Andrea Bowers / Type A

Room 01: Sara Meltzer Gallery is proud to present a new project by Andrea Bowers. The primary piece in this exhibition is a two-channel video projection entitled, Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Training. Shot in a church fellowship hall, ten dancers participate in a direct action training course taught by two trainers. All the participants, including the trainers, are from the same age group, ranging from early to late 20's. Civil disobedience is defined as a deliberate violation of the law in order to protest injustice and aims to bring public attention to social injustice so must be conducted in the full light of publicity. This exhibition continues Bowers' exploration of activism wherein the visual and political coexist. In the history of direct action, aesthetics have often served as a successful ally in bringing attention to protest.

The video project acts as both an educational training video and a dance performance. Political action is learned through sensorial perception. Education is presented as a simultaneous physical, emotional and intellectual process. The Judson Dance Theater performances of the early 60's are an important influence because they spoke of freedom, directness, experimentation and democratic participation. Just as these earlier works took place in the Judson Memorial Church, which was a gathering place for political, social and religious liberals, this project also takes place in a church setting. Currently at a time of conservative religious revival in the U.S. and much of the world, this project inserts progressive activism into the site of a religious institution.

In addition to the video, Bowers exhibits a new drawing and new photographs. The drawing is an image of protestors from an early 1980's activist group, the Abalone Alliance that later protested the Diablo Nuclear Plant in California. The image is taken from a newspaper clipping that is also exhibited. Bowers isolates a group of figures in order to highlight their body movements, transforming the documentation of an activist event into a dance performance still. In the photographs, Bowers documents the actions of the training session.

This marks Los Angeles artist Andrea Bowers' fifth show with Sara Meltzer Gallery. Bowers will be included in this year's Whitney Biennial. She has exhibited internationally in such institutions as the New Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), inova (Milwaukee), ZKM Karlsruhe, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Neuer Aachen Kunstverein, Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), UCLA Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and Tate Liverpool. Bowers will have a solo exhibition at the Magazin 4 Voralberger Kunstverein (Bregenz, Austria) this fall.

Room 02: Sara Meltzer Gallery is proud to present Type A's Damage. Continuing their focus on masculinity and the behavioral expectations associated with it, Type A (the collaboration of Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin) present two new video works and new photographs that deal with emotion and reaction, and the perception of these through the superficiality of an image.

In Bleed, a two-channel video, Type A enacts the ceremonial act of becoming "blood brothers." Each monitor presents a hand: the cut is made, but the moment of unifying bond takes place in the empty space between the monitors, hidden from the viewer. This sharing of blood signifies a formal bonding that brims with adolescent aggression. Sweat, a series of photographs, presents the collaborative's faces covered in water droplets. Overtly sexual references are purposefully exposed in the dynamic between the artists and the camera. In Cry, a three-channel video presents and exposes the artifice of induced tears commonly used in movie making. Shot from three distinct perspectives, the viewer exists as a hidden participant in this action that is both intimate and cruel. Type A continues their exploration of exertion, strength, sexuality, and vanity in the relationships between men and the society in which they live.

Room 01: Andrea Bowers. Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Training
Room 02: Type A , Damage