Martin Cox
Museum of Ennui
Grand Opening of ‘The Closet in Shoebox Projects’ presented by the Shed Collective
March 17th – June 3rd, 2018
Opening reception: Sunday, March 17th, 3-5 p.m.
May also be seen by appointment
The Closet at Shoebox Projects
660 S. Avenue 21, #3
Los Angeles, CA 90031
Boredom-as-Catalyst in Martin Cox’s Museum of Ennui at The Closet
(Los Angeles, California) – The Shed Collective was created when four artists decided to host art events in their sheds and closets. Coined “the alternative to alternative galleries” a group of sister galleries emerged. Inspired by spaces like “Elevator Mondays” and Gallery 1993 and believing that artists have to create their own opportunities to exhibit and curate, the first show opens at “The Closet” an annex in the Shoebox Project space at the Brewery on March 17th from 3-5pm.
As an experience, The Shed Collective attempts to capture the imagination in its challenging of existing modes of presentation of contemporary art. It responds both to the artist’s need to experiment and curator’s need to stage exhibits in unconventional spaces in order to engage new dialogues. Seen together, The Shed Collective fluidly explores both artistic and curatorial conditions in its varied spaces. Formed by Kristine Schomaker, Cathy Immordino, Sheli Silverio, and Diane Williams, the group aims to more efficiently enact the presence of art in varied communities throughout Los Angeles and capture a unique sense of diversity and character within each of its spaces and projects.
L.A.-based artist Martin Cox’s Museum of Ennui, another alternative project, will inaugurate The Closet as the first exhibition. Mr. Cox has long examined places where natural and man-made worlds meet. The artist’s capturing of landscapes, often abandoned or vacated shelters, and other artifacts inject the past within the present, as a site of imagination and evolution. Cox refers to these spaces of possibility and potential doom in his most recent project, The Museum of Ennui that began at Fjuk Art Center Residency in Iceland. Shifting modes from his own singular production, Cox reached out to a wide range of artists all over the world. The artist asked each participant to produce a piece of art in response to their own reflections of ennui. The word, Cox feels, has been wrongly perceived as a condition of debilitating despair and lethargy. The artist’s investigation brings historical and literary dimension in championing its connotations of boredom and melancholy as necessary to human invention throughout history.
Inspired by the museums often dedicated to a single subject or person dotted throughout Iceland, Cox developed the Museum of Ennui, as a mobile object that could alter in form and travel with all of its elements contained within its apparatus. In its second iteration for the Closet called Museum for One, the artist has added new additions from artists he is in contact with throughout the globe, as well as text and sound pieces. Though mostly digital photographs, Museum for One also includes drawings and mixed-media works. The piece’s title refers not only to The Closet’s architecture, who’s maximum capacity is one person, but the concept of ennui as a state of being solitary.
21 artists will be represented at the museum of ennui including visual, literary and sound artists from the US, UK, Iceland, Canada, India, Germany, and France have responded with small art works. Participating artists: Anna Amethyst, Cynthia Minet, Douglas Hill, Gary Edward Jones, Jessie Rose Vala, Julie Murray, Katrina Alexy, Kim Abeles, Kirthana Devdas, Kristine Schomaker, Maggie Lowe Tennesen, Marina Rees, Martin Cox, Nataliya Petkova, Röðull Reyr Kárason, Rose Portillo, Ryan Hill, Sally O’Reilly, Sara Jane Boyers, Scott MacLeod, Thora Solveig Bergsteinsdottir.
