Off-Ramp's John Rabe and Kevin Ferguson talk with a baker's dozen of the 45 artists chosen to be in OCMA's 2010 California Biennial.
Curator Sarah Bancroft on two Biennial highlights
This is OCMA Curator Sarah Bancroft's first biennial at the museum, and this time around the show is emphasizing the diversity seen in California art today: installations, conversations, paintings, and even one artist's struggle to change the museum's admissions policy.
From the OCMA bios:
Sarah Bancroft has authored and contributed to publications for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, among others, and has lectured at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Miami Art Museum. Bancroft received an MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2000, where she is currently completing her doctoral dissertation on James Rosenquist. Commenting on her appointment, Bancroft stated,
“I am delighted to be a part of the superb team at this vibrant museum. I look forward to contributing to the stellar curatorial programming at the Orange County Museum of Art that engages with local, national and international audiences.”
Camilo Ontiveros was born 1978, Rosario, Sinaloa; lives and works in between Los Angeles and Tepic Nayarit, Mexico. Ontiveros graduated from the University of California, San Diego (BA, 2006), and the University of California, Los Angeels (MFA, 2009). He is co-founder of Lui Velazquez in Tijuana; and co-founder of Salon Proceso, an art space in South Central Los Angeles. He has participated in exhibitions at Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles; the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; ARCO Madrid; LACE, Los Angeles; the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago; CECUT, Tijuana; Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City; and the Lab, San Francisco.
David Adey's Pumped Up Art
David Adey, of San Diego, made an ingenious piece called "Pump," using a pump, tubing, drywall screws, and a football. (CLICK THROUGH TO SEE THE OFFRAMP MOVIE)
"Pump" at the OCMA 2010 California Biennial from 89.3 KPCC on Vimeo.
From the OCMA bio:
David Adey was born 1972 in Morristown, New Jersey, and lives and works in San Diego. He is a graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA, Sculpture, 2002) and Point Loma Nazarene University (BA, Visual Art, 1994). Adey’s work has been seen at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla Athenaeum of Music and Arts Library, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Torrance Art Museum, Wignall Museum of Art/Chaffey College and Spacecraft Gallery. In addition, he has appeared in exhibitions at the Keller Fine Arts Gallery/Point Loma Nazarene University, Biola University, Quint Contemporary Art, as well as the Cannon Gallery Invitational and Cannon Biennial Exhibitions. David is currently Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Art and Design at Point Loma Nazarene University. He is a recipient of the 2010-2011 San Diego Art Prize in the Emerging Artist category and is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
Luke Butler goes where no artist has gone before
Luke Butler's paintings in this year's biennial focuses exclusively on one of the most popular television series in history: Star Trek. And through the show he weaves a complicated quilt that intersects anguish and fear with masculinity and heroism, not to mention the Captain himself, James T Kirk.
From the OCMA bio: Born 1971 in San Francisco; lives and works in San Francisco. Butler attended the Cooper Union School of Art (BFA, 1994), and California College of the Arts (MFA, 2008). He has had solo exhibitions at Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles; Second Floor Projects and Silverman Gallery, both in San Francisco, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at ABC No Rio, New York; Galerie Georg Kargl, Vienna; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Eagle Tavern, San Francisco.
"House Music" with Juan Capistran
Juan Capistran's uncomfortable encounter with a museum patron highlights the good and bad of doing unconventional art. He spoke with KPCC's John Rabe.
From the OCMA bio:
Juan Capistran lives and works in Los Angeles. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Capistran crossed into the United States at the age of 3. He attended Otis College of Art and Design for undergraduate work (BFA 1999) and the University of California at Irvine for graduate work (MFA 2002). He was awarded a California Community Foundation fellowship for visual arts in 2009. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including The Bronx Museum, Bronx ,NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Cam Contemporaneo, Guadalajara; and Kurimanzutto, Mexico City.
Alexandra Grant's word play
Alexandra Grant assesses what she considers the human body's six "portals": sight, sound, touch, smell, taste along with thought. In doing so, she's created six massive paintings full of geometric shapes, backwards word and dense bubbles of information.
