LOS ANGELES, CA.- Launch LA is presenting two solo exhibitions featuring Stanton Hunter and Alison Ragguette.

Both artists feature two series that juxtapose themes within their work. Hunter explores the duality between the intimate scale of his wall sculptures in contrast to the sprawl of his installation, composed of individual pieces to create the arrangement as a whole. Ragguette’s first body of work uses hybridized forms of objects that combine aspects of modern assemblage with traditional sculpture. This focus on industrial, hybridized materials contrasts the curved and bulbous objects of the Melanin series that hang as skin in various pigments, while both series confront our everyday experience of the world and the interaction between our bodies and the environment.

Inspired by artists such as Flavin, Turrell and Irwin in the Light and Space movement, and their rejection of the ‘object’ in art, Hunter shapes our perception of physical objects through scale and medium just as those influential artists shaped our perception of space through refractions of light. These small-scale ceramic wall sculptures also call our attention to space and environment as scaled down architectural arrangements. Hunter’s geometric forms recall three dimensional modeling, and especially play with the idea of recreating by hand formed clay such design models that are now commonly computer designed and printed.

“I have been exploring this body of work for over a year now, and have found different themes emerging. Some are like exploded-to-3D Mondrian paintings, some have taken on a folded quality like origami, some are torqued abstract forms, some are open planar forms with spaces opening perpendicular to each other, some include scaffolding and trussed-based open forms, and some refer to more earth-based architectural forms - clay is decomposed rock after all. The installation, Intimate Sprawl, reflects my interest in groupings and repetitions of forms that can collectively activate a space visually. Originally designed to morph as a whole into the architecture of a particular space, for Launch, they are mounted as their own nomadic cityscape.” – Stanton Hunter

Stimulating multiple senses at once, Ragguette’s sculptures seem to burst and spill with unknown liquids and bubbles. As composite forms that incorporate a “mash-up” of objects evoking children’s toys, tools, automotive, plumbing, and medical parts, Ragguette’s sculptures confront both natural and artificial forces. This element of biomimicry, an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies embodies the physicality of protection, preservation, and containment. With valves, piping, and neon colors reminiscent of toxic fluids, Ragguette recreates these potentially hazardous scenes of recreation with the objective to discover the awkward beauty within the precariousness of everyday life. Surrendering to the irony that the contemporary world is beyond human control, her intention is to elicit full engagement, even if just a momentary sensation of the inherent values of curiosity and play.

“Navigating between images of the body and concepts of technology, my work explores the ways in which natural and synthetic worlds intersect as inspired by theories of synesthesia and biomimicry. Combining porcelain, glass, and rubber, I have developed an interdisciplinary approach to making sculptural and installation works that are dialectically playful and alien, chaotic and messy, and encapsulating and encroaching.” – Alison Ragguette