Stephen Collier: LAST DAYS
1356 Winchester Avenue, Glendale, CA 91201
Sunday, October 14 at 5:00 PM 9:00 PM
Ends Nov 18, 2018
HOME ALONE Los Angeles presents LAST DAYS, an exhibition by New Orleans-based artist Stephen Collier. This show gathers recent works on paper and sculpture along with previously exhibited paintings and video, now re-contextualized in light of the current political and economic climate. LAST DAYS is inspired by the “closing sale” signage that proliferated RadioShack storefronts in 2017 as the electronics retailer went bankrupt and shuttered 1,000 locations nationwide. Collier adopts the basic layout of these signs for his drawings, and then assigns a set of material and procedural rules and works within those parameters. Collier’s recent paintings feature dilapidated peace symbols that have undergone several rounds of damages and repairs, and triptychs of the abstracted letters U-S-A that appear scorched and worn. The artist has created a foreboding site-specific sculptural installation in the gallery’s front yard that transforms this plot of Glendale suburbia into a semblance of a blighted storefront. The fusion of residential real estate with commercial decrepitude highlights the dilapidation of our values in the current anxiety-ridden and increasingly polarized political and cultural climate. Collier’s work channels this anxiety and challenges us to confront the fragility of our democratic society through his idiosyncratic and personal contemplations on human and economic mortality.