Join us for the Los Angeles Premiere of Punishment’s Place. Written directed and fabricated by Brian Getnick, performed by Kathleen Keogh, Oscar Alvarez and Peter Tomka. Lighting design by Chu Hsuan Chang.

Exhibition Dates: Wednesday, Sept 12th — Saturday, Sept 15th

Gallery Hours: 12-6pm (The work of artist-performers Kathleen Keogh, Oscar Alvarez and Peter Tomka will be on display from September 12th to the the 15th during these hours. Rehearsals are open to the public.)

Performance: Friday, Sept 14th doors at 8pm, performance at 8:30pm

Saturday, Sept 15th doors at 8pm, performance at 8:30pm

Punishment’s Place is a play that emerges from somatic explorations of a shattered monument to Prometheus Bound. Wings, chains, a snake’s skin, and pieces of a man are taken up by artist-performers Kathleen Keogh, Oscar Alvarez and Peter Tomka as the building blocks for the image of the cyclically punished demigod Prometheus. Punishment’s Place grafts the contemporary political climate of punitive logic symbolized by the monument onto the subjectivity and circumstances of the performers involved. The starting point is that we are all predators and all prey, that there is no moral high ground to stand upon, no stable image of retributive justice that satisfies us. The kind of work we do and how we play out these emotions is what allows us to move from punishment’s place into a shared and multidimensional human space.

Brian Getnick is an artist and facilitator of contemporary performance in Los Angeles. His performance work animates sculptural figures that are containers for research into the intersections of memory, history and mythology. Currently Getnick is developing a body of sculptural and performative works titled Effigy Live honing in on objects that become sites for magical retribution, a playing out of the exchanges between ideologies and people. Punishment’s Place is the first work in this series.

Oscar David Alvarez is a performance artist with a studio practice in sculpture, and installation. He is currently working with totemic hierarchies, clown rituals, metaphysical grids, and abject embodiments of male psyches. He is currently pursuing his MFA at USC Roski School of Art and Design. Oscar will also be performing at the Broad on October 11th as part of the En Cuatro Patas series curated by Xandra Ibarra and Nao Bustamante.

Peter Tomka’s photos serve as both the invitation and memento mori to social events taking place in rearranged spaces. Recent performances include ‘Tour the Coliseum’ & ‘Present Yourself at the Table’ following Sparkling, Still, or Spirit: The Ansonia Survey, an exhibition he curated. Tomka is currently a 2020 MFA candidate from the University of California Riverside and holds a BA from the University of Iowa in 2011.

Kathleen Keogh creates dance performances that favor the virtuosity of absurdity and mundanity. Her primary outlet for her work is within the dance trio Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. Formed in  in Portland OR with Rikki Rothenberg and Katie Arrants Woolly(…) is an aesthetically-inclined, trans-pop-culture, dance-therapy performance group working in  venues ranging from burned-out buildings, black box theaters, cowboy dance halls, and downtown alleyways. Traversing between hilarious absurdity and a dark intensity, they have been bringing audiences to the precipice of tantalizing confusion since 2006.

Punishment’s Place was developed by staging workshop productions throughout the year at POST Gallery, Pieter Space, PAM and USC Graduate Studios. Thank you Nathan Bockelman, HK Zamani, Dorothy Dubrule, Jmy James Kidd, and Vardui Sharapkhanyan for hosting us. Thanks also for the critical guidance and feedback of Michal Kobialka, Dorit Cypis, Tim Reid, Mathew Polzin and Asher Hartman. Photos and Videography by Julie Weitz, Ian Byers Gamber and Angel Alvarado. This performance could not have been made without the ingenuity, trust and invention of the performers.