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Artist: Ishmael Randall Weeks 

Constructive Resistance
November 17, 2016 – December 23, 2016
Steve Turner 
Los Angeles, USA

Exploring the legacies of modernism and Arte Povera, Randall Weeks will present a room-sized sculptural installation, Ejercicios Para Un Nuevo Mundo V (Exercises For A New World V) that consists of cranium-size chunks of raw mineral ore (silver, gold and copper) sourced from three mines in the Peruvian Andes. The stones have been drilled and attached to steel-pipe armatures that were bent into forms representing outdoor playground structures common to Latin American housing developments of the 1960s.

Two wall works, Paisaje/Repisa I-II (Landscape/Shelf I-II) will also be presented. Each consists of shelves made of copper plating over steel that has been coated with the mineral dust that was left over from the process of creating the sculptural installation. The shelves hold a copperized mold of a calcified tree that was found in a mine, a copper-plated styrofoam plate, and some fragments of minerals.

Randall Weeks utilizes architecture as a metaphorical structure to address the impact of man on the landscape. He juxtaposes modernist architecture with structures common in Latin America–favela shacks, adobe and vernacular buildings–and he incorporates aspects of the do-it- yourself economy to find practical solutions when resources are scarce