KON TRUBKOVICH Leap Second

May 18 - June 23, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, May 18, from 7 to 9 PM
937 North La Cienega Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90069

LOS ANGELES, CA - OHWOW is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Kon Trubkovich, titled Leap Second, on view May 18 through June 23, 2012. With his Los Angeles debut, the artist reveals his most personal work to date. A new series of paintings, works on paper, and a sound piece translate psychological underpin- nings through elegantly complex methods. The television static, weak transmissions, and tenuous connections he depicts suggest that somewhere behind all the noise and disruption there is a broadcast confirming our existence and interconnection.

Prominent in the exhibition are a group of large-scale portraits of the artist's mother, culled from just one second of home video, which documented the final party she threw in the U.S.S.R before the family immigrated to the U.S. Defining a transitional moment of flux, these works illuminate the difficultly of tracing the past and
express our elusive connection to the concept of origin. Through oil on linen, Trubkovich visually describes the sensation of relating to a person or physical location that no longer exists, or at least not as remembered, and aims to parse latent recall into a tangible codex.

As a continuation on the portrait series, in the sense that the imagery now becomes even less absolute,Trubkovich moves to embedding profiles of Lenny Bruce or the word “MAMA” onto backdrops of analog noise or “snow.” These monochromatic paintings feel more primal or subconsciously linked, presenting impossible transmissions. Weaving through a personal narrative, the contradictions arising between the seen and unseen serve as a chronicle of his imagined memory.

In Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving, which inspired Trubkovich’s exhibition, the author suggests that love is a refuge – a remedy for isolation and our disconnection from each other and nature. By archiving whispers of feelings and recollections, which are dangerously close to disappearing forever, the artist forms a pictorial and emotional space, simultaneously. Implied by the title, the work presented in Leap Second also aligns with the actuality of phantom time. All of the paused moments, ethos, and bits of history that Trubkovich has chosen to suspend, occurred in the matter of an instant. This work fleshes out the missing measure by developing sentiment, and in doing so, accounts for just one leap second.

“The reason I’m in this business, I assume all performers are – it’s “Look at me, Ma!” It is acceptance, you know – “Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma.” And if your mother watches, you’ll show off till you’re exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!” - Lenny Bruce

Kon Trubkovich (b. 1979, Moscow, Russia) has exhibited nationally at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY; and Artpace, San Antonio, TX. His work has shown internationally at Museum 52, London, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK; Athens Biennial of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Macro Future Museum, Rome, Italy; 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf, Germany; and at Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland. Kon Trubkovich lives and works in New York, NY, and this is his first solo exhibition with OHWOW.

937 North La Cienega Boulevard,
Los Angeles, CA 90069 | Tuesday - Saturday,
11 AM – 6 PM | www.oh-wow.com