We are pleased to announce the opening of our programming this May with Render Me Visible, an inaugural exhibition of selected works by Los Angeles based artist Patrick Stefaniak. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, May 20 from 4-8pm.

In this survey of crochet paintings, sculptures, and art games, Stefaniak brings viewers on a tour through his playful world; one brimming with craft, humor, and a wide-ranging engagement with art history.

Render Me Visible centers our attention on Stefaniak’s obsession with the cube, a seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration that lies at the heart of the artist’s practice. The cheekily titled Cubeism, dating back to 2015, confronts the strange nature of having an embodied experience with content on a screen. Rather than overwhelm us with evermore digital information, Stefaniak borrows from the Minimalists to immerse us in a state of suspended looking; When the flatness of the screen dissipates, Cubeism envelops the viewer’s personal field of vision, leaving them with nothing but their body, a hand over the surface of a hard edged interface, interacting with digital geometries and their audio accompaniments.

From here, lines are extracted, crocheted, and painted from the invisible 3D graphics of the computer to the physical wall of the gallery. Fittingly, Stefaniak’s crochet planes arrive in Los Angeles in tune with the city’s history. Like the iconic stunt in Buster Keaton’s 1928 film Steamboat Bill, Jr. later quoted by Steve McQueen in his 1997 piece, Deadpan, Stefaniak’s threaded loop surfaces fall forward from their supports, dangling from extrusions that leave the viewer framed but unscathed.

Render Me Visible folds and unfolds over and over again, inviting poetry in the interstices of cube and plane, surface and volume, touch and restraint.

At Bugsy LA.