Vanishing Act – Pablo Rasgado

28.09-26.10 / 2013
Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles

Steve Turner Contemporary is pleased to present Vanishing Act, Mexico City-based artist Pablo Rasgado’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. It is a gallery-wide installation that consists of two concrete block structures that present architectural interventions undertaken by Rasgado in the last year, and a group of photographic images.

Large-scale images that document his interventions will be attached to the structures. Each shows a building that Rasgado transformed into minimal sculpture by inconspicuously filling in all windows and doors. In effect, he eliminated the functionality of architecture to create a monument-like sculpture. On the gallery’s largest wall, there will be a group of photographs taken by Rasgado which show buildings being partially or entirely engulfed by fog. The poster-size prints will significantly overlap so that only a small amount of each will remain visible. Finally, there will be a series of images projected on an interior wall of one of the structures. These show the fog photographs being hung by art handlers during the setup of this exhibition.

Vanishing Act is a continuation of Rasgado’s practice of re-contextualizing aspects of the built environment to present its history. Much of Rasgado’s past work has been made from public walls, some extracted from busy city streets, others from temporary museum exhibitions. In this case, instead of working with only one component of the built environment (the wall), he has reformatted entire buildings. His simple actions aim to yield a new perception of space through architecture as well as a new portrait of its inhabitants.

Pablo Rasgado (born Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico, 1984) has had solo exhibitions at Steve Turner Contemporary (2011 & 2012); Arratia Beer, Berlin (2012); and Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (curated by Tobias Ostrander, 2011). His work has also been featured in solo exhibitions at Zona Maco, Mexico City (Steve Turner Contemporary, 2012) and Art Basel Miami Beach (Arratia Beer, 2012). It will be featured at artBO, Bogotá with Steve Turner Contemporary in October 2013. Rasgado’s work has also been featured in important museum group exhibitions including Other People’s Problems: Conflicts and Paradoxes, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, (2013); Noise, Ex Magazzini di San Cassian, Venice, Italy (2013); When Attitudes Became Form Becomes Attitudes, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (curated by Jens Hoffman, 2012); Los Irrespetuosos, Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (curated by Carlos Palacios, 2012); and Lost Line: Contemporary Art from the Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (2012). He currently is a recipient of the Bancomer MACG Fellowship.

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