For the cat, what is the possible use for the ball of yarn? It consists in freeing a behavior from its genetic inscription within a given sphere (predatory activity, hunting). The freed behavior still reproduces and mimics the forms of the activity from which it has been emancipated, but, in emptying them of their sense and of any obligatory relationship to an end, it opens them and makes them available for a new use. The game with the yarn liberates the mouse from being prey and the predatory activity from being necessarily directed toward the capture and death of the mouse. And yet, this play stages the very same 2 behaviors that define hunting. The activity that results from this thus becomes a pure means, that is, a praxis that, while firmly maintaining its nature as a means, is emancipated from its relationship to an end; it has joyously forgotten its goal and can now show itself as such, as a means without an end. 

- Giorgio Agamben, "In Praise of Profanation" 

Et al. etc. is pleased to present A rat's back, a two-person exhibition featuring new work by Andrew Chapman and Daniel Payavis. 

Andrew Chapman has a BFA from California College of the Arts and an MFA from Stanford University. His paintings and sculptures approach experimentation and innovation through an abstract layer of technique and finish - a prompting towards an engagement with the unknown. He has exhibited at Et al. (San Francisco), Portmanteau (Geneva), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Important Projects (Oakland), and Johansson Projects (Oakland). Chapman lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. 

Daniel Payavis (b. 1985) received a BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia and an MFA from the University of Texas, Austin. His work uses languages of historical painting to examine the nature of image, eliding boundaries of graphic, photographic and other pictorial idioms. He has exhibited at Thomas Duncan Gallery (Los Angeles), Texan Equities (Los Angeles), Pied-à-terre (San Francisco), Secret Recipe (Los Angeles), the Torrance Art Museum (Torrance), and Reserve Ames (Los Angeles) among others. He lives and works in Los Angeles.