The Pit is pleased to present Pile/Plié, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Heather Rasmussen.  An opening reception will be held on November 4, 2018 from 4-7pm, and the exhibition will be on view through December 16, 2018. 

In her first exhibition at The Pit, Heather Rasmussen will present a new series of photographs and sculptures. The gallery space will be inhabited by sculptures resembling an accumulation of the staged objects and backdrops used in the creation of her photographs, which will line the gallery walls. For this exhibition, Rasmussen expands on her examination of the female form, her personal history as a dancer and motherhood. The artist recently photographed her changing body through the stages of pregnancy and post-birth, further examining relationships to cycles of life and death, and the ever evolving and changing body.

Throughout Rasmussen’s compositions one finds metaphorically charged still-life objects with personal and historical references such as sculptural recreations of the artist’s legs and feet, aging produce, and exotic minerals. These combine with sections of her own body that are refracted, distorted and multiplied through mirrors. The choreographed movement and the body in transformation are ever present in these pictures. In her surreal and poetic works, a vegetable echoes a human limb, something cumbersome becomes sexual, the inanimate becomes invigorated. Dichotomies are constantly set forth where objects and images slip between senses of movement and stasis, new and old, fresh and rotten. In select works the act of moving a mirror allows the viewer insight into what is otherwise generally held out of frame: glimpses of the artist and her studio where she makes the photographs.   

To coincide with Rasmussen’s exhibition Pile/Plié, the artist and The Pit have created a limited edition necklace, which references a major work in the exhibition, a highly detailed plaster cast of the artist’s leg which will be suspended over a mirrored surface near the gallery’s back wall. A 2-inch 3D printed stainless steel copy of the artist’s leg serves as a pendant suspended from a sterling silver chain.  Each piece comes in an AMAC jewelry box, with a tag showing it’s place within the numbering sequence of the 100-piece edition.  Necklaces will be available at the public reception and beyond in The Pit’s zine shop, as well as our online store.  To pre-order please email info@the-pit.la

Heather Rasmussen was born in Santa Ana, CA in 1982 and lives in Los Angeles. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2007 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine, CA in 2004. Rasmussen’s work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Weingart Gallery, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA (2015); California Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA (2015); and Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA (2012). Her work has been featured in thematic exhibitions such as Solar Flare, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance (2018); Input/Output, Sycamore Gallery, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH (2014); Trouble with the Index, California Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA (2014); Curious Silence, Brand Library & Arts Center, Glendale, CA (2011); 31 Women in Art Photography, Affirmation Arts Foundation, New York, NY (2010); and Salty Dog Bites the Hand, Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA (2008). Rasmussen’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.