Scott Benzel

The work of this L.A. artist focuses on what he describes as "cultural histories and their subsequent mythologies," and to that end, he creates installations from the various items of ephemera, which are displayed in vitrines or on shelves as if they were part of a museum or archive. Video and audio pieces are also part of the mix. Although this material appears to be indexed, the associations between them are free-form and basically subordinate to the process of trawling for the stuff. It's not the collection that matters, but rather the collecting. The cultural history in question here spans the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, represented by such artifacts as a 1967 Esquire article about Sharon Tate and a business card from Malcolm McLaren, among hundreds of others.