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The Underwater Museum
Yixin Li
Ellen Gallagher creates works that are often themed in water. Delicacy, softness, feminine beauty, resilience, and tenderness; depth, darkness, uncanny, relics, death, and debris; dynamics, material cycle, identity, and gender, all pointing toward a metaphor of underwater realm that the artist depicts, through her diverse body of works, as existing within its own integrity yet hiding from daily consciousness. The architectural type of underground water reservoir has existed for thousands of years. The invisible nature of this space contrasts with both its status as vital infrastructure and its statement of administrative power and structural strength. Furthermore, there exist intuitive connections of this typology with Gallagher’s dreamlike underwater world. The waterbed surrounding the Department of Water and Power building, built by AC Martin in 1965, provided the point of departure of an underwater environment. Los Angeles: a city of cars, a city where water is scarce. A city replenished with spirits of art. A parking structure is translated into a cistern and then further into a space for art. How does the implementation of artwork shed light into the significance of mediocre and forgotten spaces, giving them new characteristics and potential? This is a project on juxtaposition of the three distinct elements, each one multiplying meaning into another. As an exploration, an experimentation, and a question mark, the proposal is essentially an investigation into a novel interpretation of the contemporary art space.