Left Handed Oil Test
Gunner Dongieux and Karla Zurita
Apr 12, 2024
San Gil, Colombia



Pop Gun presents ‘Left Handed Oil Test’
a two person exhibition by Gunner Dongieux and Karla Zurita at the Virreina Loma Serena residency in San Gil, Colombia.
In Epicurious’s YouTube series Well Equipped, design and usability guru Dan Formosa reviews popular kitchen gadgets. With the ‘left handed oil test,’ Formosa tests each gadget with a greased non-dominant hand, highlighting underlying design and utility deficiencies.
In this site specific exhibition, Dongieux and Zurita stress test conceptual motifs developed at Virreina’s Loma Serena residency in San Gil, Colombia.
Dongieux’s ongoing series at the residency contemplates the relationship between artist and artistic labor, personifying ‘practice’ in the form of friendly minions. Cast among other objects of daily routine, unwashed dishes and hand-cut mangos, the minion reminds the artist to paint in the same way a smiling Mr. Bubbles Bubble-Bath bottle reminds him to scrub behind his ears.
Zurita investigates sites of congregation by reassembling the ephemera of rural festivities. In Party Mat, Zurita uses a parental impulse to craft a kitchen placemat, weaving plastic bags and children’s pajama fabric into a fruit market polymesh sack. Once placed in front of the sink it rings the party time bell, letting visitors know that the kitchen is now a site of celebration.
Together, the tandem approach labor from the oily left-hand, finding the play in daily practices. Dongieux and Zurita will continue working at the Virreina Loma Serena Residency for the remainder of April.