Stephen Neidich

Ltd Los Angeles is pleased to present Not Necessarily Necessary, Stephen Neidich’s first solo exhibition. In Not Necessarily Necessary, the works of Stephen Neidich relentlessly lay bare their material makeup and the methods of their construction and production. From the weathered tail of a Ford pickup truck, to a beat up Milwaukee tool box, the objects encountered here are easily recognizable. Welds, chains, nails, and other techniques of fastening or adhesion are uncomplicated, economical, and minimal. If you seek tactics of deliberate obfuscation or sleight-of-hand mastery, you will be sorely disappointed. Even the wall works, which contain the most gestural employments of materials in this exhibition, are far from perplexing. The vacuum formed plastic that encase a variety of colored tool bins functions as transparent lenses that also frame, reveal and support as they function to contain or restrict. While most assemblage works generally result in a melding of unique component parts into singular cohesive forms, Neidich’s works consistently resist or even totally refuse that gestalt quality we’ve come to expect from art. Therefore, the likely initial response from the art historically seasoned is sure to be “What gives!?”.

There is something you should know about Stephen Neidich. Something about his drive and torque. Each component retains its individuality within each system or piece because it is highly prized and appreciated by its collector. Neidich fuses refuse together in order to refute the socially normative chain of entropic events that is all too often imposed on objects. Instead, the junker artist isn’t a raw material maker, but a hacker of the larger social-industrial machine; A reanimator of neglected, abandoned, and disposed objects as much as a recycler of them. Balance, both physical and formal, are present within each kinetic sculptures that dance haphazardly in loops around the space. But there is a larger balance at play and at stake in these works. The balance between objects and subjectivities that reaches outside the gallery and into the social fabric, where machines and industrial goods canalize our actions and direct our behaviors for better or worse. We welcome them into our lives, let them tell us what to do, and then we get rid of them. Enter Neidich, who swoops in to reclaim, to restore, repurpose and rejigger, not in an instrumentalizing or reductive way, but in way that offers new potentials. Potentials that offers new lives for loved objects. Despite the masculine masses and surfaces, the tension of vacuums, the loud whirring of electric motors, the clanking of metal on metal, the sculptures before you are funny, pathetic, convivial. They are made with great caring and humor. Don’t believe me? If the titles of the works or the artist’s beaming smile weren’t enough to persuade you of a jovial disposition, take as final evidence a sweet bit of trivia. The welding jacket that flops about in Chevron (2017) is indeed the artist’s own, and the very same that was worn when welding the very steel it will now reside with in perpetuity. No, it’s not necessarily necessary to know that, but it is necessary to know how unnecessary necessitation is in the works and practice of Stephen Neidich.

Stephen Neidich (1984, NY, USA) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his MFA from CalArts in 2013 and his BFA in Sculpture from Brown University in 2008. Neidich has been featured in numerous publications including i-D Magazine, Art F City, Art Forum, Eye to Eye International, and Art In The Parking Space.