Volume Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the 2022 edition of Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles with a presentation of new works by Tanya Aguiñiga, Ross Hansen, and Sam Stewart.
Sam Stewart’s deftly pleated and warmly lit Da Capo lamps are an homage to the bonnets worn by Shaker women. The utopian sect centered around equality, pacifism, modesty, celibacy, and the ecstatic worship which gave them their colloquial name. Shaker directives for simplicity in daily life included design guidelines for their handcrafted furniture and attire. These communal styles of dress – including unadorned bonnets for women and a specific hairstyle for men – served as a visual equalizer, a symbol of their belief that everyone is equal. Sam Stewart is known for his considered and witty objects. These referential lamps, like much of his work, interpret highly specific source material into the language of finely produced furniture design.
Also decontextualizing real world referents, Stewart’s “ultralight” lamps are inspired by the aesthetics of emergency – naked light bulbs, life rafts, and camping tents. Similar to the modern camping tent, each ultralight can be easily assembled and disassembled, fitting into a small travel bag due to its component parts: collapsible fiberglass rods and ripstop nylon fabric.
New weavings by Los Angeles-based artist/craftsperson Tanya Aguiñiga are scaled in relation to the human body. Aguiñiga has woven and knotted cotton rope around metal armatures. Sections of material are dyed and then unwoven to reveal a spiral of color. Aguiñiga began working in craft to embrace significant and fundamental maker traditions, many of which are passed down generationally. Her weavings and other objects are craftivist gestures, using both traditional and experimental techniques to uplift these essential practices. Her object-making practice works in tandem with her activist and performance practice which strives to build community and solidarity at the US/Mexico border.
Additional braided textiles are from Aguiñiga’s Extraño series, named for the Spanish word extraño’s two meanings: the experience of missing and the adjective, strange. The Extraño pieces combine ice-dyed technicolor weavings with raw cotton, flax, and synthetic hair. They were made in reaction to the grief, gratitude, rage, exhaustion, and worry the artist has experienced in response to the constant threats our BIPOC community faces and the diverse effects and losses of the pandemic—the bright colors are meant as a respite.
Colorful new fiberglass and ceramic epoxy tables by Ross Hansen exemplify Hansen’s subversive use of industrial production methods to form unique and animated designed objects. These substantial side tables are made of two rotund domes, one perched on top of another. Their mottled pink, green, and taupe surfaces were inspired by lichen and moss growing on stone.
Felix was co-founded by Dean Valentine and brothers Al Morán and Mills Morán. The fair’s mission is to create an intimate experience that prioritizes connoisseurship, collaboration, and community. The 2022 edition takes place February 17 – 20 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles. Public hours are Friday and Saturday from 11am – 8pm and Sunday 11am – 5pm.
