A rabbit named Fritz escapes from the animal trainer at the county fair outside of Rome.
A parrot sets out to track him down and finds him, at which point the rabbit, now in the city center, is so hungry that he sees the parrot as a carrot and proceeds to bite both it and a nearby kitten he’s high on poppers from the Tub and craving prawns.
After consuming Chinese food from a dumpster He believes he is digging a hole to China where he encounters miners who, he is convinced, wish to have him for dinner.
The phrase Kale for Stray Bunny is derived from the syllables in the artist’s name: ale-or-a-unny = Taylor, Stephanie. From here the exhibition splits into at least two different stories: that of a rabbit and/or a process narrative, an evocation of alternate worlds joined by rhyme. All works in the exhibition tell the story of the rabbit, and, in addition, they in some way rhyme with the materials with which they are made. For instance, the rabbit, Hopper, is made of copper and so are his poppers. The story is made by a simple connection of narrative elements and attempts to be a normal kind of story, a convincing façade.
The exhibition includes a video collaboration with Alice Könitz, A leash for Fritz and kale for stray bunny, 2006, which depicts the hallucinations of a rabbit on poppers. The sounds in the phrase “A leash for Fritz” is made of the sounds in the name Alice Könitz. A dialogue between an animal trainer and his parrot is set to music; the melody is made from the dominant-vowel sequence of the text to which it is sung. Crude illustrations accompany the conversation.
In the project room is a three-person collaboration between Kathryn Andrews, Alice Könitz and Stephanie Taylor titled “Hug Fu”. Fu in Chinese is the equivalent of chez in French, “at the house of.” So the title means something like “The house of Hug”. The artists, who took part in the Tong Xian Artist’s Residency in Beijing in July, made the first part of their exhibition before they went to China, trying to imagine china with props gathered in Chinatown, Los Angeles. They exhibited the work in Beijing at Courtyard Gallery. They have made the second part of their exhibition, in the project room, with a combination of pre and post-China work including a song about Chinese cooking, a soccer ball and a large construction functioning as both a support and a sculpture. The exhibition continues until October 13, 2007
