For Immediate Release
August 4th, 2009
Laura Ball: “Boundary of the Interior”
Dates: September 12th October 16th, 2009
The Kopeikin Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles of artist Laura Ball (http://www.laurasgallery.com) who grew up in Southern California and graduated from U.C.Berkeley. The exhibition “Boundary of the Interior” opens with a reception with the artist on Saturday, September 12th from 6:00 – 9:00 and continues through October 16th. This event is free and open to the public.
Laura Ball's work has always addressed real world battles and the ludic activities of play and competition. Ball’s work displays an epic struggle, suggestive of an archetypal rite of passage, but the dreamlike and surreal qualities are created from specific sources. Ball draws on memories from her visits to Disneyland and other southern California theme parks as a child, and from her recent travels to Greece and Germany to create the backdrops to her narratives. She also works from controlled situations in which she photographs her mother and three sisters acting out and posing to create the confrontation and drama found in her narrative works.
Ms. Ball's watercolors (she also paints although there are no paintings in the
current exhibition) incorporate journeys, trials, and transformation woven into narratives that resemble contemporary fairy tales. Modern day struggles of the
subconscious unfold into playful conflict among surreal and dreamlike
landscapes. Gender politics, the environment, and violence are themes
embedded within her fantastical narratives. In these scenarios, her human
subjects and animals are in a struggle with each other and their environment.
The watercolors themselves become a subjective antagonist and a force
opposing the adventurers. Reality and perception are bent as the foreground
disappears, only to reappear later in a flood of rainbow colors. Pattern and color weave throughout the work in shifting densities as the varied brushwork seems to reflect the various roles and emotions of the figures' adventures.
Using, among other influences, Joseph Campbell's "A Hero with a Thousand
Faces" as a road map for the obstacles Ball's heroines confront, vibrant colors
and exotic animals help create a fantastical world where one must undertake a
journey, fraught with peril in order to gain a great prize or personal truth. Pivotal moments from the heroines' journeys inspire her work, which can in turn be read as universal icons that map progress along life's path. The animals, while skillfully rendered, resemble the animals of carousel rides, emphasizing the playful aspects of her work. The beautifully crafted line and use of vibrant, yet feminine color help to create the sense of otherworldliness.