The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery presents the first institutional solo exhibition in Los Angeles by artist Lukas Geronimas.
The exhibition will feature a series of new sculptural works, commissioned especially for the gallery that borrow from ritualistic objects or spaces wherein rituals take place. This includes works described by Geronimas as a column, a tomb and a signet. Custom Hung Valance is a series of wooden racks that support pointed Gothic-style frames made of polished aluminum, stretched muslin, and tinted plywood which mimic a clerestory, a reference to the gallery’s church-like floor plan. Puzzlemaster combines elements from an array of devotional figures such as the nemes headcloth and ceremonial beard of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, the seated “pose of royal ease” of Dharmic idol, the multiple arms included in depictions of hindu deities, and the heroic proportion and musculature portrayed in renderings of Greek and Roman gods.
Invoking traditions both ancient and sacred, these works evoke the auratic status of revered objects and spaces. Geronimas plays with the conventional power dynamic that has historically been established between architecture, works of art and the viewer, inviting us to consider the alchemical process by which inanimate things come to be imbued with spiritual significance. While the artist adopts a critical stance toward object-worship, he still prizes craftsmanship and he spends many hours engaged in the production of his sculptures, deeply attuned to his materials. Rejecting the increasingly outsourced nature of art fabrication, the artist both embraces and queries traditional notions of authorship and artistic genius.
For more information, visit: https://www.lamag.org/lukas-geronimas-october-14-december-12-2021/
Lukas Geronimas, installation view, courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McLane