Bio

Chorpenning is from Alta Dena, via New York and Europe.  She has had numerous solo shows and siteworks in galleries and museums, nationally in New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Texas, and internationally in Paris, France, and Germany.  She has performed to rave reviews at Dixon Place, The Knitting Factory, BACA, The Painted Bride, and Claremont College.

Among other things, Chorpenning does so-called "dark rooms," chairs with flash units, "suntanning," and light-sensitive rocks.  All these things use afterimages (from phosphorescent paint or flash units that leave traces on one's retina, or suntanning lotion around a word template) to mimic memory perceptions.  The "memories" can build up and overlap, and sometimes interact and overwrite each other.

Chorpenning's solo show at Dangerous Curve in 2004 was one of her "light room" installations.  In these, she uses paint on walls and floors to record "memories" of constantly moving sunlight streaming in through doors, windows, and skylights throughout a given day.  All Chorpenning's past light rooms have been records of sunlight as it actually came into the rooms, but in "February Thirtieth," the sunlight was completely fabricated for a completely fabricated day. Chorpenning has noted that light traces left from another part of a day can have a surprising psychological effect, causing the viewer to perceive enhanced brightness in a room without really understanding why. Imagine the effect in a room that, facing North, doesn't have any direct sunlight at all.  The space at Dangerous Curve is such a room, and the effect of Chorpenning's multicolored trace records was profound.

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Liza Simone
Executive Director
Phantom Galleries LA
213.626.2854
PhantomGalleriesLA.com