Kon Trubkovich Leap Second

With his first Los Angeles exhibition, Kon Trubkovich reveals his most personal work to date. A new series of paintings, works on paper, and a sound piece translate psychological underpinnings through elegantly complex methods. The television static, weak transmissions, and tenuous connections he depicts suggest that somewhere behind all the noise and disruption there is a broadcast confirming our existence and interconnection.

A group of large-scale portraits of the artist’s mother plays prominently in the exhibition. The imagery culled from just one second of home video that documented the final party she threw in the U.S.S.R before the family immigrated to the U.S. Defining a transitional moment of flux, these works illuminate the difficultly of tracing the past and express our elusive connection to the concept of origin. Through oil on linen, Trubkovich visually describes the sensation of relating to a person or physical location that no longer exists, or at least not as remembered, and aims to parse latent recall into a tangible codex.

In Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving, which inspired Trubkovich’s exhibition, the author suggests that love is a refuge – a remedy for isolation and our disconnection from each other and nature. By archiving whispers of feelings and recollections, which are dangerously close to disappearing forever, the artist forms a pictorial and emotional space, simultaneously. Implied by the title, the work presented in Leap Second also aligns with the actuality of phantom time. All of the paused moments, ethos, and bits of history that Trubkovich has chosen to suspend, occurred in the matter of an instant. This work fleshes out the missing measure by developing sentiment, and in doing so, accounts for just one leap second.

“The reason I’m in this business, I assume all performers are – it’s “Look at me, Ma!” It is acceptance, you know – “Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma.” And if your mother watches, you’ll show off till you’re exhausted; but if your mother goes, Ptshew!” – Lenny Bruce