April 21 – June 23, 2012

Opening reception: Saturday, April 21, 2012, 6 - 8 pm

Artist Talk: with Eve Fowler at 7 pm

Performances:
Dashiell Manley - Friday, May 4 at 7:00 pm (at Lora Reynolds Gallery)
Math Bass - Friday, May 4 at 7:30 pm (at Lora Reynolds Gallery)
Barry MacGregor Johnston - Saturday, May 5 at 7:00 pm (at Fusebox Festival Hub 1100 E 5th Street)

Lora Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the group exhibition This Is It With It As It Is. We are excited to be exhibiting new work by four Los Angeles-based artists: Math Bass, Eve Fowler, Dashiell Manley, and Barry MacGregor Johnston. In addition, Bass, Manley and Johnston will give performances in conjunction with the Fusebox Festival.

The title piece of the show, Eve Fowler's This Is It With It As It Is, is a text painting on a day-glo background. The text is borrowed from Gertrude Stein's How to Write and is a kind of linguistic jungle gym. It offers an opportunity to wrestle with a series of words and grapple with the gray area between meaning and nonsensicality. This gesture points to the complex frameworks found in all four of the artists' practices.

Fowler's sound piece in this exhibition interweaves spoken word with the ambient noise captured during the installation of one of her public art projects in LA. In a similar vein to the fluorescent text paintings, this sound piece explores of the power of language to confound instead of describe. It was created in conjunction with Tara Jane O'Neil, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer.

Math Bass is multidisciplinary artist. In addition to giving a performance, Bass will exhibit four drawings of ritual masks that evoke the landscape as much as raises questions of identity and portraiture. Bass probes the limitations of language with special attention to the gap between the signifier and the signified. Quick to reject any and all readings into the meaning of the work, Bass instead hopes the viewer will simply experience the pieces. Bass's work will be included in the much-anticipated 2012 Los Angeles Biennial, Made in LA, organized by the Hammer Museum and LAXART.

Dashiell Manley's framed objects are comprised of painted canvas on one side and painted glass on the reverse. He is showing these double-sided objects alongside a film that features objects at varying stages of completion. The film is a puzzling exercise in textual and formal abstraction. His work will also be included in Made in LA, the 2012 Los Angeles Biennial.

Barry Macgregor Johnston's practice includes poetry, sculpture and performance. In addition to creating new sculpture for the exhibition, he will also be performing off-site at the Fusebox Hub. In his performances Johnston often uses the context of live music, in particular "the opening act", as a place to present actions and language, which, in his words, "conjure potential energy." Bringing together elements of hardcore music, tragic theater, and dance, Johnston hopes to generate a situation rather than a spectacle, a celebration rather than a show.