Eastern Standard Time
Eric Doeringer
September 22 - November 4, 2011
Exhibition Images - Coming Soon
Artist’s Statement
I am a lifelong resident of the Northeast, and
Eastern
Standard Time presents an East Coast vision of
“West Coast” art. I
chose the title as a counterpoint to the Pacific
Standard Time
exhibitions opening in Los Angeles this fall.
The two titles suggest
the physical and temporal disjunction between
America’s two coasts
(one my home, the other home to this exhibition).
This idea of
dislocation in space and time is central to my
work, which is made
“after” other artists.
For this exhibition, I have recreated works by
California artists or
that otherwise look Westward. The pieces were
inspired by artists
like John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, and Richard
Prince, who renounced the
supremacy of the artist’s “hand” in favor of a
deskilled approach to
making art. However, as one of Baldessari’s text
paintings states,
“An artist is not merely the slavish announcer of
a series of facts.”
No matter how deadpan this art might appear, the
creators’ personas
(the original artists’ and mine) are deeply
embedded within it.
I am interested in the relationship between the
“original” and the “copy” and associated
questions authorship and
value. When I re-photograph a Marlboro
advertisement, am I
appropriating from Phillip Morris or from Richard
Prince? Do my
attempts to throw three balls into the air in a
straight line have
less artistic merit than John Baldessari’s?
My recreations are faithful to the originals in
many ways. But, like
a sentence that becomes garbled through
repetition in the game
“telephone”, they are not perfect copies. When
remade, the artworks
are transformed into pieces that are distinctly
my own. My works have
been called both homage and theft, but I believe
they are as much an
expression of my interests and ideas (and my time
and place) as they
were for the artists who made them the first
time. They are
simultaneously copies and original works of art.
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Installation photos - click on an image to see a larger picture
photos of works from the exhibition
another year in LA is located at the Pacific Design Center, Suite B267, 8687 Melrose, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Gallery phone: 323-223-4000