In this video we attend the opening reception of the exhibition “American Cement at the American Cement Building”, a group show with works by Aimee Goguen, Margaret Haines and P Staff. Curated by Henry Hopper, the exhibition runs until March 9, 2026.
Aimee Goguen, Margaret Haines and P Staff curated by Henry Hopper at Tropical Berlin Gallery, Los Angeles. February 22, 2026.
Press release (excerpt):
Cement as bad alchemy
Cement is a spiritless stone: fake earth that has hardened before it has integrated. Opus Caementicium – the rubble-work at the root of empire – follows the alchemical process up to fixation, then commits the ultimate error: it freezes transformation before reconciliation, producing endless matter without spirit.
Our play is one in which the ghosts of our narrative fragments escape fixation and are performed once again. What has risen out of the mire is what has passed through the body, the voice, the hand, the eye, and the fire.
Unfolding within the American Cement Building (a structure shaped by the marriage of American industry, military defense architecture, and corporate power), three artists—Aimee Goguen, Margaret Haines, and P. Staff ” brandish prophecy, theatre, poetry, surveillance, alchemical instruments, masks, blades, regurgitated teratomas, and the fixative properties of cement itself, upending the architectural and ideological confines and utilizing them as means to transcend their surroundings.
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