Featuring works by 30 artists, Re:Cycle: Bike Culture in Southern California investigates the cultural influence of the bicycle through sculpture, illustration, photography, performance, and video.
The exhibition challenges the automobile’s role as the dominant form of transport, drawing on a wide range of applications, styles, and media to highlight the bike’s increasing appeal in car-centric urban sprawls. Regardless of the approach, each artist raises questions (and sometimes, answers) regarding the bicycle’s timeless benefits, including overall health and sustainability.
Lisa Anne Auerbach’s knitted sweaters serve as bike-activist bumper-sticker couture, while Finishing School’s Little Pharma Drug Run takes riders on an eye-opening, after-dark bike tour of drugstores in Downtown LA, exploring alternative medicines in the hope of weaning citizens off their servitude to the drug industry. Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser convert cars into bicycles, and Diane Meyer’s Without a Car in the World features pictures and interviews with a hundred carless Angelenos.
Read more about Re:Cycle — Bike Culture in Southern California , download the exhibition catalog, and if you’re in SoCal, check out the show at University of California, Riverside’s Sweeney Art Gallery.
Click through for images from Re:Cycle — Bike Culture in Southern California.
Tad Beck, Bipod (2006) Single-channel video installation, 5:09 min.
Jud Turner, R-Evolve (2009) Found objects and welded steel, Variable
Rubén Ortiz Torres, Sound Bike (2010) Digital inkjet print, 13×19 in.
Rubén Ortiz Torres, LED Bike (2010) Digital inkjet print, 13×19 in.
Anonymous, Ghost Bike, 2010 Bicycle and paint
Clement Hanami, Rice Rocket (2008) Rickshaw
Nathan Bockelman & Cameron Crone, The Air Up There (2009) Flocked BMX bike, dirt, cardboard boxes, trophy tubes, Variable
Craig Stecyk, Rouleur 1-3 Channel video installation with bikes
Ashira Siegel, Moments of Silence, Stars into Skies (2010) Bicycle, lights, Variable, Courtesy of the artist