Rongwrong
April 10—May 8, 2016

HALSEY MCKAY is pleased to present Rongwrong, a two-person exibition at the Elaine de Kooning House and Studio, featuring Aaron Aujla & Adam Marnie. Comprised of sculpture, wall based works, and site-specific installation, both artists exact mirroring positive gestures that evoke absences.

Aaron Aujla’s sculptures are excerpts from home remodeling projects. Countertops from homes of divorcees are removed, replicated, and replaced in a discrete gesture that is a continuation of Aujla’s investigation into personal choice and domestic space. These social exchanges provide a doubling of description that quietly asserts autonomy despite the inextricability of the pairing.

In contrast to Aujla’s displacements, Marnie presents a large construction that is at once metaphor and object–-both structural and absurd. Built of provisional materials and utterly direct in its address, the work attempts to splice the bodily experience of the architecture in a gesture that folds the work and the space in a site-specific loop.

Aaron Aujla (b. 1986, Victoria, Canada) received his BFA from the University of Western, Canada in 2006. His work has been shown internationally at such galleries as C L E A R I N G and Quincaillerie Vander Eycken, Brussels, Belgium; Carlier Gebauer, Berlin, Germany; Paradise Row, London, UK; Art: Concept, Paris, France; Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles, USA; The Journal, Brooklyn. USA; and Martos, New York, USA. Aujla currently lives and works in New York, USA.

Adam Marnie’s recent exhibitions include Construction/Destruction, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, and Freak Scene, United Artists, Ltd., Marfa, TX. In 2015, he organized the group exhibitions Fictions at Derek Eller Gallery, New York, and SYLVIA BATAILLE at JOAN, Los Angeles. He is publisher and editor-in-chief of F Magazine. Marnie lives in Los Angeles.