Christopher Adler & Allison Edmark

Los Angeles, CA
Residency: February 2016

Chris Adler & Ali Edmark are artists and curators based in Los Angeles. They run a small gallery named VACANCY.

Artists Statement:
The first two weeks of our residency were used to execute the curatorial project Soft Remove, at Random Access, Syracuse University. We produced eleven bodies of work using instructions from other artists. We used our Sculpture Space studio and the artist apartment to make sculptures, photographs and videos. We produced the work, wrote the press materials, formatted a book, documented the installation and deinstalled. Driven by particular aspects of our own artist practice — we’ve been curating and collaborating with other artists. This was a great curatorial/collaborative experiment to be able to execute. 

"The curators laboriously fabricated every work for this show during a residency at Sculpture Space in nearby Utica, NY. It was taken as a chance to engage in transnational material teleportation; a chance to grapple with serious in-expertise in various modes of production; a chance to test for ourselves if a work’s significance can lie solely in either ideation or material presence. It is also a chance to realize difference in repetition; a chance to take part in the process of mattering, of drawing distinctions that are also chance based, as in two smart controllers made dumb through a curtain of time and space. This is a chance to extend our roles as curators into the commercial realm of geo-labor, where art objects are readily shipped, cast, printed, poured, sliced, welded, polished, painted, and framed without any direct control of the artist; to claim agency in this task of distinction via obstacle.” — Chris Adler & Ali Edmark, Soft Remove

We also have a new body of images that we’re excited about. The images didn’t end up as completed sculptures as planned, but our time in the studio solidified a clear direction. This body of work – documenting simple actions with objects and utilizing the aesthetic of flash photography. Project breakdown – the action must require two people (camera operator and actor), the object must be appropriate to the action (what object makes the most sense). The image ultimately become a sculpture that engages with a particular aspect of the space it was performed in – we are currently interested in corners. We also executed a few short videos, experimenting with flash and utilizing the Central New York landscape.