FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Osman Khan, “Scanners”
July 31 – August 21, 2004
Reception: Saturday, July 31, 7-11pm
Dangerous Curve
1020 E. Fourth Place (between Molino and Mateo Sts.), Los Angeles, CA 90013
Contact: Tim Quinn and/or Kathryn Hargreaves
213-617-8483
E-mail, <events@dangerouscurve.org>
Web site, <http://dangerouscurve.org>
Hours, Wednesday – Saturday, 1-6pm
Osman Khan's "A Credited Gesture" appearing at Dangerous Curve.
Spend or Don't Spend: Osman Kahn takes the Scam out of Scanning at Dangerous Curve, the New Downtown Experimental Exhibition and Performance Art Space
Join the Community Opening Celebration!
Los Angeles, CA - For a little more than six months now, we've been feeding and entertaining our opening-goers, along with dishing them cutting edge art. We heard that people that plan to just stop by for a few minutes end up staying the whole evening! Our next opening is for Osman Khan's <http://www.osmankhan.com> new media extravaganza "Scanners" on Saturday, July 31, 2004. Bring your credit cards! The celebration runs from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m., at 1020 East Fourth Place, between Molino and Mateo Streets, in the back of the 500 Molino Street Lofts, #102. (This is between the two on/off ramps on the L.A. side of the Fourth Street Bridge.)
Again we have amazing food by master chef John Saslow, plus the over-the-top Australia-based performance artist Jemima Wyman (currently in residency at 18th Street Arts Center). Others TBA. Live music will be by The Swinging Chandeliers (Joseph Hammer and performer Sayo Mitsuishi), Uncrushworthy, and the fabulous Kittenfreaky. There's no charge, and there's free parking across the street. The exhibit runs until August 21. Two weeks after openings, we generally have Performance Art and/or Experimental Music and Film Nights starting at 8:00 p.m. (See below.) See below also for any other recommended openings and events on opening night. The gallery is open every Wednesday through Saturday, 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. See our website <http://dangerouscurve.org> for directions, events, pictures, and updates.
For someone with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering interested in expressing how technology has changed the social fabric, art was the only avenue for Osman Kahn. He'd taken plenty of more traditional art courses, but that type of artmaking just didn't do the trick. So he turned to new media.
While a Design/New Media M.F.A. candidate at U.C.L.A., Kahn extended his curriculum to steep himself in art history. So he knew how Conceptual Art had extended what art could be. However, he went straight to the heart of the matter and asked if the purchase of the artwork itself could be the art. Here, the part becomes the whole. In his piece "Kahn Artist," he lets the user swipe their credit card for whatever amount they want. The artwork is the resulting charge listed on the user's monthly statement. Oh, there's also a receipt that gets generated, but that's only for legalities, not documentation. The statements are readymades, if you will, appropriated from the consumer world, pointing to how art gets "value" from its purchase price.
In Kahn's interactive new media, the spotlight on the process, not on immediate visual feedback, as in video games. In "Net Worth," Kahn's scanner reads your name off your credit card and ranks it among previously input names according to how many times they all come up in a Google search. The feedback is vernacular: can we really trust information gathering? What about false positives, i.e., when you rank high simply because you have a common name?
Really, though, it's largely only when we're assigned numbers that we can have a unique ID. This is not lost on Kahn. In his "Art Dispensing Machine," he uses scanned credit card numbers to print out unique combinatorial characters. Sometimes, though, for those very lucky people, he prints out a little surprise.
Dangerous Curve is committed to supporting visionary established and emerging artists of all ages, by emphasizing one-person shows of risky, intelligent work that is not necessarily commercially viable nor currently popular. In a time when other spaces have reduced their performance art programming, Dangerous Curve is a new venue for performance artists, with performance installations, monthly performance art events, and an annual performance art festival planned.
Other events (subject to change):
Performance Art and/or Experimental Music and Film Nights
8:00 p.m.
$5.00 suggested donation to the performers
August 14, September 11, 2004
