Okay Mountain

Mark Moore Gallery proudly presents Long Plays, the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of works by Austin-based artist collective, Okay Mountain. Drawing upon various media, including video, sculpture, photography and drawing, the group’s nine members pay homage to the ubiquitous content of contemporary consumer culture. Long Plays delves further into the collective's observations about the calculated fluidity between entertainment, commodities, and advertising.

In 2006, Okay Mountain formed their collective and simultaneously opened an exhibition space in East Austin, Texas, by the same name.Their participation on both the production and vending sides of the same industry contributed to a shared heightened awareness about the nature of exchange—a trait that has manifested itself in objects and performances that parody our uniquely American reverence for commerce. Through calculated exaggeration and espousal of the absurd, Okay Mountain creates farcical caricatures of a national identity. Faux infomercials, flyers, guidebooks, and memos are rife with satirical imitations of salesmen, tour guides and mascots – playing on our communal tendency for unsatiable want. In Long Plays, the artists analyze the strategies of catalogue photography, corporate procedure, and "How To" books to fulfill an undefined yearning for perfection. As consumers, we're often told that the perfect handyman tool, business plan, or instructional manual can guide you towards your best self; Okay Mountain riffs on these distorted perceptions, and lampoons their fallacies with a shrewd wit. Nonsensical instructions scrawled across a whiteboard mimic the brainstorm sessions of a start-up company, but ultimately lead to inconclusive results. Products born from harebrained invention appear fetishized and enticing, but are fundamentally useless. Okay Mountain identifies the contrivances that shape our relentless desire for immediacy and accumulation, and spoofs them with a sagacious flair.

Okay Mountain consists the following members: Sterling Allen, Tim Brown, Peat Duggins, Nathan Green, Justin Goldwater, Ryan Hennessee, Josh Rios, Carlos Rosales-Silva, and Michael Sieben. While most artists are alumni of the University of Texas at Austin (TX), others are graduates of University of California Los Angeles (CA), Rhode Island School of Design (RI), and the University of Kansas (KS). Institutional exhibitions have included those at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston (TX), Austin Museum of Art (TX), McNay Art Museum (TX), Art House (TX), University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (TN), deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (MA).