 2 chairs and a tray runs from September 26–December 11, 2015 at Outside Gallery (2806 ½ Lincoln Park Avenue, Los Angeles 90031).

Kristin Cammermeyer, big wheel, 2 chairs, and a tray (2015). Mixed media with found objects, dimensions variable. Photo: Kristin Cammermeyer.

Kristin Cammermeyer, Accumulation at 12th & Marion (2015). Mixed media on 6 panels, 32 3/4 x 153 x 2 1/2 inches. Photo: Kristin Cammermeyer.

Kristin Cammermeyer, Accumulation at 12th & Marion (2015). Stop-motion video, 11:03 minutes, sound design by Michael Dillon. Photo: Kristin Cammermeyer.