Scoli Acosta

Los Angeles-based Scoli Acosta transforms images and objects gleaned from daily life, literature, mass culture, and dreams. Acosta's work is characterized by what he describes as an "aesthetics of resourcefulness"-the artist favors humble materials, economic gestures, and transparency with respect to craft.  His installations emerge as poetic constellations that reveal traces of his research and production processes, as well as his movements through various landscapes. His work, installations and performances, has been presented in solo and group shows in major contemporary institutions in France such as FRAC Normandie; FRAC Basse-Normandie; Passerelle, Centre d'art Contemporain, Brest; La Criée, Rennes; FRAC Pays de la Loire; Centre d'art de la Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel; Castillo/Corrales, Paris; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Laboratoire d'Aubervilliers; Fondation Ricard, Paris and in the United States at The Armory Show, NYC; MCASD Downtown, San Diego, CA; MADE IN LA 2012 at the Hammer Museum; LAXART, Los Angeles

In “To Ward The Setting Sun”, a mobile made of sliced wooden drum shells depicting surfer hands and the sun in flight, forms the entry to a body of fragments in paintings, drawings, and sculpture that extend into the gallery. Acosta opens a space to reflect on Los Angeles and the gallery’s location on Sunset Boulevard. It’s the site and culmination of hope and brightness, new life and new people, the pursuit of the spotlight, the frontier of westward expansion and the ocean itself. Here, the sun is the ideal we cling to and thrive under, but the sun does set, and the day, like a lifetime or empire, ends.

Working with the basic idea of what he calls “ the aesthetics of resourcefulness,” Acosta manipulates materials familiar and found, repurposed and ultimately revived. He absorbs and isolates elements from the external world, not so much to elevate as to expose them for their intrinsic humble poetics and narrative potential. The artist maintains a transparency of the handmade quality of his art, laying bare the signs and traces of enchanting imperfections. “Though you can see how it’s made, the mechanics of it, it still has a beauty and a magic to it… when you make something, when you use your hands… you create the world.”