Regen Projects is pleased to debut a new body of work by Los Angeles-based artist Catherine Opie. Titled Rhetorical Landscapes, the exhibition presents a series of animated political collages and landscape photographs. This marks the artist’s tenth solo exhibition at the gallery. For over thirty years, Catherine Opie has captured often overlooked aspects of contemporary American life and culture. One of the most important photographers of her generation, her subjects have included early seminal portraits of the LGBTQ+ community, the architecture of Los Angeles' freeway system, mansions in Beverly Hills, Midwestern icehouses, high school football players, California surfers, and abstract landscapes of National Parks, among others. Rhetorical Landscapes continues Opie’s examination of the current American political landscape and the moving image, a visual technology that she utilized in her first film, The Modernist. In the center of the gallery eight monitors form a closed circle. Life size in height and resembling oversized iPhones, each monitor features a screen that displays an animated film Opie calls “political collages.” Comprised of numerous magazine cuttings culled by Opie over the course of Trump’s reign, each collage represents themes articulated in the news cycle embodying contemporary political issues spanning topical subjects like nationalism, climate change, immigration, gun control, and the diminishment of natural resources. Arranged on hand-painted blue grids that reference modernism with their simplistic structural form, each animation develops over time, slowly building and integrating images until it forms a coherent collage. Although their subject matter communicates a sense of urgency, each collage is imbued with humor that references the political satire of Monty Python, whose films were a sense of inspiration for the artist. Over the course of her career, Opie has traveled extensively across the American continent documenting its diverse communities of people and the landscapes they inhabit. Encircling the monitors, nine framed photographs are installed along the gallery walls. In juxtaposition to the digital worlds created in the political collages, this new series of photographs turns Opie’s camera to the verdant wilds of the American South, depicting a sort of pause and longing for this particular place in the American imagination. A play on words, the swamps evoke the political metaphor manipulated by Trump, yet they also remain one of the last undeveloped ecosystems facing the effects of climate change and human development. Opie’s swamps image the vulnerability of this contested land awaiting interference, presenting unadulterated views of seemingly uninhabitable terrain that are virtually devoid of human presence. ------------------------------ Regen Projects is pleased to announce ON VIEW, an exhibition by New York-based artist Lawrence Weiner. This marks his tenth solo presentation at the gallery; his first, ASSUMING THE POSITION, was Regen Projects' inaugural show in 1989. Lawrence Weiner describes his exhibition as follows: IT’S ALL ABOUT THE THING ITSELF & HOW IT IS FIRST PERCEIVED & HOW IT IS USED A leading figure in the development of the Conceptual art movement in the 1960s, Lawrence Weiner’s seminal and singular practice uses language as the core material in his work – a distinct challenge that redefined expectations of what an artwork is and can be. Questioning the fundamentals of sculpture and art-making itself, Weiner shifted his practice from object-making to producing text-based work with his 1968 precept: 1. THE ARTIST MAY CONSTRUCT THE WORK 2. THE WORK MAY BE FABRICATED 3. THE WORK NEED NOT BE BUILT EACH BEING EQUAL AND CONSISTENT WITH THE INTENT OF THE ARTIST THE DECISION AS TO CONDITION RESTS WITH THE RECEIVER UPON THE OCCASION OF RECEIVERSHIP EVENT Conversation with Catherine Opie and Lawrence Weiner moderated by Dagny Corcoran Saturday, February 29, 2:00 pm RSVP requested to Elizabeth Gartner at elizabeth@regenprojects.com