Laurie Frick: Sleep Patterns at Edward Cella Art + Architecture, 6018 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, Cal. through April 2, 2011. This is the West Coast debut of Austin, Texas and New York City based collage and installation artist Laurie Frick, who is also associate publisher of artcritical. In addition to wall-based relief assemblages, Frick has made a site specific piece titled Bumpy World. She works with found wood fragments and eyeglass trays (materials first encountered by the artist at a residency in the Bemis Center, Omaha, Nebraska.) The grid is loosely followed and randomly transgressed. Or so it would have seemed if the artist had not informed us that her order of bumps and hollows actually follows neural paths of sleep patterns. Such procedural insight notwithstanding, when a visitor lands at LAX hours on a crystal-clear afternoon and proceeds directly to Edward Cella, a gallery that specializes in architectural drawings, these experiences, coupled with knowledge of Frick’s earlier collages mimicking city maps, all conspire to give her assemblages the distinct feel of urban sprawl. But then, perhaps cities unconsciously follow similar neural patterns too. Especially cities that never sleep.
Laurie Frick, Bumpy World , 2011. Wood pieces from found eyeglass trays, cut, assembled and adhered to wall surface and placed on floor., approximately 20 x 15 feet. Courtesy of Edward Cella Art + ARchitecture/The Artist