Human Resources Los Angeles presents artist Tiger Munson’s Numinous Rupture: An exploration of the individual and collective relationship we have with atomics, our nuclear world, and cataclysm. The exhibition consists of artist Munson’s photographic fabric light installation, performances by his portrait subjects, and an afternoon symposium.

January 17th to 25th
Opening reception and performances: January 17th 7-10pm

Gallery Hours: January 18-January 25 THU-SUN, noon-5pm

Ogechi Chieke

“Why the Schlong Face?” performed by Camille Bachand, Clark Walter and Shaq Jizz

“OFFLINE WORLD”
a story of the moment of the end of the world.
Performed by CLOCK with Helen van der Neer including the 42 string double bow harp, voice and orchestral backgrounds

“Memento Mori”
performed by 3-19 Dance Art

“Life is short, and shortly it will end;
Death comes quickly and respects no one,
Death destroys everything and takes pity on no one.
To death we are hastening, let us refrain from sinning.”

Created and Choreographed by Beatriz E Vasquez
Music for Variation #2 and #8 composed by George Ramirez
Body Paint by Alfredo Iraheta

Dancers:
Ernesto Mañacop
Omar Rodriguez Diaz
Beatriz Eugenia Vasquez

The premiere of “Multiple Personality”, torrential experience Leopold Nunan Soares and full band

Symposium: Saturday January 24th 2 pm

Ali Tobia The Puissance of the Human Energy Field: A Yogic Look at Energy Possibilities for When the Polar Ice Caps Melt and Fossil Fuel Supplies Deplete.

Joseph Hankins, author of Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan, on the Buraku, the “untouchable” social class, the workers at Fukushima

And other presenters to be announced

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“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”

— text from the Bhagavad Gita, quoted and mused by Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist behind the creation of the atom bomb, upon seeing the first nuclear explosion.

Using backdrops of atomic bomb blasts painted in the 1950’s by a scenic background artist who painted the clouds in the “Wizard of Oz” “Ben Hur “and “Showboat”, among other Hollywood movies, Munson sought to investigate social, historical, and alternate constructs via the portrait studio. The backdrops were jumping off points for intersections of contemporary representation and catastrophe. As artifacts and stand alone works of art, they maintain an aura of both an historical Cold War period of American and world history, and a fictionalized, Hollywood representation of that awareness. The backdrop was simultaneously the object and signifier of “the portrait studio” and functioned as such, and also initiated the creative individual engagements with the subjects. How does the scope of this human historical milestone, both as a direct and mediated cultural consciousness, impact the individual persona? What are our mythologies, hopes, recourses? Despondency, aggression, monstrosity, optimism, survivalism, escapism, transcendence: all are branches to this nuclear tree that fan out in a usual trifecta of contemporary discourse: race, gender, sexuality. These sensibilities extend through the photographic images in this project. In development and under wraps for three years, the images in Numinous Rupture are seeing their debut both as an art project, a photo fabric light installation at Human Resources Los Angeles in Chinatown, and in their photographic form online and in prints.