5 Sept – 12 October 2014

Opening Reception 5 Sept 6-10pm

Marginal Utility is proud to present Le Horla, prescription
a group exhibition of works by WENXING DING,
VIRGINIA FLEMING,  MARIEL HERRING, ADAM LOVITZ, SCOTT SCHULTHEIS and C.J. STAHL.

The title of the exhibition references Guy de Maupassant’s short story in which the protagonist witnesses the passing of a strange ship along a familiar waterway, and begins to experience haunting hallucinations. Written in diary form, Le Horla chronicles the anxiety of an individual whose perception of reality has become ungrounded. With an inability to control his most intimate settings, familiar objects and spaces become actors in discorporate narratives.

The artists included in this show play in the fickle space between past experience and the unrecognizable present moment. The paintings of Wenxing Ding suggest a wondering curiosity of the world. Painted with a skillful yet naïve façade, Ding’s narratives recall the incidental truths associated with children’s drawings. Virginia Fleming’s work is all camp and horror distilled to their most essential moments. Her mise-en-scène paintings offer voyeuristic glimpses of bodies and interiors. In Mariel Herring’s paper mache works, a mimetic process is used to access remembered and studied objects. Chairs, tables, pill bottles, and tools are severed from their functional use, and take on a psychic tension, exploring themes of presence and loss. Scott Schultheis investigates traumatic ruminations of the self and others in his plaster casts of household items, and video works of dislocated bodies and narratives. Combining hand and readymade items, C.J. Stahl explores form, producing objects of a domestic geology, while Adam Lovitz‘s considerations are of a more celestial nature. Remixing lived visual references and happenstance-making, Lovitz’s paintings and sculptures remind us that we are all made of star dust.