What's on Los Angeles | Index


by Jody Zellen

August 16, 2018


Alison O’Daniel
Say the word "NOWHERE." Say "HEADPHONES." Say "NOTHING."
Shulamit Nazarian
July 21 - August 25, 2018


Alison O'Daneil installation view

At first glance it is hard to make sense of the disparate objects that comprise Alison O’Daniel's installation, Say the word "NOWHERE." Say "HEADPHONES." Say "NOTHING." These include: polyurethane columns that hang from the ceiling, hand-made cloth banners with colored ropes that extend down the wall and across the floor, and diagrams crafted from acoustic rubber detailing the paths Zamboni machines follow to resurface skating rinks. Important facts that contribute to understanding the installation are: O’Daniel is hard of hearing. O’Daniel used to be a figure skater. O’Daniel often borrows from and reinterprets works of other artists such as Louise Nevelson and Sophie Tauber Arp. In some inexplicable way, these seemingly unrelated elements feed off each other to create a semi-coherent yet intriguing whole. O'Daniel draws from her own experiences and those from hard of hearing communities to engage with ideas surrounding the comic effects of mis-hearing. In many ways, her process is a kind of ongoing chain reaction or game of telephone where one thing leads to another along an imagined trajectory of assumed and allowable mis-communication that transform and translate a wide range of source materials into unique works of art.

Upon entry, one's eyes immediately gravitate to a flat welded steel wire sculpture suspended from the ceiling between the lobby and main space of the gallery. This three-dimensional line drawing entitled Arp Screen (all works 2018) is an ingenious configuration of interlocking shapes including asterisks, circles, arrows and what could be interpreted as feet and legs. The piece loosely references the abstract compositions of Swiss artist Sophie Tauber Arp (1889-1943), known as one of the foremost women working in geometric abstraction. While O’Daniel sites Arp as a referent, there is not an obvious one to one correspondence between the referent and O'Daniel's representation. Her interest is not in remaking other's work but would seem to be in the associations that can be drawn from its style and place in art history.Hanging toward the front of the lobby gallery are two intriguing works— Her Eyelashes and Optical Track— ambiguous black catenaries that drape from the ceiling almost reaching the ground. These curious sculptures are made from painted black steel and covered with false eyelashes. O'Daniel sites a photograph of the artist Louise Nevelson smoking a cigar as one of her sources of inspiration. Nevelson was fond of over the top jewelry, headscarves and multiple pairs of false eyelashes. In O'Daniel's game of telephone, one can imagine the trajectory from this photograph of Nevelson, to O'Daniel's Surreal interpretations. Nevelson is also the inspiration for Louise I, Louise 2 and Her Shadow 1, column-like works that are both suspended from the ceiling and attached to the wall. O'Daniel has remade Nevelson inspired table-leg sculptures from foam and other acoustic material so as to shape the way sounds move through the gallery space.

The idea of shaping space to follow specific patterns is also evident in O'Daniel's "Zamboni Path" works. Here, she uses acoustic rubber cut in the pattern of Zamboni diagrams— the optimal paths these machines follow to clean ice. Materials that dampen sound also comprise O'Daniel's "Sound Proofers," large-scale cotton banners with curved edges that hang from the ceiling. Each double sided flag-like panel is a montage of colored shapes that harken back to Arp's abstractions. Long cords flow from the sides of the banners to the floor spreading out as a tangle of criss-crossing fabric lines.

It is possible to see these lines as the physical link between the works, or metaphorically as the 'telephone wire' that allows one idea to transform into another along an imagined trajectory. Whatever the connections or pathways, O'Daniel's process begins with the fact that she is hard of hearing which she uses as a point of departure for explorations into the unexpected surprises that come from mis-communications and mis-hearings. Through a series of associations between music, self-image, female icons in art history, hearing and communication, O'Daniel asserts her agency by creating a fascinating and challenging body of work that poetically transforms what some might consider a 'dis'-ability into a gift.