ART CITIES:L.A.- Manny Krakowski

Growing up near Los Angeles, Manny Krakowski had observed phenomena such consumerism, industry and advertising that supports it. His relationship with daily objects is an important investigative opportunity for his to question material functionality, and the memories associated with things that we use every day. Changing the material of these items puts its contemporary use in question. Through researching the history, he usinterested in how time has changed its social or political connotation.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Edward Cella Art & Architecture Archive

True North is the direction along the earth’s surface towards the geographic North Pole. True geodetic North differs from magnetic North (the direction a compass), and from grid North (the direction northwards along the grid lines of a map projection). The exhibition “TRUE NORTH” by Manny Krakowski, at Edward Cella Art & Architecture in L. A., includes unique hand-blown mirrored glass sculptures on custom pedestals and hand formed glass tubes filled with toothpaste. The exhibition was conceived when Krakowski began thinking about True North as an impermanent geographic location. Vulnerable to the concept of this location as an unknown site, Krakowski set out to transform his psychological experience into a physical representation with the creation of seductive mirrored glass sculptures. Krakowski’s glass sculptures literally reflect the space around them, a reference to modernism, and perhaps are a nod of admiration to the objects portrayed in still life paintings by Giorgio Morandi. These alluring, glass sculptures, and shaped, corroding, toothpaste-filled glass tubes, create a fleeting experience of oscillation and complicate further the idea of a True North.

Info: Edward Cella Art & Architecture, 2754 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, Duration: 6-20/8/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.edwardcella.com