Ian Trout: Private Property: AF Projects, Los Angeles

Ian Trout’s first solo exhibition at AF Projects continues his ongoing investigation of painting's dialogue with the ubiquity of graphic symbols in modern society.

Opening September 10th - 6 to 8pm
7503 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles

Police departments regularly park empty police cruisers on the street as a strategy for deterring crime and in Cambridge, Massachusetts the local police placed a cardboard cutout of an officer in the Alewife Metro Station towards the same ends. In both scenarios the state concludes that even the image of authority will elicit compliance.

Private Property, an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles based artist Ian Trout, considers the methods of social control that have come to define the criminal justice system.

Two paintings, titled Motorcycle Police (Upside Down), depict the same enlarged stock image.

Two multi-panel photo works, The Washington Post, August 19, 2014 / The Punisher, Issue 13, 2019 and LawOfficer.com, July 7, 2016 / The Punisher, Issue 13, 2019, combine opinion pieces written by police with panels from a 2019 comic book in which the creators rebuff law enforcement’s use of The Punisher’s skull-shaped symbol.

Driverless Car is a short found-footage work excised from a recent viral video that captured San Francisco police pulling over a driverless car.

Ian Trout (b. 1983) lives and works in Los Angeles. He received an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2011. He has recently exhibited at there-there in Los Angeles.