Giovanni’s Room
Attunement
Anders Hamilton | Yimiao Liu
February 25 - March 30, 2024
Opening reception: Sunday, February 25, 2-5 pm
Giovanni’s Room is pleased to announce the opening of “Attunement”, a two person exhibition by Anders Hamilton and Yimiao Liu. The show features 5 recent sculptures by Hamilton and works on paper and silk by Liu. Attunement will run from February 25th through March 30th, 2024. Giovanni’s Room is located at 850 South Broadway, Suite 600, Los Angeles, CA.
Certain things have a way of whispering their meaning into the world. Without making promises they simply extend the invitation to have a closer look, to go inward. Think of robin eggs laying in a nest, a patch of morning glories woven through a chain link fence, a spider web glistening in dew. These sorts of things do not demand attention, they attract it. Hamilton’s Obelisk sculptures, which are in dialogue with the natural world, offer a similar type of invitation. The artist gathers twigs, leaves, and flowers from nearby his studio. The twigs are dried and coated in resin to preserve their structure. These familiar forms become foreign after meticulous applications of paint and pigment. The leaves and flowers are dipped in slip and burned away in a kiln firing, much like cremation. The ash of what once was alive, is sealed inside a ceramic shell of its former self. They are then glazed with recipes containing rare earth elements as a source of color. The dichroic properties of these elements produce a glaze that responds directly to its light source. For example, the fleshy orange glaze used in “Eternal Bloom” becomes a vibrant pink when shifting from natural to artificial light.
Yimiao Liu’s delicate, intricate drawings present shapes and forms suspended in undefined spaces. Light and the interference of natural elements play a key role in her work, which uses soft, muted colors and gentle pencil strokes. The forms in Liu’s drawings pull from the surreal, the nearly supernatural. Her drawings are raw, emotional, and highly symbolic, often referencing personal experiences and the artists’ spirituality. Each work can be thought of as a journal entry, recording moments of change within the expansive internal landscape of the individual.
When something no longer changes it is dead. Knowing Hamilton's obelisks inhabit dead matter, yet retain the ability to change in response to light source makes them less of a static sculpture and more like a living tomb. The enshrined plant appears to be patiently awaiting transcendence, poised for rebirth, as if the cremated ash locked inside might produce new growth. Liu’s work is a space where moments of change and the emotions that result are distilled and re-expressed as a visual composition. This act bears witness to a constantly evolving human spirit, and in doing so becomes a record of loss as well as a celebration of growth.