Installation view of Receiving Space featuring Elizabeth Arzani & Owen Premore
Elizabeth Arzani & Owen Premore: Receiving Space
On view: Souvenir | September 7th – September 28th, 2024
Opening Reception: September 7th, 5-8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday September 28th 5pm
Hours: Thursday – Saturday, noon-5pm
Using fragments, fate, and found materials, Elizabeth Arzani and Owen Premore respond to happenstance and the unknown in their two-person exhibition, Receiving Space. As a collector of sorts, Arzani’s work is rooted in storytelling offering a form of communication that extends language. Stories are located in the cracks, and creases, stains, and rust of physical objects, layered with her own mark making. Premore’s kinetic and sound sculptural devices explore the role of technology in human curiosity and perception through repurposing antiquated products. Often inspired by the history and intended use of found objects, Premore attempts to repair, clean, and research items before giving them a new function. Together, their works—ranging from paper pieces and tin collages to interactive kinetic sculptures—convey varying levels of visual and auditory noise.
Arzani’s tin collages shapeshift to mimic fragmented letter forms found on the ground, while her works on paper reimagine fragmented sentences from which their letters and words were once lost. They appear as repeated phrases, weaving words in different iterations from legible to illegible. Here, weaving is a conversation with the over and under pattern performing gestures of listening and responding, with the possibilities created from miscommunications lodged in-between. They communicate a love letter held dearly or a loss for words; words acting as an entrance or an exit. Presenting words as a map or glimpse of an inner world—the words we hold onto or the words we let go—unspoken, ignored, crumbled in a pocket, or picked up from the ground never opened.
Premore’s latest series, Heavy Time, which draws inspiration from human intentionality and beyond-known-science pursuits, such as psychotronics, radionics, and the paranormal. The work is fully realized when visitors interact with openness, vulnerability, playfulness, and social cooperation. Premore’s Sculptraptions— a blend of sculpture and contraption— are designed to embrace unknowns through the difficulty of repurposing objects and pursuing technological endeavors with unpredictable outcomes.
