PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

Lisa Anne Auerbach
b. 1967 in Ann Arbor, MI, USA; based in Los Angeles
www.lisaanneauerbach.com
www.americanmegazine.com

Works in exhibition
American Megazine #1, 2013
Inkjet on paper
Installed at Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art

American Megazine #2, 2014
Inkjet on paper
Installed at Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art

Take This Knitting Machine and Shove It, 2009
Photomural
Installed in the display window of Books Ogaki Karasuma Sanjo

Take This Knitting Machine and Shove It, 2009
Merino wool on custom fiberglass mannequin form
Installed in the display window of Books Ogaki Karasuma Sanjo

See all installation views at higher resolution: www.flickr.com/photos/parasophia/sets/72157654544399523

Lisa Anne Auerbach originally studied photography, but during the 2004 United States presidential election she created a knitted message, and since then has produced a large number of knit works. In 2013, she produced the approximately 150 × 100 cm (60 × 39 in.) ultra-large-format work American Megazine #1, containing photographs of the characteristic architecture of megachurches in various locations including California and Arizona. The second in the series, which featured photographs of psychics, was exhibited at the 2014 Whitney Biennial. In addition to sympathizing intellectually with movements such as feminism, punk rock, and homemade zines, Auerbach incorporates their ideals into the tactile fabric of day-to-day life. Starting with simple inspirations from her daily life, she employs readymade materials and media available to individuals and insists on working with her own hands, producing works rich in playful critique that tread the borderline between ordinary and extraordinary.
At Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015, the American Megazine series will be presented at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art with periodic page turnings that require two sets of hands. Also, Auerbach’s photomural and knitwear from Take This Knitting Machine and Shove It will be shown in the display window of Books Ogaki Karasuma Sanjo. The works are based on a conflation of the 18th-century Luddite uprising, in which British textile artisans destroyed newly invented machinery in protest against the Industrial Revolution, with the legend of the heoric wealth-distributing Robin Hood. The artist herself wears eye-catching knit sweaters of her own creation, emblazoned with caustically humorous slogans.

• Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art
• Display window at Books Ogaki Karasuma Sanjo