Commonwealth & Council concludes its season of G.L.O.W. exhibitions with Match Four. This series of artist match-ups pays homage to GLOW™: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling while expanding on the trademarked acronym with possibilities for other meanings in the midst of our shifting realities and narratives of difference. As a code of conduct, our G.L.O.W. encourages teamwork and positions its participants as co-conspirators rather than adversaries.
Match Four teams up A.L. Steiner and Suzanne Wright in the exhibition G.L.O.W.: Gone Livin Out West. Emerging from the ashes of the socio-cultural revolution of the late 60s, Steiner & Wright both recently dislocated to California. Friends, collaborators and comrades for almost 17 years, they have finally realized their ultimate dream of living together in a shared communal live-love work space, and it happens to be in Los Angeles. What brought them out here is complicated – reasons too numerous to list in a mere press release - but this reasoning will be evidenced in the show, as they persevere under the strain of lacking an efficient and futuristic public transport system, Corporacratic-imposed income precarity, Westward-expansion infused gender performativity, self-diagnostic health care, liquid modernity, universal transition and mandatory pleasure rituals.
Wright presents a series of drawings which attempt to reinterpret a collaborative photo project by Zackary Drucker + A.L. Steiner. The photos are reconfigured into controlled and intentional Rorschach mandalas, ripe for psychological interpretation. Steiner’s bricolage decoupage assemblage asks “What Would Richard Prince do (if he were a Lesbian?)” [see http://www.northdrivepress.com/interviews/NDP5/ND5_FOWLER_STEINER.pdf]. Additionally, several unearthed artifacts of “otherness” emerge from both of the respective artists’ childhood archives to complete the circle. This press release will be updated daily during the run of the show.
A.L. Steiner uses constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, performance, writing and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a cynical queer eco-feminist androgyne. Steiner is a collective member of Chicks on Speed, cocurator of Ridykeulous, co-founder/organizer of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and collaborates with numerous visual and performing artists. Steiner is currently visiting core faculty in the Roski Master of Fine Arts program at Univeristy of Southern California.
Suzanne Wright received her BFA from Cooper Union and her MFA from UCSD in 2010. She has been included in exhibitions at Stephen Friedman Gallery, Stefan Stux, Claire Oliver Gallery, Monya Rowe and Artist Curated Projects (ACP). Suzanne’s work can be seen in publications including Armpit of the Mole, Into the Abyss and most recently, Women and performance: Feminist Lanscapes. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.