"Gymnosphore Bubbles and Steams: An Installation by David Deany and David Hanson"
2001-03-31 until 2001-04-28
Side Street Projects
Los Angeles, CA, USA United States of America

Gymnosophore, an art installation featuring functional hot tubs built by artists David Deany and David Hanson. The Gymnosophore space will host a limited number of parties including the opening reception on March 31 from 7-9pm. In addition to the tubs, the installation includes various paintings, sculptures, and videos.

David Deany, painter and sculptor, has a conceptual bent and a predilection for environment making. After receiving an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997, he has been included in exhibitions in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Houston, including a one person show in which he transformed a gallery into a functioning bed and breakfast, acting as artist and host. His paintings range from tactile, sculptural abstractions to romantic oils and quirky goaches and his sculptures often engage the rhetorical as well as the absurd.

David Hanson is a sculptor with a history of grandiose performative work and concept-oriented event engineering. While receiving his BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design, he gained media notoriety for his transformation of a campus sculpture and hillside into a slimy vagiphallic slosh pit. Noted founder of the infamous Disturbathon, an annual bacchanalia held in Dallas, Texas, Hansons performances, videos, events, paintings, and sculptures all exhibit a sensibility of serious hedonism.

Referencing Southern Californias strong history with the party architecture of the spa, Gymnosophore is an abstract hot tub fantasy, a carnivalesque play-space, and a psychoactive performance/experience as well as a visual essay on hot tubs and hot tub culture.

p Historically, the hot tub was more than just an appliance of leisure. Ancient Hindu traditions utilized the hot tub as a central icon in religious ceremonies. The gymnasiums of ancient Greece iconized the hot tub as the site of important philosophical dialogues. Following these traditions, this collaborative exhibition uses the tub environment to introduce the concept of the party as a theatrical art form. Gymnosophore proposes to engage on the material level of the earth and body as well as the ineffable planes of the mysterious and abstract, at turns both contemplative and asinine.

The word Gymnosophore is a contraction of the words Gymnos (Greek for naked), sophos (Greek for wisdom), and -more (derived from moros, Greek for puerile, as in the word sophomore). Hence, the Gymnosophore intends to incubate sophisticated hedonistic ritual, as well as dedicated foolishness, all set to the squirming steamy mojo of our tubs.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in Los Angeles