The Pit is pleased to present Mindy Shapero: Second Sleep. An opening reception will be held at the gallery on April 29, 2018 from 4-7pm, and the exhibition will be on view through June 10. Also on view will be Laurie Nye: Venusian Weather in The Pit.

According to historian A. Roger Ekirch, humans slept in two phases well into the 17th century. Anthropologists and biologists have also found evidence of bi-phasic sleep in humans. Literature and diaries reaching back into history document accounts of what night was like for our ancestors, telling of a period of sleep followed by an hour or two of wakefulness and then another period of sleep, the second sleep bookending quiet times of prayer, reflection, sex, and ideation. It’s easy to imagine that dreams were often a preoccupation between sleep phases, in the dark and quiet of the night.

Mindy Shapero’s anthropomorphic sculptures are like figures emerging from such night visions. Imagined though also strangely familiar, her large-scale works are totemic, suggesting archeological ruins or manifestations of Jungian archetypes. Made with humble materials like spray paint and bits of hand-painted cut paper alongside more opulent materials like richly pigmented felt and gold leaf, it is Shapero’s aesthetics of relentless accumulation that give her works their energy, as hundreds upon thousands of tiny bits grow into human and architecturally scaled objects. Portals and radiating forms, concentric rings and infinite stripes, a hypnagogic hallucination of shapes and colors beckon us into what might be the artist’s dreaming mind turned inside out in a flash of infinity.

Mindy Shapero was born in Louisville, KY and lives in Los Angeles, CA. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD (1997) and a a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (2003). Shapero’s work has been exhibited internationally, including a two-person exhibition with Jockom Nordstrom at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2006). Her work has been featured in thematic exhibitions such as Pivotal: Highlights from the Collection, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2017); NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL (2015); Storytelling as Craft, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY (2013); Flights From Wonder, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA (2013); New Art for a New Century: Recent Acquisitions 2000-2009, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA, (2010); Like color in pictures, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO (2007); The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. (2006); Thing: New Sculpture From LA, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2005); and California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2004). She was awarded the Will-Grohmann Prize, Berlin, Germany in 2006.

Broken Head from the Other Side, 2018, Fiberglass, resin, acrylic paint, felt, and gold leaf, 48 x 38 x 29 inches

Broken Head from the Other Side, 2018, Fiberglass, resin, acrylic paint, felt, and gold leaf, 48 x 38 x 29 inches