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David Ebbinghouse, “Small Sculptures” and Javaughn Renee, “The Chest: Tools of War and Peace”

Presented by Artpost at Artpost

March 4-April 25, 2010

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Artpost Gallery will be exhibiting the work of artists David Ebbinghouse and Javaughn Renee in a show that opens on Friday, March 5, from 5-9 pm.

Ebbinghouse is exhibiting a number of small sculptures utilizing materials that are usually discarded, food wrappers from Granola bars, plastic bags that contain corn chips, shiny colorful wrappers from chocolate bars, and plastic inner bags from boxes of cereal. These have been combined with aluminum pop tops, bamboo skewers from shish kabobs, and the sticks left over from burning incense to make three-dimensional structures. The forms, squares, grids and cubes, derive from minimal art, but the materials are the trash and detritus of our consumer society.

Using the structural possibilities of the materials, Ebbinghouse has given them a second life that allows them to be seen in a new way. Another series of works called “gris-gris” uses the circle as the organizing principle. These take the form of beads strung on a cord. The cord is braided from strips of plastic bags and the “beads’ are found objects, keys, small plastic toys, aluminum pop tops, and other bits and pieces culled from dumpsters. They have the look of post-apocalyptic amulets.

Javaughn Renee's installation, “The Chest: Tools of War and Peace,” originated from visions she had about the Iraq war. Ideas for much of the installation were inspired by a visit to a thrift store, where she observed an isle of florescent spaceships and water guns which looked like current military weapons. Both war and peace tools are found in “The Chest,” and the subtle, often monochromatic works are informed by Quaker traditional aesthetics. She uses the idea of “simple speech,” as she builds silhouettes for concepts, beliefs and ideas that at times bring us to commit violence toward each other and sometimes bring us together.

David Ebbinghouse was born in 1949 and has lived in Bloomington, Indiana since he graduated from Indiana University in 1971. He has been active in the Bloomington arts community for many years and for almost a decade headed the Bellevue Gallery, an artist co-op. He is well known for his performance art pieces and installations that are often combined in an exhibition opening in order to lead the audience into the world of his artistic vision. Ebbinghouse experiments in many media and pursues concepts and materials he encounters rather than using a media driven approach, (such as only welding steel or only making oil paintings). Ebbinghouse has traveled widely, especially in India and has collected ancient beads and conducted research on them. He has published bead research and given lectures to various bead societies around the country. All this he considers to be a subset of his artistic practice, rather than a separate activity, as he seeks to integrate all of his experiences into his work. This intention to create an art that is instrumental in living a life in modern times is the same impulse behind all of the world’s mythology throughout all time and history. In this way Ebbinghouse seeks to create an art that transcends the boundaries of how we normally think about art.

Javaughn Renee lives in South Bend Indiana, but grew up in the culturally, economically, and geographically diverse area of Southern California. With limited funds and an ambivalence about the art world, she paints, draws and collects simple materials to create works that reveal the complexities of our humanity. Javaughn’s first group shows were at The Unurban Café in Santa Monica, and El Mercado La Paloma in Los Angeles, and featured her colorful watercolors and oil pastels. After moving to South Bend, however, she continued an idea she began in a show at the Pasadena American Friends Service Committee in 2002. Her work, titled (), was her first piece in an installation about war.Although that work has since been destroyed, it inspired “The Chest: Tools of War and Peace.”