With Angie Waller's research-based installation project Fatty Duck commenting on the marketing tools in a snowballing new urban China, it seemed a comparison with an alternate urban location- ESL and the immediate city blocks- was inevitable. There appeared to be an undeniable connection between the content of Ms. Waller's work, the images of a up-and coming suburban China as presented within ESL's space, and modes of representation and commerce in the immediate outside, in the Hollywood neighborhood. The Corridor Gallery- the venue where all ESL projects have been hosted thus far- is located within a neighborhood that has changed significantly over the years, going from a prostitution zone and a metropolitan transport hub to an immigrant quarter, and is now showing signs of gentrification (ESL is of course part of the process).
Thus that night ESL's neon sign, which has been displayed thusfar at every event, operated not only as a pun on the idea of an English as a Second Language school, even as it shares the commercial sidewalk with immigration law offices and check cashing businesses, but also as an appropriately welcoming invitation to the content of Waller's work. As with the other shows, we hoped that members of the areas own community, be it business owners or schoolkids, would be curious about the China imagery and text contained inside.
Angie Waller's project included multiple copies of a study 'catalogue', facilitating potentially more complex reflections on the part of the viewer about the use of western visual language in a global arena. Waller's show was almost too full of data, icons, signs- this was interesting to note given the similarly outfitted outside LA environment (Burger King's aura, directly across the street, in disonance with the eastern budding-capitalist imagery inside).
