MIKA AGARI + ZACK RAFULS: OLD MUSIC
Marvin Gardens is pleased to open ‘Old Music’ a two-person exhibition featuring Mika Agari and Zack Rafuls. The show is composed of new work that shares both artists’ multimedia approach to sculpture, and includes a single collaborative piece titled Bubble, pictured above.
The show title takes its name from a recurring character that appears in a number of stories in Ursula K LeGuin’s Hainish Cycle collection. However indirect the narrative ties may be, this exhibition shares LeGuin’s interest in material exploration, ecological futures, and speculative storytelling. Both artists are attuned to the alchemic potential of objects and mindful of the visual residue of our shared surroundings.
The primary sculptures in Old Music are Agari’s Peasant Prince, a mixed media sculptural mosaic that presents a diaristic take on city life, and Rafuls’ Tondo Series – sculptural medleys of items suspended in frying pans filled with pools of resin. The exhibition’s collective ingredients list includes such varied elements as discarded masses of Styrofoam, coastal stones, turmeric powder, puzzle pieces, broken glass from Agari’s street, a plastic farm animal, clementine peels, avocado pits, glass prosthetic eyes, and a delicately crocheted jellyfish.
In addition, Agari and Rafuls both present playfully nuanced architectural investigations in a sculptural video piece and a site- specific installation. These works (Columbus Circle, and Mirror Moulding) utilize reflection as both aesthetic trope and, as the artists state, “a metaphorical device to loosely address our constantly shifting perception of self against the forever churning backdrop of our day-to-day environments.”
