Video installation by Slovenian-born video artist Natasa Prosenc Stearns at Tarfest
10-year retrospective of Tarfest (Anniversary Art Exhibition, 2003-2012), a group show of 38 artists, curated by LACMA's Holly Harrison, will feature the latest stunning piece by Los Angeles-based artists of Slovenian descent, Natasa Prosenc Stearns.September 15th - October 6th, 2012.
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 20, 6:00-10:00p.m.
5900 Wilshire Blvd, Variety Building / East Annex, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Innocence Dissolved is a multi channel video installation resembling a child's room with piles of old toys, broken and abandoned, tumbling over the furniture, as if engaged in an afterlife dance of forgotten emotions. Shot in Slovenia and produced in L.A., Innocence Dissolved was first shown in a storefront of an abandoned furniture store in Pasadena. In August 2012 Wallspace gallery hosted its second, more ambitious and complex incarnation. It's third installment will take place as part of Tafest retrospective at LACMA.
Innocence Dissolved by Maja Manojlovic
The rolling dolls with perky plastic cheeks and the soft, sad-eyed plush pets in this installation invoke a deeply buried nostalgia for the loss of an affective sense of materiality that is -- paradoxically -- generated by the post-industrial hyper-production of "things." As our environment is cluttered with an unprecedented excess of material objects, our culture witnesses a steadily dissolving ability to infuse these objects with emotion. It is this emotional investment that animates our relationship with objects and with materiality as such. Now that this emotional link is loosening, our world is changing. These old-fashioned toys, once brimming with the energy from a child's power of imagination and warmth of her touch are now discarded, as are the imaginative and emotive habits that go along with them. The installation "Innocence -- Dissolved" thus metaphorically performs the impasse of fast lane consumerism wrapped into the ideology of progress; the discarded toys suffocating in the thickened gooey mass of the past embodied emotional investment, that has nowhere else to go except release into obsession with possession and consumption.
Natasa Prosenc Stearns, Biography
Natasa Prosenc Stearns is a Slovenian artist and filmmaker based in Venice California. She earned her BA at Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she began making her video pieces, gradually expanding her practice towards installations, films and prints. Exploring innovative strategies in visual expression and storytelling, her projects started to appear in galleries and festivals and to win awards and grants.
In 1997 Natasa traveled to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA in Film and Video at CalArts. She represented Slovenia at the 48th Venice Biennale and participated in numerous shows and festivals around the world - ARCO Fair, Madrid, Douloun Museum of Art, Shanghai, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Melbourne film festival, Pandemonium, London, SXSW, NY EXPO, and others.
Innocence Dissolved by Maja Manojlovic
The rolling dolls with perky plastic cheeks and the soft, sad-eyed plush pets in this installation invoke a deeply buried nostalgia for the loss of an affective sense of materiality that is -- paradoxically -- generated by the post-industrial hyper-production of "things." As our environment is cluttered with an unprecedented excess of material objects, our culture witnesses a steadily dissolving ability to infuse these objects with emotion. It is this emotional investment that animates our relationship with objects and with materiality as such. Now that this emotional link is loosening, our world is changing. These old-fashioned toys, once brimming with the energy from a child's power of imagination and warmth of her touch are now discarded, as are the imaginative and emotive habits that go along with them. The installation "Innocence -- Dissolved" thus metaphorically performs the impasse of fast lane consumerism wrapped into the ideology of progress; the discarded toys suffocating in the thickened gooey mass of the past embodied emotional investment, that has nowhere else to go except release into obsession with possession and consumption.
Natasa Prosenc Stearns, Biography
Natasa Prosenc Stearns is a Slovenian artist and filmmaker based in Venice California. She earned her BA at Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she began making her video pieces, gradually expanding her practice towards installations, films and prints. Exploring innovative strategies in visual expression and storytelling, her projects started to appear in galleries and festivals and to win awards and grants.
In 1997 Natasa traveled to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA in Film and Video at CalArts. She represented Slovenia at the 48th Venice Biennale and participated in numerous shows and festivals around the world - ARCO Fair, Madrid, Douloun Museum of Art, Shanghai, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Melbourne film festival, Pandemonium, London, SXSW, NY EXPO, and others.
