Street Specifics: Panel Discussion with Rosten Woo, Farrah Karapetian, and Saber

Sandroni.Rey is pleased to present a panel discussion hosted at the gallery. Farrah Karapetian, whose work is currently on display at the gallery, has invited Saber and Rosten Woo to discuss the diverse ways in which their practices seek to make meaning out of the urban environment. Links between the projects of the participants include an engagement with institutional architecture, with the human instinct to resist, undermine, or change such determined structures, with the question of what matters as art or artifact in the wake of any traumatic event – personal or political, and with the question of how to engage with environments and artifacts in such a way that does not fetishize their history, but allows them to be dynamic and relevant within a contemporary context. Reception to follow. (Birthday cake!) RSVP to [email protected]. Biographies of Panelists Farrah Karapetian, a native of Los Angeles, works with photography in a sculptural field, often in an effort to transcribe a history of human presence on urban architectural surfaces. Approaching the cameraless photograph from the perspective that anything - constructed or found - can be a "negative", her process tendentially results in an image that is, in the words of LA Times critic Leah Ollman, "more like a metaphor than a record." Karapetian has exhibited her work in Los Angeles with Sandroni.Rey, at the Aspen Art Museum, and at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Parc Saint-Léger, France, among other locations. Upcoming projects include a trace of a graffitied surface of a segment of the Berlin wall; the negative that results will be on display on Wilshire Blvd as a part of the Wende Museum’s “Wall As Canvas I” project, to coincide with the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Southern Californian native Saber has been an artist and graffiti writer since the age of 13. Saber burst into global graffiti fame with his 1997 piece on the sloping cement bank of the Los Angeles River; a work considered the world's largest such piece. Nearly the size of a professional football field, the piece was featured in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and on the KCET series Departures. This September the work was “buffed” by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Having exhibited globally, Saber is a diverse artist, known for his complex graffiti abstracts on canvas or in wood and his New Reality oils. His monograph, “Saber: Mad Society, ” was released by Gingko Press in 2007 to great aclaim. Saber is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in Los Angeles and the release of the second edition of "Saber: Mad Society." Rosten Woo is a designer, writer, educator, and co-founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP). His work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Netherlands Architectural Institute, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and various piers, public housing developments, tugboats, shopping malls, and parks of New York City. His writing has appeared in the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and Metropolis Magazine. His forthcoming book "Street Value" from Princeton Architectural Press deals with race, redevelopment, and retail environments in Downtown Brooklyn. In addition to this work, he has consulted for numerous non-profit organizations including Common Ground, the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center, City Lore, and the Municipal Arts Society. He is brand new to Los Angeles.