PRESS RELEASE
Sean Shim-Boyle: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
November 2 - December 21, 2013
Exhibition Opening: Saturday November 2, 6-8pm
For his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Canadian-born artist Sean Shim-Boyle has created A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats. This site-specific installation at LA><ART fuses architecture and sculpture to create a performative gesture using recycled raw timber and automatic sliding doors.
Installing 100 beams to the existing architecture alludes, in part, to the forests of his childhood home in British Columbia. By lowering the existing rafters, this transformation compresses the space. The intervention alters the sensory relationship the viewer may have to the building. Towards the rear of the space is a set of automatic sliding glass doors, a variety commonly used in commercial premises. Placed in too-close proximity to one another, the sensors designed to open and close the doors are compromised, leaving the doors locked in endless standoff. The arrested movement of the doors creates an apparent passageway that is neither accessible nor secure.
In this sense, Shim-Boyle’s work considers the everyday transformation of raw materials into animated structures that occasionally take on a mind of their own.