ARIELLE CHIARA
JOHN DIVOLA
ZOE KOKE
ARIANA PAPADEMETROPOULOS
SER SERPAS
KAMARIA SHEPHERD
ALIX VERNET
BRI WILLIAMS

“Y’all ain’t coming to that damn house
Doesn’t look hi she used to
Doesn’t answer hi she used to
Doesn’t smile less she has to
Y’all ain’t coming to that damn house
Doesn’t try less she has to
Doesn’t write less he has too
Doesn’t cry like a baboon
Doesn’t whine by blue moon”

-transcription of text from sculpture
“Ha recollection”, Kamaria Shepherd

Ochi Projects is pleased to present group exhibition Doesn't whine by blue moon. The exhibition is on view from February 22 – March 21, 2020, and includes works by Arielle Chiara, John Divola, Zoe Koke, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Ser Serpas, Kamaria Shepherd, Alix Vernet and Bri Williams.

Doesn’t whine by blue moon is a collection of ruin-like works that assemble a love song of warning. A photograph of a red tide (Zoe Koke) is an everyday omen, an unaltered record of the ocean’s dying life. Meanwhile, Koke’s surveillance mirror suggests the allure of speed and our culture’s comfort with it. Obsidian piles ordained in silk (Arielle Chiara) point to a level of endurance, nature’s growing status as decorative rather than vital.

Grids and axial lines re-occur throughout the pieces. Vernet’s bureaucratic ruins speak to the fetishization of remnants as referents to an “iconic past”. They consider the brick as both a foundational object in Westernized ideas of “permanence”, as well as that which will ultimately be left to signal its instability.

Questions around the conventions and boundaries of photography and sculpture are revisited throughout the exhibit. Rigid geometries act as both boundaries and portals. Chiara’s piles look to have collapsed or fallen out of Divola’s photograph. The rectangular graffiti in Divola’s Intervention K evokes Malevich’s Black Square, a catalyst for the avant-garde, yet its placement inside a dilapidated home re-figures notions of “Modernity”. Disrepair is positioned as a collaborative project between object and time, and the image a witness.

Acts of mapping and tracing serve as guides for departure. Ser Serpas’ Resource for Discard simultaneously evoke a quasi microscopic bodily perspective as well as a distant topographical scale. Meanwhile, Kamaria Sheperd’s sculptural poem refigures a 19th-century dress pattern into a textual architecture. The victorian pattern nods to traditions of domestic feminist practice while simultaneously acknowledging its discursive limits in providing an intersectional lens on power.

Mutilation to a landscape, or home, is interpreted along different lines, altogether implying the shared impact of the current frenzied eco-political moment. Papademetropoulos’ mutated grid of a woodshed in a forest further amplifies the distortive and allegorical language pervasive in traditional landscape painting. Medusa, (Bri Williams) is both mythological and deflective. Not so much an equestrian war monument but an aftermath, recorded. The grandeur of sculpture is questioned in several works, which although perform sculpturally point to questions around what is worth monumentalizing.

-Alix Vernet, Zoe Koke

Arielle Chiara (b.1994, Los Angeles, CA) was awarded a BA from Pitzer College with a combined major in Studio Art and Environmental Analysis in 2018. Recent exhibitions include Water Damage at Soft Opening, London, UK (2019) and group exhibitions at Nichols Gallery, Claremont CA, Studio106, Santa Monica, CA, and at Aker Brygge, Oslo, Norway. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She is currently pursuing a Graduate Gemologist degree with The Gemological Institute of America. 

John Divola (b. 1949, Los Angeles) BA, 1971 California State University, Northridge; MA 1973: MFA 1974, University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1975 he has taught photography and art at numerous institutions including California Institute of the Arts (1978-1988), and since 1988 he has been a Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside. Divola's work has been featured in more than seventy solo exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Australia, including: "Mirrors and Windows," The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, 1978;; "California Photography: Remaking Make-Believe," Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York. 1989. "The Photographic Condition," The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California. "Whitney Biennial 2017," Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, NY 2017. 

Zoe Koke (b. 1989, Calgary, Alberta) recently graduated with an MFA from UCLA. She holds a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal. Recent exhibitions include American Myth, Washer and Dryer Projects, Salt Lake City (2019); The Butterfly Effect, SPACE, Vancouver (2019); Made to Look Natural (with Ben Borden) Smart Objects, Landers, Ca (2018). She currently lives and works in Texas.

Ariana Papademetropoulos (b. 1990, Pasadena, CA, USA) lives and works in Los Angeles. Since graduating with a BFA from Cal Arts in 2012, she has exhibited both in the US and internationally. In 2014 she curated Veils at the Underground Museum in Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include Just Like Arcadia at The Breeder in Athens, (2019), Sunken Gardens, Soft Opening London (2018). Upcoming exhibitions include Fauna and Flora at Mamo Art Center, Marseilles as well as All of them Witches at Deitch Projects in Los Angeles, as well as solo presentations with Soft Opening and Vito Schnabel in Switzerland. 

Ser Serpas (b. 1995) is a poet and artist based in Geneva.

Kamaria Shepherd (b. 1991 in Houston) has exhibited nationally and internationally at Chen's in Brooklyn, New York; New Release Gallery in New York, New York; Human Resources in Los Angeles, CA; SoCal MFA Juried Exhibition at the Millard Sheets Art Center in Pomona, CA; Black Light at the Otis Graduate Studios in Los Angeles, CA; Palazzetto Cenci at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Rome, Italy; and Circolo Degli Artisti in Rome, Italy. Kamaria earned an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from UCLA (2018) and a B.F.A. in Painting from RISD (2015). She is the 2018 UCLA recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship.

Alix Vernet (b. 1997) BA, UCLA lives and works in New York. She has exhibited in London, Athens, and Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include a two-person show Water Damage at Soft Opening in London (2019) and Fantasia at Steve Turner Contemporary in Los Angeles (2019).

Bri Williams (b.1993) lives and works in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions include Queer Thoughts, Interface, Oakland; Pina, Vienna (forthcoming); and a two-person exhibition with Diamond Stingily at Ramiken, Los Angeles. William’s work has been presented in group exhibitions at Karma International, Los Angeles; Diane Rosenstein, Los Angeles; and Queer Thoughts, New York, among others.