Avia Rose Ramm                   
WASTED REMAINS REMADE
Oct 10 – Oct 21, 2022

Avia Rose Ramm’s childhood took place in an idealized version of the American suburban home … but now it’s for sale (the childhood, that is, though maybe the home too, that’s unclear). In any case, the home where they were raised to be the ‘perfect’ Stepford-style housewife was, in their words, a waste; as in “a waste of space, built from waste, and grown on wasted ideals.” Now that their rose-colored glasses have come off, they see it instead as a place of mourning; the nostalgic ick of mothballs and American flags and lost familial roots. In response, their Window Dressing installation, Wasted Remains Remade, is a condensed portrayal of self-reinvention; out of the ashes, as it were. As a stage for this process, the display window is transformed into a metaphorical version of their childhood home with a long domestic hallway covered salon-style with family portraits - an awkward arrangement of the nuclear family complete with photos of favorite pets and intermingled with religious icons – which gives way, around the corner, to a secluded bathroom, that safest and most private of havens in the home. Within these hallowed spaces, a performance ensues. Throughout the first week, all is ‘properly’ arranged, but during a live musical and dance performance at the start of the second week, the paintings and photos on the wall reveal their changeability. Paintings inspired by the torn-up pages of old magazines pushing an outdated domestic lifestyle, the decorative elements initially present one reality, but ultimately shift through the performance to present another. The Dancer, an avatar for the artist, interacts with and rearranges the space through various task-based improvisations, transforming it into one more comfortable and personally expressive, a rebellious act of self-fashioning narrated by the accompanying Musician. Following the performance, the installation remains as it was always intended, remade from the waste that was left behind.

Avia Rose Ramm is a San Diego-raised, Los Angeles-based visual artist. Their primary aim is to portray the vulnerability and the melancholy of living by depicting a fidgety relationship between themselves and animals. They also take visual elements from Catholic-heavy art historical periods, such as the Renaissance and the Baroque, as well as their own personal upbringing, integrating it into their work, often in a crude manner to address issues of extreme anxiety and depression caused by conservative upbringings. Ramm uses the depiction of animals, most often sheep, unicorns, and donkeys, in order to subvert the meanings nominally attached to them and to document their own journey to self-acceptance. These symbolic creatures that ordinarily carry an extreme metaphorical weight instead become animals of comfort. They have found much beauty in our individual experience of the world and seek to portray these abstract, intangible concepts in a familiar visual way. Their primary mediums are oil painting and multimedia sculpture. After previously studying painting at the Marchutz Art School in Aix-en-Provence, France, they received a Bachelor’s Degree in Studio Arts from San Diego State University.  Recent residencies include Art Produce and Bread and Salt, with selected exhibitions at Trash Lamb Gallery, Swish Projects, Weird Hues Gallery, and the Everett Gee Jackson Gallery.