Lauren Halsey: Kingdom Splurge (4)

Lauren Halsey: Kingdom Splurge (4)
May 14 – July 9, 2016
http://www.recessart.org/lauren-halsey/

Public Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6pm; Thursday, 2-8pm

Events:
Middling Reception: May 26, 6-8pm Reading Group 1: Funk: June 2, 6-8pm Reading Group 2: Sun Ra: June 16, 6-8pm Listening Session & Poetry Night: June 30, 6-8pm Closing Reception: July 7, 6-8pm

sacred motherplane thangz will land at a simulated terrain of kingdom splurge, the technicolor version of el aye n harlem with nature. we will pledge our lives to the holy Funk. in Funk we will trust. we will blow the cobwebs out of our minds, out of your minds, put it on evreethang to never be unFunky again—to be completely ourselves for everybody has a little light under the sun. there will be ceremonies...Funktismz. gettin dipped...Funk transplants. gettin deep.

once turned out, we build for our future realm on a whole nother other plane: under different stars, past mystic coco tomorrows, up the milky way from the silky side of the sun where find we doo doo mamas turned Funkstresses ascending neferititi, isis n dem. but not by those turnt deep purple magic cities, somewhere else—around the corner from the slauson where mr everythang slangs dvds n cds and hours after those liquidy pathways to god. there.

– Excerpt from Kingdom Splurge’s Funkifesto II (2013)

On May 14th, Lauren Halsey will begin work on Kingdom Splurge (4), a two-month long project that will transform Recess into an interplanetary liquid environment composed of hyperreal gardens, fantasy landscapes, and pools of beauty water.

This project will be the fourth articulation of Halsey’s Kingdom—an environment that the artist describes as “an infinite project of endless becoming that entails liberation through Funk, fantasy architecture, and the experimental development of space: gardens, lawns, vacant lots, churches, liquor stores, parking lots.” At Recess, the Kingdom will invite visitors to traverse and lounge in the fantastical setting. Atmospheric changes will occur over the course of the Session, with visual and audio components accumulating as Halsey collaborates with visitors to realize unique forms.

By disassociating from the scale, temporality, and conventions of our everyday surroundings, Kingdom Splurge (4) will create a space where imagined ideals can flourish: pleasure, passion, leisure, and Funk can be put to use in a quest for new social possibilities in communally shared realms. At once a model of and a hypothesis for new modes of human habitation, the environment and its constituent parts will act as spatial metaphors for agency, optimism, self-determination, and love.

Lauren Halsey: Kingdom Splurge (4) is part of Recess’s signature program, Session, which invites artists to use Recess’s public platform to combine productive studio space with dynamic exhibition opportunities. Sessions remain open to the public from the first day of the artist's project through the last, encouraging sustained dialogue between artists and audiences. Due to the process-based nature of Session, projects undergo constant revision and the above proposal is subject to change; consult the project website, recessart.org/lauren-halsey, for accruing information on the Session’s developments.

About the Artist:
Lauren Halsey was born in Los Angeles, California in 1987. She holds an MFA from Yale University (2014) and a BFA from California Institute of the Arts (2012). Halsey recently completed a residency at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2014-2015) and is the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2014) and an Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship (2013). She builds fantasy sculptures and environments that remix ephemera she gathers in her neighborhood with ancient Egyptian architectural styles, hyperreal nature, technicolors, outer space, and Funk.