Heather Rasmussen: Work and Work

October 3, 2011 - October 21, 2011
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
3001 Gallery
Graduate Fine Arts Building (IFT)
3001 S. Flower Street
Los Angeles, CA 90007

Reception: Tuesday, October 4, 7:30 pm

Heather Rasmussen's exhibition “Work and Work” combines the ongoing projects in her practice into one physical space. Covering a range of techniques, this show brings together two major streams of her practice.

Rasmussen’s ongoing investigation of shipping container disasters includes the photograph WanHai, one of several photos by the artist based on images of these disasters found on the internet. These photos include container vessels at sea, stacked containers in shipyards, floating cargo containers dispersed by hurricanes or tsunamis, and cargo train accidents. The found image becomes a template used to create a sculpture that is constructed for the production of a new photograph. Each sculpture appears hastily made, with visible tape and staples, showing a temporary and fragile structure. The artist’s works are titled with the place and date of the accident, relating the new photograph to the original event. By abstracting the scene from its original context and placing the damaged containers onto a seamless background, these objects become patterns of color and shape leaving a ghostly interpretation of a disastrous event.

Other works in this group include a triptych of small drawings that examines the accidents through careful realistic rendering. By leaving in both details and signage, these drawings contain more clues for the viewer to discern the scene and also function as studies of the intricate forms of the crumpled containers. A video shows two scenes, both of the process of folding paper containers and the transport of them. Shot in 2007 during the deinstallation of the artist's sculpture Pier J, Rasmussen slowly removes each paper shipping container and organizes them into storage boxes, dressed as a laborer wearing white booties, gloves, and a work suit.

Rasmussen’s other body of work here is in more traditional still-life and landscape photography. A black and white photograph physically combines the paper shipping containers with mutant “Buddha’s Hand” lemons within the space of the image. Trying to achieve both the natural and the manufactured, this photograph underscores the connection between two bodies of conceptually different work. The final work in the show, a still-life photograph, displays the raw and vulnerable insides of a small watermelon, grown in the artist's garden. Here again, sharp color and geometry combine with a sense of fragility and beauty that runs through all of the work.