Debbie Long

Mark Moore Gallery proudly presents "Tow Package," the first Los Angeles solo exhibition by sculpture and installation artist Debbie Long. Each sculptural work Long creates begins as a collection of found objects the artist amasses from her immediate environment. For this exhibition, these include cb radios, trailer hitches, and hood ornaments the artist gathers from the New Mexico desert, where she currently lives and works. Once a stockpile is accumulated, Long then recasts and reanimates the debris through translucent glass and meticulous lighting – a presentation that allows each piece to seemingly illuminate from within. The results are seemingly organic formations reminiscent of geodes, petrified amber, or stalagmites, but are instead relics of consumer culture due to their contemporary imagery.

Long’s initial interest in phenomenology lead her to a practice dedicated to the physical world of corporeal experiences, namely light, space, and color. Through the transparent materiality of cast glass, wax, crystal, and plastic, the artist is able to imbue luminescence and color into cast appropriations of ubiquitous objects and detritus she serendipitously finds during her desert walks. By way of recasting litter such as rearview mirrors, truck hood ornaments, and bullet casings, each sculptural form transcends its manmade material qualities and becomes an artifact of nature, seemingly eroding and transforming into celestial rock formations. The artist then mounts these objects to a wall in groups that create immersive environments, evoking a cave-like world in which the discards of the everyday morph into immaculate gemstones. The resulting installations of light and color creates a intimate space in which the viewer may bypass the analytical world of language into a realm of corporeal experience and pure sensory pleasure. Through Long’s skillful alteration of space and context, each light-infused object functions as proof that in the end, there is only nature.

Debbie Long received her BFA in sculpture from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and has exhibited her work at Gallery 128 Lower East Side in New York City (NY), Cinemaland Chinatown in Los Angeles (CA), Boston University's Sherman Gallery in Boston (MA), and The Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe(NM.) Long received grants to attend Pilchuck Glass School in 2004, a Creative Capital Foundation workshop in 2006, and was recently invited to speak about her work as part of SITE Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Center for Contemporary Arts' Dialogue 360 lecture series. Long worked as studio assistant to Ken Price from 2006-2012. Before establishing her current studio in Taos, New Mexico in 2000, Long split her time between Taos
and Los Angeles.