The Social Register
at Park View

The Social Register with Buck Ellison, Elif Erkan, Jules Gimbrone, Tom Holmes, Hudinilson Jr., and Stephen Willats, installation view (2015). Image courtesy of the artists and Park View, Los Angeles. Photo: Jeff McLane

More fun than scream therapy is the purposeful and cathartic smashing of objects: a rare zone aligning celebratory cultural traditions with a Limp Bizkit ideology.

Elif Erkan’s Grounded, showing as part of Park View’s group show The Social Register, embeds shattered china plates into a warm-hued chunk of cement. Whether made in celebration or anger, this, along with Jules Gimbrone’s Traps and Transmutations, are The Social Register’s most compelling signs of life. Elsewhere, the show’s subtlety might better be termed “life-like.”

The Social Register evades certainty perhaps because “the social” so easily lends itself to misreadings, vague assertions and outright denial. Its title alludes to class, a concern not shared by many of the works included, and the principle of the social is unevenly applied across works that range from generic to deeply personal.

Buck Ellison’s Thyroid Problem and Hudinilson Jr.’s Auto-retrato (Exercicio de Me Ver) share a level of intimacy interrupted by each work’s distancing tactics. Measured against Gimbrone’s installation—a riff on Alvin Lucier occupying Park View’s bedroom gallery—Ellison’s tastefully disquieting photography and Hudinilson Jr.’s facsimiles of the body seem cold.  In Traps and Transmutations, bass reverberations and artifacts of an earlier performance maintain a presence—an interaction in real time and space—probing the viewer’s relation to Gimbrone’s obscure reading of the room.  

The Social Register runs September 19–November 7, 2015 at Park View (836 South Park View Street #8, Los Angeles, CA 90057)

Elif Erkan, Grounded (2015). Concrete, fiberglass, pigments, china and gold plates, 36 x 35.5 x 3 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Park View, Los Angeles.

Tom Holmes, Untitled Arrangement (2015). Acrylic on plywood panel and painted artist’s frame, 36 x 24 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Park View, Los Angeles.

Jules Gimbrone, Traps and Transmutations, installation view (2015). Image courtesy of the artist and Park View, Los Angeles. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Aaron Horst is a writer and architect based in Los Angeles. He has written for Carla, Art Review, and Flash Art.

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