The Council Gathers In Time

DEAN AND LAURA LARSON’S ‘MOURNERS’ USE THE PAST TO ENCOUNTER THE FUTURE AT GALLERY 825 (LAAA), WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA

(Los Angeles, CA) Spanning several years, Laura and Dean Larson’s solo show The Council Gathers in Time marks the completion of their third collaborative body of work. In continuing the use of sculpted human-animal hybrid bronze figures the duo’s playful mixture of mediums sets the stage for unforeseen lyrical encounters.
 
The work’s retracing of historical events through its ‘council’ of human-animal hybrid characters are presented independently as sculpture, through photographs and a limited-edition art book. The bronze figures reference the poses and scale of The Mourners, a series of 14th and 15th century alabaster sculptures of monks and clerics encircling a tomb. These embodiments of late medieval devotion inspire the Larson’s characters as they are also found presented in various locales throughout Europe. With eighteen figures in all, their animal heads reveal themselves to be among various endangered species.
 
Mounted continuously across three gallery walls is an archival pigment print on canvas. The Council Gathers in Time depicting the travels of the Council from the home planet to this planet as they come to discover the cause of its sixth mass extinction. This journey continues across the Baltic Sea, Scandinavia, Finland, Russia and Germany.
 
Art historian Betty Brown writes about this work, “The two artists have woven Dean's images of space into a seamless backdrop for a creation/destruction narrative linking the mythic animal monks and our planet's environmental devastation. At 17 inches tall and over 23 feet in length, the horizontally extended frieze recalls the medieval masterpiece known as the Bayeux Tapestry, a woolen-embroidery-on-linen textile recording William of Normandy's invasion of England in the eleventh century.”

See the review of our exhibit in Art and Cake here:  
artandcakela.com/2018/10/06/3-solo-exhibitions-at-laaa-gallery-825-provide-powerful-observations-of-our-world/