Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present a two-person show of work by MK Guth & Jocko Weyland that deals with travel, both imaginary and real. In each case, desire is the starting point.

Red Shoe Delivery Service (RSDS) is a 3 artist collaborative group from Portland, OR / Brooklyn, NY including Molly Dilworth, Cris Moss, and founder MK Guth which configures itself differently with each new place they visit. Sometimes presenting theme-based installations like the RED SHOE DELIVERY SHOE STORE, constructed for PICA’s Time Based Arts Festival; the RSDS Dispatch Center at the NYC Armory Show, in collaboration with the Swiss Institute/Contemporary Art; or RSDS TRAVEL AGENCY, offering virtual travel to just about anywhere, which was part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2005, they create an interactive art experience motivated by ideas of desire, transformation, risk, home and storytelling. The members of RSDS do not see themselves as performers; rather, they act as architects of imagined space, orchestrating a fantasy site where the person on the street becomes the performer. This imaginary site is a place where anything is possible, provided one is willing to take the risk and extend a certain amount of trust. RSDS creates photographs, videos, paintings, installations, and multimedia lectures and interactive DVDs, mining their experiences with their participants. On the occasion of this exhibition, the artist will present three piles of shoes titled A lot, A little, and Already filled, a detritus after-effect of the participants’ journey.

Jocko Weyland’s photographs and drawings meld into the narrative of his life journey, and, recently, his time spent in living in China where he made this body of work:

My “art”: there was very much a part of my life which was very simple and poor (I know not by Chinese standards, but by Western standards) and also very stimulating but hermetic and quiet—due to the lack of communication. So I read a lot, thought a lot, watched a lot of movies, and noticed all the little details around me — the packages, the colors, textures, the sounds and smells — and I think and hope that these drawings and photos reflect that accurately. In some way, the drawings were a way of dealing with an alienating and often confusing environment, trying to capture it somehow, just what was around, for all to see — that’s what interested me there. Also they are very meditative — spending two or 4 hours doing this tiny drawing of a cigarette pack, trying to get every detail just right. With the photos – again – it was the “real” that interested me. China attracted me for many reasons, and one was that though there was even more hype and bad art and nouveau riche tawdriness going on in Beijing when I was there than in New York (“artists” driving Ferraris, etc), there is a very, very “real” side of China that I felt connected to: the normal people, the person on the street. Which is kind of ridiculous because I don’t speak the language and I’m a total outsider, but I felt a connection, or maybe better yet an appreciation, for the little things in life, done simply, or ingeniously, without a lot of money. The knife grinder, the trash hauling guys, the fruit sellers, the people on the bus. Just going about daily life, but with a sort of weird mass “artfulness.” The art of life. Just these little things that might seem completely normal if you are Chinese but to me were really intriguing and often totally mystifying and a bit “off”. On some basic level the photos are about that —the colors and textures that were foreign and unfamiliar to my eyes— daily life in three dimensions represented through photographs.

Portland, OR-based MK Guth holds an MFA in Studio Art from New York University. A multidisciplinary artist, Guth’s work has been exhibited internationally, at numerous museums, galleries and festivals including: Portland Art Museum: APEX, Portland, OR; The 2008 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; The Melbourne International Arts Festival, Australia; Nottdance Festival, England; A Gentil Carioca Gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Swiss Institute, New York, NY; Betty Moody Gallery, Houston, TX; White Box Annex, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; Artists Space, New York, NY; Side Street Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Frye Museum, Seattle, WA; and Consolidated Works, Seattle, WA. Guth is a founding member of the RED SHOE DELIVERY SERVICE, an on-going collaborative performance project. In 1997, Guth was a recipient of the Betty Bowen Fellowship Award from the Seattle Art Museum. MK Guth is represented internationally by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR.

New York based artist Jocko Weyland (B. 1967, Helsinki) is also a writer, curator, editor, and skateboarder. The author of The Answer is Never (Grove, 2002) and various articles and stories published in Thrasher, The New York Times, Cabinet, Vice and Apartamento, amongst others, he is the founder of Elk Gallery and Elk magazine. Jocko Weyland is represented by KS Art, New York, NY.

Special thanks to Kerry Schuss.