September 2003 - SPACE GALLERY is proud to present Glass Beets & Blind Potatoes - the first solo exhibit by artist and LA WEEKLY critic Doug Harvey since his acclaimed Skipping Formalities show in 1999. Trained as a painter, Harvey’s attention became concentrated on his writing and audio art in the intervening years - at the expense of his painting. Seeking a way back into a regular painting practice, he began working from observation of actual objects, a departure from his previous appropriation-based investigations. After a few experiments he fixated on a bunch of beets, and eventually began painting them on sheets of glass - inspired in part by the Senegalese devotional Sufi glass paintings of Mor Gueye.

In keeping with this edible root theme, Harvey has modified several of his trademark kinetic potato sculptures, previously seen in over 7 exhibits in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The Pommes des Terre Froids were oversized representations of the archetypal tuber: constructed from overlaid chicken-wire and spray-foam grids, with wobbling plastic novelty eyeballs at each intersection animated by a vibrating bumble ball - equally inspired by the poetic-political psychoanalytical gymnastics of Deleuze & Guattari and the formal undeniability of Vincennes porcelain. In their latest incarnation, the potatoes are glazed, inert Oedipal versions of their formerly agitated paranoiac selves, eyes plucked and engines junked, but persisting nevertheless.

The works in this exhibition are not for sale.