The Five Spot

Curated by Shana Nys Dambrot
Andrew Shire Gallery
October 2012
Los Angeles

From the curator, Shana Nys Dambrot:

The Five Spot brings together five artists (two of whom show a collaboration) who each administer the strategies of television optics and commercial desire as both the poison and the antidote, turning fervent codes and strategies inside out to get at what is hidden behind the surface. The show’s title refers to the casual lingo of televised programming and also cash money. The very diverse practices of these artists, all of whom live and work in Los Angeles, replicate for the viewer differently aspected optical and emotional experiences akin to the passive, manipulative vertigo of commercial surrender. These artists explore the way color and pattern stimulate the brain, using imagery, abstraction, and the in-between, delivering content but deferring meaning. The exhibition features work by: Marion Lane, Bettina Hubby, Vincent Sabella, Laura & Manfred Menz.

For The Five Spot, Hubby shows a selection of her quirky, creepy, expertly engineered collages on paper, as well as devising a new format for her ongoing Sex Without People traced-drawings series. Her collages often cannibalize fashion photograph—and increasingly co-opt its actual materials—deconstructing and reimagining the elements of desire, appetite and aspiration. The result are naughty, macabre, and deceptively pretty objects in which you cannot help but recognize yourself.