SKYLAR HASKARD &
MICHAEL RASHKOW
JUNE 12 to JULY 17, 2010

L.A. Based Artists Explore the Performative and Transformative in Art

GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY in Beverly Hills is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by Skylar Haskard and Michael Rashkow, opening on June 12, 2010. Both artists produce work that expresses an acute awareness of the space in which it resides. Gallery owner Herair Garboushian explains, “There’s a firm conceptual footing to what both Skylar and Michael do. I’m certain the work will provoke as many questions as it does answers, and I’m certain it will be exciting.” The exhibition will remain on view until July 17, 2010.

For his upcoming installation, Haskard expects to populate the gallery with a number of objects or documents that work together as part of the whole, but at the same time have the presence to exist on their own—some of which are utilitarian pieces that may be functional and relevant in a person’s everyday life. Haskard’s work bares a distinctively performative mark, with compositional elements often subject to change and viewer interaction. Such is the result of the artist’s conscious investigative process, one that views work as every bit durational as it is spatial.

For the exhibition at GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY, Rashkow will install a series of large photographs that are physically altered along with other sculptural elements. Rashkow explains that he “conceives of each show as a whole, performing a constituent function within the makeup of my practice.” For this show he intends to “incorporate the gallery space as a site through the use of its movable walls as a presentation device for a group of large photographs. The photographs, some of them worn or otherwise manipulated, formulate a cosmology to which the physical space of the gallery is ancillary.” He expressly states that he wants this work to reckon with the world, separate from Art.


Skylar Haskard (born 1977 in Los Angeles) explains that his practice “commits to the idea that a work can change over the course of an exhibition’s duration…In an ideal exhibition the work should act as an introduction or open-ended proposal rather than being a sealed, unalterable entity.” It is a work of enjambment. It’s the hanging sentence that precedes, even coerces, a jump to the next thought. It derives its multiple layers from the very fact that it is participatory and impermanent.

Haskard has shown both nationally and internationally, with his most recent solo exhibitions taking place in 2007 at Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles, and Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. In 2008 Haskard was invited by Curator Philipp Kaiser to partner with John Baldessari, as part of a group show reinterpreting the work of Allan Kaprow at MOCA. A faculty member at Otis College of Art and Design, Haskard currently lives and works in his studio in Los Angeles.

Michael Rashkow (born 1974 in Los Angeles) currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles at China Art Objects in 2009 and at LAX Art in 2007. He has also exhibited widely in New York, the MOCAD in Detroit, and abroad. Michael Rashkow works in a variety of medium, the material and visual effect of the work changes, though he consistently deals with notions of transformation across a broader spectrum. Rashkow studied Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley and holds an MFA and BFA from UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture.