The Devil’s Workshop

4 June - 2 July, 2022

Band of Vices is pleased to present the upcoming exhibition, THE DEVIL’S WORKSHOP, a solo exhibition by contemporary artist, Rebecca Niederlander.

The Devil’s Workshop is an exploration of the communities of the different, of those we chose to exile, those we chose to embrace, and those we chose to enter into.

In many belief systems there is a single entity, often saddled with having been disobedient to a God, that holds the supposed forces of evil. This na’er-do-well, by virtue of their straying off the dictated majority path, is exiled and creates their own domain with all the others who have also chosen differently. Los Angeles is filled with such emigrés that left behind a life, we are all those that choose a different path.

The wood works are part of the Pilgrimage series, which involves making pilgrimages to wood-workers (often emigrés) across Los Angeles and interviewing them about their spiritual practice. After this I take their scraps and, in my studio, combine these with others to make new sculptural works. I do not alter the scraps.  I investigate each piece, observing the grain and the cuts and the tones to find where it fits best in conversation and community.  I see each scrap as a lost soul, and my job is to create unique spaces that rightfully re-home each one.

Rebecca Niederlander (b. 1965, USA) is a Los Angeles based visual artist, curator, and writer. Her sculptures and site-specific installations are data visualizations of the ephemeral in life. These labor-intense abstractions use repetition and the inherent nature of the materials to address the individual as connected to the larger intergenerational community; as well as the micro and macro nature of that ego, and ego’s foil in the necessities of solitude and boredom in the creation of individual thought.

LACMA curator emeritus Howard Fox wrote that the “endless connections, interceptions, overlaps, and mergers that define the growth patterns of Niederlander’s works are suggestive of not only the patterns of the physiological development of any living being but (by the extension of our focus on our own humanity) also of the aesthetic/intellectual/spiritual evolution and transformation of our individual selves, values that Niederlander pursues in both her art and her personal life with a devotion not unlike a religious calling.”

Projects have included There's A Nova In the Bed next to Mine, in an official project for the 56th Venice Biennale in Italy, Blanche Descartes, You’re So Square Baby [I Don’t Care] at the Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles, the solo exhibition Axis Mundi at the St. Louis Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, various public art projects for the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and two site-specific projects for the Los Angeles International Airport. Niederlander’s writings have been published by Rizzoli Press among many others. She also co-founded the social practice BROODWORK, which investigated creative practice and family life through exhibitions, lectures, written projects, public art, and events. Reviews and articles about her work include the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Architect’s Newspaper, Dwell, and LA Weekly. She has an MFA from UCLA and a BFA from California College of the Arts and is recipient of grants from the NEA, Culture Ireland, and Cornell U. among many. She is married with one son.

Accompanying artists in this exhibition include new large format oil paintings by Edyta Pachowicz and expressive portraits by Remedios Patton in Vada’s Pinacotheca, our newly-named gallery annex.