Larsen, Janne

≡≡≡≡≡
Movie Reel Project:
at Outpost for Contemporary Art

Ainsi fon fon fon les petites demoiselles… and that’s why I’m not a Lesbian is a series of video works developed about the many facades women put on and discard throughout the various roles they play. Video was projected and framed in various sculptural totems from a cardboard peep show booth to a hair sculpture, to a coffin-like table.

Self Portrait explores Montblanc’s ancestry by deconstructing the nature of portraiture.

Concentrated Milk investigates the power structures confronting older women as they renegotiate behavioral paradigms proper to younger women.

Masculinihilist is an attempt to represent sex as seen from the perspective of women living in a masculinihilist world, a state of being in which masculine power has been erased from a previously victorious collective history. The video struggles to untangle the grotesque drama of male-dominated porn by redistributing the sexual fiat of perversion into the hands of female performers.

The Old Lady and the Milkmaid is a deliberately nonsensical attempt to delve into the dramatic undertones of an everyday interaction of women of equal status. Watch The Old Lady and the Milkmaid Now.

Janne Larsen:
Janne Larsen is a practicing artist and set designer. She received her B.A in philosophy from DePaul University and in 2007 received her M.F.A from Cal Arts. Janne has exhibited at Telic Art Exchange, Workspace, L.A Municipal Gallery, UCLA’s Kerkhoff Gallery, The Fine Arts complex at Cal State L.A., Art House Gallery, Beta Level, and the Museum of Contemporary Art DC. Janne has also designed sets at Pomona College, Bootleg, The Odyssey, Caltech, and Cal Arts.. Janne has recently been published in the magazine, “Zen Monster’ and is currently working on a book of illustrations entitled ‘Tea Parties’ with Amanda Tomme. In the upcoming year, Janne expects to bring the tragedy, Medea, to the Daveli Cave outside of Athens, Greece sponsored by the Greek Ministry of Culture.

The Ups & Downs
Janne Larsen
Friday, February 6 from 7 to 10 pm
Saturday, February 7 from 7 to 10 pm
at workspace
Time Lapse documentation



This installation is about elbows, the least friendly part of the body; elbows on the freeway, the least social social-interaction. Let’s face it: In the freeway it is You or Them. Body parts are at high risks, morphing into the space of the car, you maneuver and try to out-strategize Them. The last figure in the installation is the hopelessly ideal. The one that is the Other. The unused body part, the dreamer, the drifter, the asleep at the wheel, the one no one talks about.

Bridging the gap between installation art and set design, Janne translates text and spatial dimension into new forms of expression. Her work explores spatial development in performance and gallery dynamics. Her strategy is like that of Brancusi or Meyerhold: “to create an event that transforms the stage, it’s objects and the entire material space of the auditorium - including the audience members - into the work.” Through social experiments in art, Janne breaks through the fourth wall by challenging the structures behind preconceived notions of art and performance. Janne Larsen received her B.A in philosophy from DePaul University and in 2007 received her M.F.A from CalArts. Janne is a Los Angeles based installation artist and set designer. Janne’s most recent project is an installation in a cave in Greece, sponsored by the Greece Ministry of Culture. Her work has been seen at Telic, CalArts, BetaLevel, UCLA, CalPoly, Cal State LA and the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery.