Cruising

Dabin Ahn, Stephen Aldahl, Mario Ayala, Tyler Christopher Brown, Drew Escriva, Brittany Fanning, Mark Flood, Zhamak Fullad, Shana Hoehn, Raffi Kalenderian, Mikael Kennedy, Nathaniel Matthews, Liz Markus, Jasaya Neale, Estevan Oriol, Esteban Ramón Pérez, Michael Rikio Ming Hee Ho, Jacob Rochester, Sam Sae Jin Chun, Adam Stamp, Eleanor Swordy, Wolfgang Tillmans, Georgina Trevino, Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack Alabaster Projects is pleased to present Cruising. This expansive survey brings together a broad selection of paintings, photographs, works on paper, sculpture, and mixed media works by over twenty artists. The universal allure of art and automobiles have been misconstrued as counterpoints in recent times. Both, however, are powerful tools, objects, and vehicles of social, cultural and political expression. The entanglements of these two massive industries, both in production and value, have been readily acknowledged in twentieth century American art histories and practices. This exhibition celebrates these convergences and the social prowess of art and automobiles through the singular and multivalent act of cruising. The thrill of a full-throttle car cruising on an open road energizes across generations and spaces. Private encounters, among one another or with a path, become collective, social experiences and ways in which to relate to one another. This exhibition asks how to represent cruising in its multitude of energies, emotions, and strength. Undoubtedly, cruising connotes many types of journeys—beyond the machine where vehicles become libidinal bodies, meanders of the mind, queer passages and more. Southern California offers its own notable relationship through lowrider cruising amongst post-war Chicano youth subcultures along with the violent localized policing of such movement. Despite the very recent overturning of cruising bans, one can still spot bygone signage across East Los Angeles. And yet, these signs signify and re-mark the persistent targeting of queer and racialized bodies from moving freely, cars or otherwise. Cruising acknowledges these histories, localized and beyond, while also expanding and pushing against them, driving towards the liberating release of the road. Cruising, here, is represented as a heavyweight cultural expression in itself as well as a key social and unifying relation. A number of the works explicitly engage with industrial techniques or materials used in automobile production, customization and signage while others are far more representational. Some of the artworks make reference to queer experiences while others lead with Southern California vernacular styles and histories. The works in Cruising ruminate on the drive in its many forms, from portraiture to metalsmith techniques, pop art to assemblages, works laden with recognizable pop culture signifiers and/or more personal, intimate histories made collective, to rugs and the esoteric and punk. Representation, figuration, and abstraction all carry with them suggestions of power and identity through the drift. The exhibition pays tribute to its title in every possible sense of the term with works in varying styles, techniques and modalities. The works assembled in the exhibition respond to this idea of a meander, a drift, a voyage sans fixed destination nor predetermined destiny. Some of them are selected earlier works, while others are newer works, all exhibited for the first time and directly responding to the concept of a liberating drive. The result not only reveals resonances between art-making and journeying, it also opens up a diverse assortment of conversations between the works. A plurality of dimensions occupying chance and freedom ensues. We can return and pass through the same point repeatedly and anew every time.

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1634 W Temple St

La, NY