The Floating Gallery LA
5760 W. Pico Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90019
Exhibition Photography: Antonis Ricos
In her nearly three decades as an MFA professor, Annetta Kapon steadily encouraged her students to create their own conditions to make and show work, regardless of limitations. Out of this spirit her Proxy Gallery was born. It is also out of this spirit that The Floating Gallery was born. It is an honor to present this gallery within a gallery.
Proxy Gallery is a conceptual project that allows a platform for discourse. Though it materially occupies a one-cubic-foot box, it is treated in all ways as a traditional gallery. The fact that the space is small is neither hidden nor foregrounded. It is not simply a dollhouse for miniature artwork. Instead, the restrictions have been a catalyst for experimentation and questions around the nature of a gallery and an artist’s relationship to it.
According to Annetta, the idea came about in 2013 at Otis College, where she was doing an independent study with her (then) graduate student Katie Thoma. They were reading Gaston Bachelard and Rosalind Krauss, making little FIMO clay sculptures whilst talking. In these perfect conditions, the idea hit, and the project was born. The first exhibition at the Proxy, Bread and Patiosopened on January 13, 2013, and featured sculptures by Kapon and Thoma.
Since this inaugural exhibition, the Proxy Gallery has now had over eighty-five of them, in Los Angeles, Paris and Athens. Artists have ranged from emerging fresh-faced students to internationally celebrated artists, all of whom have approached the concept in vastly different ways. Annetta Kapon: Proxy Gallery 10 Years, reflects on all her hosted exhibitions to date as a retrospective. The physical Proxy Gallery itself is also here, with its latest exhibition: I’m Worried About Fitting In by Mirena Kim.
Viewed for the first time as a whole, the Proxy Gallery emerges as a prolonged continuous dedication to a creative idea; not just a space to exhibit art, but as the art itself, with each approach reminding us of the true nature of the platform and its founder, a work of collaborative art that continuously deepens over a decade, and now beyond.
The Floating Gallery LA
5760 W. Pico Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90019
August 5-September 30, 2023
opening reception Saturday August 5, 6-8 pm
Hours:
Fri 12-3
Sat 12-6
Sun 12-3
and by appointment: info@thefloatinggalleryla.com