Untitled
Exposition Park Rose Garden, Exposition Park, Council District 9
Artist's Website
About the Artist
Michael Queenland’s solo exhibitions include Michael Queenland at Maureen Paley (London), Roam at Kristina Kite Gallery (Los Angeles), Rudy’s Ramp of Remainders at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, The MORL or NYC-Apartment at LAXART (Los Angeles), Bread and Balloons (New York), and Michael Queenland: Photographs, Sculptures and Shaker Classics at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art. He has participated in group exhibitions including Made in L.A. 2018 at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Stories of Almost Everyone at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Assisted at Kavi Gupta Gallery (Chicago), Catawampus at Midway Contemporary Art (Minneapolis), Idle Youth at Gladstone Gallery (New York), the 2008 Whitney Biennial (New York), Nina in Position at Artists Space (New York), and Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2016, Queenland received the Rome Prize and was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
About the Art
Michael Queenland explores cultural, communal, and biographical issues by juxtaposing everyday objects in his work. His metal sculpture, Untitled, 2019, presents breakfast cereal scattered and piled on top of a hand-knotted rug featuring patterns from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. Here, two cultural products meet: the bold, artificial colors of processed cereal found in the West intersect with the East’s rich and complex traditions of tribal weaving. One is a perishable food item made for modern consumption, while the other is part of a history of artisanal craft. The viewer is asked to consider the formal, social, and political associations that emerge from this interaction. For Queenland, Untitled, 2019 evokes an archaeological site, a map of a citadel, a military aerial view of a geographic region, or leftovers of a kid who played with her food on the living room rug.