detail from Timothy Nolan's Pitch
detail from Rebecca Niederlander's Family Tree: Baby Blues
Super Elastic
a four person exhibit at the Pacifica Building
Corner of Broadway and Promenade, Long Beach, CA 90802
A Phantom Galleries, L.A. project

February 5 - March 10, 2009
On view 24/7 and open by appointment.
Opening Reception: Thursday February 5th, 5-9 PM

Phantom Galleries, L.A. presents its inaugural exhibit at the Pacifica Building in Long Beach, curated by artist Timothy Nolan. In response to the first appearance of the TED Conference in Long Beach this February, Super Elastic brings together large works from four Los Angeles-based artists whose work addresses our expanding visual landscape, propelled by advances in science and technology. From the subatomic to the super galactic, imagery coming from electron microscopes and the Hubble telescope is now an integral part of the culture. Quantum mechanics, relativity, the Big Bang, chaos theory, multi-dimensional math, etc., have all irrevocably shifted the consciousness of our society, even if many have little or no knowledge on the subjects. Scientists and mathematicians are busily trying to solve the puzzles of the universe; these four artists exploit these puzzles for all they're worth.

Julia Latané's Blue Superstrings, inspired by the mind boggling concepts of string theory, springs from the wall and undulates to and fro. Rebecca Niederlander's mobiles are clearly of the natural world, but their spindly rotating tendrils could go micro or macro, referring to plant structures or meteor showers. Likewise, in wall drawings made with Mylar tape, Carrie Ungerman builds tension that evokes mighty asteroids colliding, or the tenderness of cell division. Nolan's repeated triangle floor work plays with the geometry of crystal formations while conjuring a fourth dimension with its double-mirrored surfaces. Although each artist is very literate in the history of pattern-based abstraction, conceptually and aesthetically, they are inspired by and draw liberally from an infinite pool of scientific inquiry.