LAG

Lag brings together the work of Marnie Briggs and John Zane Zappas, whose sculptural works favor subjectivity and the fruitful miscommunication that takes place between maker and viewer. Both artists set their sights on the concrete and the known and seek to tip the scales towards uncertainty by employing a range of material driven tactics. Briggs’ sculptural tableaux implement a domestic and architectural vocabulary that has been anthropomorphized and recontextualized, allowing a looseness where there was none. Using plaster, wax, and rubber, the objects rendered are stuck between realities, asking the not what we know but how we know. Zappas creates nameless objects by developing ambiguous form and inventing sometimes absurd processes. He hand-carves over-sized basswood hooks and masticates snack foods to a pulpy glaze, manipulating and transforming ordinary, mass-produced things to become foreign. His objects easily remind of us of what we know–our impulse is that we may retrieve their meaning and make sense of them, a feeling that forms a reciprocal relationship between the work and the viewer.

Marnie Briggs was born in Arrowsic, Maine. She earned a BA in Studio Art from Pitzer College and a MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Born in Torrance, CA in 1985, John Zane Zappas received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2012. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Primetime in Brooklyn, New York, and Good Weather Gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 2012 he participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.