Downtown, Los Angeles
Group Exhibition
Here to Go
As It StandsMichael Bala Susan Cianciolo George Herms Ray Johnson As It Stands is pleased to present Here To Go, a group exhibition featuring works by Michael Bala, Susan Cianciolo, George Herms, and Ray Johnson. Owing its title to the autobiography of Byron Gysin, inventor of the "cut-up" literary technique, the artists in this exhibition consider the "stitch" while operating across collage, assemblage, and sculpture, not only as a physical act of joining material, but as a broader method of working through acts of salvage, accumulation, and recombination. Fabric, cardboard, photocopies, and architectural scraps appear throughout the exhibition less as passive materials than as carriers of prior use and memory. Rather than concealing rupture, these works lay bare taped seams, exposed strings, and cracked edges, allowing the logic of assembly itself to become a central element of formal practice. Though separated by generation and geography, the artists included share an attention to the unstable meeting point between disparate forms, influences, and references. Herms' poetic constructions, Johnson's correspondences and associative networks, Cianciolo's intimate economies of reuse, and Bala's hard-edged assemblages each approach collage as a lived condition rather than a visual strategy. Images and objects drift between personal archive and collective vernacular, producing works that assemble slowly over time. Throughout the exhibition, influence itself is treated as a salvaged material: carried forward, altered, and re-stitched into new configurations. Rather than presenting history as fixed lineage, these artists rifle through its discarded leftovers in search of new forms and meanings. Michael Bala (b. 1994, Maui, HI) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include Eye Comfort at Overduin & Co., Los Angeles (2024) and When Evening Shadows Fall at Tiffany's, Los Angeles (2023). Selected Group exhibitions have been held at: Michael Benevento Gallery, Los Angeles; Theta, New York; Clearing, Los Angeles; Clearing, New York; Castle, Los Angeles; Et al., San Francisco; Peana, Mexico; and Paul Soto, Los Angeles. He received his BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2019. Susan Cianciolo (b. 1969) is a visual artist and designer who lives and works in New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include RUN 13 Fashion Show at Overduin & Co., Los Angeles (2021); Spirit Guides: Paintings 1990–2020 at Bridget Donahue, New York (2020); and God Life: Modern House on Land Outside Game Table at South London Gallery, London (2019). Selected group exhibitions and projects include the Whitney Biennial 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; Swiss Institute, New York; and Modern Art, London. Cianciolo studied at the Winchester School of Art in England, and received her BFA from Parsons School of Design in Paris in 1991 and Parsons in New York in 1992. George Herms (1935–2026) was born in Woodland, California and lived and worked in California. Recent solo exhibitions include The Secret Archive at Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica (2023); George Herms: Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown) at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011); and George Herms at Berggruen Gallery (2018). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum; and Centre Pompidou. Ray Johnson (1927–1995) was born in Detroit, Michigan and lived and worked in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include What a Dump at David Zwirner (2021); Please Send To Real Life: Ray Johnson Photographs at The Morgan Library & Museum (2024); Ray Johnson at Richard L. Feigen & Co. (2019); and Correspondences at Whitney Museum of American Art (2018). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Art Institute of Chicago; Walker Art Center; and Centre Pompidou.