Deborah Schamoni

By turning the gallery spaces into a kind of multi-pronged ‘performance’ of a cautionary tale, the physical space becomes the site of Bibby’s unique brand of concrete poetry. The walls, windows and floor are the bricks and mortar for a conversation that begins now. This exhibition marks the end of Bibby’s current residency at the MAK Center, where the city of Los Angeles and his experiences there all play a staring role in this dark, unravelling drama.

Bibby’s original texts are written almost in a ‘call-and-response’ manner, and the words themselves perform aspects of the O-Town House architecture in his glass poem-sculptures scattered around the space.

The Civil Disobedience sculptures were liberated from bus-stop benches around Los Angeles. These so-called ‘armrests’ are installed by the city in order to prevent people from using the benches as beds - but in the exhibition Bibby has them perform a far less odious function of displacing only the works themselves from the walls.

With In Case of Emergency, Bibby is cultivating a complex, cut-up-tactic of linguistic seduction - where words are as generous as they are nefarious. His humor and heart are borne through acts civil disobedience and his undeniable (unstoppable) optimism is often cleverly disguised as fervent rancor.

Photos: Riccardo Banfi
Courtesy of the artist and O-Town House, Los Angeles