January 18 – March 15, 2014

Opening reception: Saturday, January 18, 6–8 pm

Artist Talk: 7 pm

Lora Reynolds is pleased to announce a new installation work by Vishal Jugdeo in the project room, A Weight Dangles Above Your Head, organized by independent curator Sarah C. Bancroft.

Jugdeo recently presented a similar project, A Shaky Picture Has No Weight, at the performance biennial Performa 13 in New York. This piece combined theatrical objects, video projection, sound, and live performance into an immersive and discursive environment.

The installation at Lora Reynolds Gallery incorporates elements of the Performa piece, including fragments of video footage filmed in Guyana, where Jugdeo's ancestors were taken as indentured laborers during the 1800s. The quasi-documentary imagery of the lush Caribbean landscape—and the people who live in it—contrasts Guyana's exoticism with the artist's personal ties to the country. With sculptural objects that create an absurd theatrical environment around the video projection in the project room, the installation A Weight Dangles Above Your Head functions as a mental map: an abstract model of communication and exchange.

Born in 1979 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, Jugdeo graduated from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver (BFA, 2003) and the University of Los Angeles (MFA, 2007). He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2005. Jugdeo has exhibited at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), LAXART (Los Angeles), the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Netherlands). He has received grants from Art Matters, Artadia, the California Community Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts. He teaches in the Intermedia Department at the University of Southern California Roski School of Art and Design and is based in Los Angeles.

Sarah C. Bancroft is an Austin-based independent curator and writer and serves as Associate Director of curatorial affairs at the art initiative Fluent~Collaborative and its exhibition venue testsite. Prior to her move to Texas in 2013, Bancroft held curatorial positions at the Orange County Museum of Art from 2008 to 2013 and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) from 2000 to 2005. In addition to her critically acclaimed traveling exhibition Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series (2012), Bancroft curated Two Schools of Cool (2011) and organized the 2010 California Biennial at OCMA. One of the projects she curated in 2009 was Video Work by Gao Shiquang and Chen Qiulin at OCMA as part of the Ancient Paths, Modern Voices China Festival produced by Carnegie Hall and the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. At the Guggenheim, she co-curated James Rosenquist: A Retrospective (2003). Bancroft received her MA in the history of art from the Courtauld Institute of Art (London). Her area of specialization is modern and contemporary art from the 1950s to present. She is a bike commuter, an urban hiker, and lives in Austin with her husband David.