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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LUN*NA MENOH Debuts
MAXIMUM MINIATURE : Scale Behavior in Style

(not necessarily in this order...)
1. RUNWAY SHOW
2. BETTINA HUBBY projection piece "Sex without the People"
3. A debut sewing machine music performance by the duet THE SEWING SISTERS

Saturday, November 5, 2011 at 8 PM
Doors open at 7:30 PM

FLAVORPILL LINK

Concept Runway Show Re-Appropriates Vintage Clothing and Miscellaneous Materials into Wearable Art, Scaled from Very Small to Very Large and Proving That “Size is the Matter”; Drawing Series Sex without the People by Artist Bettina Hubby to Accompany Fashion Show on Venue Walls

“Size is the matter,” explains L.A. based fashion designer, visual and performance artist, musician and provocateur Lun*na Menoh.

In MAXIMUM MINIATURE : Scale Behavior in Style, a unique runway performance and exhibition taking place November 5, 2011, at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica, California, Lun*na has scaled a series of clothing items and accessories in four gradations, from small to very large, calling attention to the ubiquitous role that size plays on the function of a designed object. For instance, a choker becomes an oversized bow tie or a fanny pack becomes a travel bag, as Lun*na moves the concept of size and scale out from the dressing room and onto the runway.

Each of the finished couture pieces in MAXIMUM MINIATURE: Scale Behavior in Style is handmade by the artist designer in her Silverlake, Los Angeles studio, utilizing her signature raw materials—reclaimed and re-appropriated clothing alongside other personal and commercial castoffs.

“This is technically an art performance but I call it a fashion show because ultimately I’m working with fashion products. It’s very tricky to deal with size—the concept is very subjective. One person’s oversized is another’s tight fit,” explains Lun*na as she recounts that, in the dressing room, almost no one ever feels exactly the “right” size.  At the core of this project however, Lun*na’s examination of size extends well beyond the fashion world. “The issue of size and scale is very prevalent these days. People are looking for the super small, in electronics for instance, to the extreme of super large, in architecture or cars—size really is the matter.”

In a humorous conceptual nod to her subject matter, Lun*na will also screen videos of a puppet runway show on the venue walls, concurrent with her real fashion show.  Small paper doll puppets will model mini couture cutouts to be, paradoxically, projected at nearly human scale in the gallery. Lun*na will also team up with New York based musician Tsugumi Takashi to a perform music alongside the live runway show. Utilizing their sewing machines to evoke musical sounds, the band—the Sewing Sisters—will perform original compositions created while at the hand wheel. Furthering the scale-manipulating, self-referential nature of this event, a puppet version of the Sewing Sisters’ performance will also be featured in the puppet show video.

In conjunction with Maximum Miniature, artist Bettina Hubby will exhibit a slideshow of approximately 30 drawings titled Sex without the People. In each of her drawings, kimono-clad figures are rendered in black and white, engaged in provocative poses or sexual acts, except that the subjects’ body parts—their faces, limbs, skin—are missing, leaving only their hair and the absence of their form to complete the image. Bettina’s drawings tell a reductive version of the story that often exists between the lines, and are reminiscent of both artist Masami Teraoka’s sexualized ukiyo-e works and of Lun*na Menoh’s faceless 2010 A Ring Around the Collar, Musicians exhibition in which the artist reinterpreted iconic rock and roll images, by removing the subjects’ faces and leaving only a stained white collar where the neck once was.

Like Lun*na’s work in MAXIMUM MINIATURE : Scale Behavior in Style, Bettina plays with the intersection of culture and commerce that this unique show presents; as such, she will offer a made-to-order selection of bedroom items such as bed sheets and pillowcases, imprinted with her exhibition images.

ARTIST BIOS

Lun*na Menoh has exhibited fashion and visual art work at the Laguna Art Museum, Santa Monica Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design, and her work was included in the 1998 exhibition “Addressing the Century: 100 Years of Art and Fashion” at the Hayward Gallery in London; Lun*na has a dress in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  As a musician she has performed and released albums with the groups Seksu Roba and Jean Paul Yamamoto. Lun*na last showed her work in A Ring Around the Collar, Musicians, an exhibition of acylic-on-canvas paintings in 2010 at Track 16 Gallery. MAXIMUM MINIATURE : Scale Behavior in Style is the latest installment of Lun*na’s creative work as a cultural documentarian, critic and fan.  Her website is www.lunnamenoh.com. A complete line of her work, as well as her creative thoughts and her off-center yet inspirational “object of the day” can be found at www.lunnaworld.com.

Bettina Hubby is a visual artist and the founder of HubbyCo, a studio employing creative disciplines for topical explorations, branching off of the role of artist-creator, adding curator-contributor, utilizing and promoting a diverse community. Thus far each project calls for a different group of artists with a common interest corralled by HubbyCo to investigate a topic. Each artist's practice intersecting with the others to challenge and push boundaries, both individually and collectively, and to create outside the confines of conventional exhibition settings. Bettina’s latest project, GET HUBBIED is a multi-tiered project about the fragile yet resilient institution of marriage, which explores the idea of marriage through various media, and will culminate on September 25th, 2011, in a genuine, legally binding wedding in close collaboration with one couple. Follow the project at www.gethubbied.com.

WHAT
MAXIMUM MINIATURE : Scale Behavior in Style
Runway show of outlandishly scaled fashion items by Lun*na Menoh

Sex without the People
Projected drawings by Bettina Hubby

WHEN
November 5, 2011 at 8pm

WHERE
Track 16 Gallery
2525 Michigan Avenue, Bldg C-1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Telephone: 310-264-4678
Website: archive.track16.com

PRESS CONTACT
Brent Turner
the Campbells
[ideas + communications for contemporary culture]
Telephone: 323-300-6132

Email: brent@thecampbellspr.com