Fabrications
Jesse Durost

ENDGAMES
John Sisley

January 23–February 28, 2009


For the work in Fabrications, Jesse Durost combines simple architectural forms with layers and transparency, resulting in sculptural works of both logic and fantasy. Exploring the potential of a self-invented vocabulary, Durost begins his sculptures with a series of fundamental structures—simple architectural forms with varying spatial characteristics. Durost’s cubes imply mass and interior; his screens imply barriers or planes, with each module arranged both systematically and intuitively.  Like words in a sentence, each element takes on new meaning, as it becomes part of the larger sculptural work.

Jesse Durost attended the Columbus College of Art and Design, and lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Durost’s past exhibitions include Hole in the Sky at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, and Bent (with Chandra Bocci and Ryan Boyle), curated by Stephanie Snyder, Curator of The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College.

Within John Sisley’s newest body of work, ENDGAMES, the construction and deconstruction of images is examined in works that compile, breakdown, or re-arrange figures, narrative, and temporal structure through simple repeated gestures. Sisley’s recent works have explored the inaccessible latent information experienced through the erased or destroyed photograph, the lost or unseen film, and the damaged record. The title of the exhibition, ENDGAME refers both to the point in a game of chess when few pieces remain on the board, and to Beckett's play of the same title, in which four characters exist in a kind of limbo waiting for an end to their lives. In each group of works within ENDGAMES, Sisley breaks down and reconfigures a number of elements, resulting in the simultaneous degradation of the original image and the construction of each sublime new image configuration.

John Sisley was recently included in the 2008 exhibition LA25, at LACE, Los Angeles. A project created by Skadden & Arp to showcase the talents of some of the young artists whose work will enhance the richness of Los Angeles’ cultural life, LA25 was curated by Thomas Solomon and juried by John Baldessari, Kris Kuramitsu, Weston Naef, Cathy Opie, Ann Philbin, and Paul Schimmel. John Sisley lives and works in Los Angeles, California.