Scupper: Curated by Carlos Agredano
Carl Cheng
Sophie Friedman-Pappas
Sayre Gomez
David L. Johnson
Rindon Johnson
Maren Karlson
Harrison Kinnane Smith
Teresa Margolles
Park McArthur
Ed Ruscha
Analia Saban
Cielo Saucedo
Jesse Stecklow
Charlotte Zhang
• a hole in a ship's side to carry water overboard from the deck.
origin: late Middle English: perhaps via Anglo-Norman French from Old French escopir 'to spit'; compare with German Speigatt, literally 'spit hole'.
• sink (a ship or its crew) deliberately.
• prevent from working or succeeding; thwart
origin: late 19th century (as military slang in the sense 'kill, especially in an ambush')
Scupper is a group exhibition organized around a central question: how do our infrastructural systems define, excrete, and destroy their waste?
In the 21st century, the inadequacies of our infrastructure are coalescing into the collapse of our financial, social, medical, legal, and environmental systems. In tandem with an already unstable foundation, new technologies are further accelerating this disintegration.
The exhibition functions as a mirror to the collapse, artworks are haphazardly scattered across the gallery space, precariously hovering over and around visitors. These objects include self-destructed machines, removed pieces of hostile architecture, futile financial interventions, scavenged detritus, industrial byproducts, air pollution, human particulate matter, artificial intelligence, and forensic representations of urban wastelands.
To be a scupper (noun) is to function as an exit, a hole designed to remove harm to a systems structural integrity; to scupper (verb) is to intentionally thwart another structure from succeeding. Our globalized world embodies both noun and verb, it is a paradoxical structure that dismantles itself as it builds.
This exhibition neither scuppers nor is a scupper, it is the carnage of our cannibalized systemsproposes no solutions but exists as the last dregs of our crumbling infrastructure.
The ship is sinking!
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Cielo Saucedo, Captioning system, 2024
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Jesse Stecklow, Glue Trap for Non-Living Things, 2019
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Sayre Gomez, Untitled, 2024
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Analia Saban, Folded Concrete (Gate Fold), 2017
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Charlotte Zhang, The Garden (Ueberrothian render pipelines and winking hammers), 2024
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Teresa Margolles, Papeles de la Morgue, 2003
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Teresa Margolles, Papeles de la Morgue, 2013
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David L. Johnson, Loiter (Jordi), 2024
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Harrison Kinnane Smith, Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company Final Dividend Check (1883), 2024
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Jesse Stecklow, Untitled (Air Sampler), 2019-2021
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Jesse Stecklow, Untitled (Corn-fed Sampler), 2022
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Rindon Johnson, The brown house was on fire to the attic. He wrote his last novel there at the inn. Even the worst will beat his low score., 2022
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Sophie Friedman-Pappas, Kiln Building 3, 2024
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Carl Cheng, Erosion Landscape Bread Print. Bread Print No. 3112024, 1979
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Maren Karlson, Staub (Holes) 1, 2024
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Park McArthur, Senior in their 30s, 2024
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Ed Ruscha, Elysian Park and the Stone Quarry Hills, 2023