Locust Projects is pleased to present Performative Intimacy, an installation by Los Angeles-based sculptor David Jang. Known for inventive kinetic installations employing hacked consumer electronics and subverted household appliances, Jang fills the Project Room with twenty-four ceiling-mounted box fans that emit a dancing, reified breeze. Trimmer lines attached to each fan’s blades flow to the floor, and as the blades spin in synchrony the lines twirl upwards creating an animated cyclone effect under each fan. Visitors can enter the installation and walk between the trimmer lines as the fans spin in unison, and lines twist taut and uncoil in playful rhythms. Performative Intimacy surrounds the audience in a hypnotizing environment, using the greatest economy of means. 

Consumer electronics, with their life’s instructions literally coded into their mother boards, are the building blocks of Jang’s practice. He examines and remixes these codes to discover the hidden subtexts and hierarchies they uphold. By hotwiring the fans, Jang transforms these typically cool, detached, machines into playful performers that are, as described by critic Peter Frank, “at once hilarious, frightening and charming.”

ABOUT DAVID JANG

David Jang was born in Seoul, Korea in 1975 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He received a BFA from College of Visual Arts, St Paul, Minnesota. Jang’s exhibitions have been shown internationally and nationally at Nagasaki Museum of Fine Art in Japan; Pleiades Gallery in New York; Heritage Art Center in Manila, Philippines; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Laguna Art Museum, Municipal Art Gallery, and Downtown Art Center Gallery in Los Angeles. Jang has been reviewed in Art Ltd Magazine, the Huffington Post, Korean American Magazine, Artillery Magazine, KCET Artbound, and Korea Times.