July 13 - August 17, 2013

David Castillo Gallery, Miami 

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David Castillo Gallery presents Lost Boys: Doğan Arslanoğlu & Johnny Laderer, curated by Claudia Mattos.

 

Lost Boys contends with autobiographical space; a type of space, both physical and not, marked by personal experience. Informed by Henri Lefebvre's trialectics of social space, the exhibition approaches a definition of space beyond locality and by the values with which it has been charged.

 

Arslanoğlu’s photography and Laderer’s sculpture appropriate mundane imagery and materials to map personal and memorial experience. They create actual and aspirational sites, charting when, where, and with whom they have been. Articulated within these spaces is a nostalgia evidenced in location: a sense of home, particularly situated in Florida. The pieces in this show function as souvenirs, commemorating and bearing witness to times past and present. This is a cartographic exercise of identity.

 

Drawing a reference to Peter Pan’s Lost Boys, the show focuses on an exploration of youth and masculinity to draw out a notion of memory, experience, and home; in the end, the Lost Boys find home.

 

Arslanoğlu approaches his subjects with a vernacularism that renders them placeless. These are images of his immediate surroundings and experiences; he is the unpictured subject of every scene. And this imagery becomes a log of sorts, charting the places—the friends, girlfriends, and experiences—where his camera has followed. He maps a personal narrative. Free from identifying markers, these images could have been taken anywhere.

 

Laderer’s practice departs from a more value-laden note: he creates work with found or discarded objects, or (put more simply) junk. The road is imperative to Laderer’s collecting of objects and ideas, and his materials reference his movement throughout the state. He is a magpie, claiming trophies along the way. Laderer’s is a practice of re-creating, re-staging, and re-claiming his and Florida’s past.

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Arslanoğlu’s and Laderer’s objects serve as the spaces for memory, allowing glimpses into a greater mapping of personal experience. And they are Lost Boys insofar as they attempt to find home, wherever (or whomever or whenever) that may be.