From the OCMA bio: Alexandra Grant was born in 1973 in Fairview Park, Ohio; lives and works in Los Angeles. Grant is a graduate of Swarthmore College (BA, 1995), and California College of the Arts (MFA, 2000). She has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, and her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore; the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; and other galleries and museums in the United States and abroad. Grant is a founding board chair and artist with the Watts House Project, an artist-driven initiative to redevelop the homes across the street from the historic Watts Towers in Los Angeles.
Zoe Crosher's Secret Muse
A globe-trotting explorer/prostitute who documented her life in photographs inspired Zoe Crosher's project "The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle duBois." She talked about it with Off-Ramp's John Rabe.
Zoe Crosher is an artist living in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Vancouver, Rotterdam, Los Angeles and New York City. In addition to her exhibition practice, she has a monograph, Out the Window (LAX), examining space and transience around the Los Angeles airport, and an upcoming monograph on her newest project The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle duBois, to be published by Aperture Books. Crosher recently served as visiting faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles; was an associate editor at the journal Afterall; and is currently visiting faculty at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.
Agitprop starts a conversation
Kevin Ferguson talks with David White about his collective Agitprop's contribution to the Biennial: "The Third Party". It aims to start a conversation with normal, every day people about art, politics, and anything else. He was carting around a table with two chairs and a PA, happy to interview any and all willing participants.
From the OCMA bio: David White, founder of Agitprop, was born in 1976 in Cleveland, Ohio, and lives and works in San Diego. White has a BFA in sculpture from Ohio State University (2005) where he also studied video production and landscape architecture. He is currently working toward an MFA at the University of California, San Diego. White studied landscape design and traditional stone working in Germany, and art and technology in Brazil at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Agitprop is a space conceived as a tool for enabling neighborhood connectivity and engagement. White uses art historical conventions as a method of engaging individuals or groups at the scale of the neighborhood
Sherin Guirguis's art may wobble ...
Off-Ramp's John Rabe was struggling for words to describe one of Sherin Guirguis's pieces, but Sherin said it herself: it's like a cross between an earring and a Weeble.
From the OCMA bio:
Sherin Guirguis was born in Luxor, Egypt in 1974. She received her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997 and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2001. Her work references various contradictory elements, both formal and social. Guirguis’ work investigates the frictions between the contemporary and the traditional, the reductive and the ornamental. She has had solo projects at LAXART, Los Angeles and Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, CA. Selected group exhibitions include venues such as Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, Contemporary Art, Tuscon, AZ; ArtFrankfurt, Germany; and the Las Vegas Art Museum. Her work has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Flash Art, Artforum, Beautiful/Decay, and Artweek. In addition to her own work, Guirguis occasionally curates exhibitions featuring emerging artists in California. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
Painter John Zurier's big sky ethos
If anyone ever deserved the title "painter of light", its Berkley painter John Zurier: his work in this year's biennial practically consume the viewer with a massive expansive of sky blues and cloudy whites. He talks about how, in his paintings, he both tries to transport viewers to far off places and make them think about about the story behind his surreal, ethereal landscapes.
This interview is a part of Off-Ramp's special look in the 2010 California Biennial. Click here to listen to the whole thing!
From the OCMA bio: John Zurier was born 1956 in Santa Monica, California; lives and works in Berkeley. Zurier received both his BA (1979) and MFA (1984) from the University of California, Berkeley. One-person exhibitions include shows at Peter Blum Gallery, New York; Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco; Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and Galeria Javier López, Madrid. His work has also been shown at the Berkeley Art Museum; the Seventh Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea; Hunter College Art Gallery, New York; and the Oakland Museum of California. Zurier participated in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He is eminent adjunct professor at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and the recipient of a 2010 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
Vishal Jugdeo doesn't tell you what to think.
He wasn't being difficult. Vishal Jugdeo, who hails from Regina, but lives in LA, doesn't believe in over-interpreting his work for the viewer. "Too early," he told Off-Ramp's John Rabe of the installation at OCMA that he'd only completed Thursday.
From the OCMA bio:
Vishal Jugdeo is a Canadian artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. He completed a MFA at University of California Los Angeles, a BFA at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine. He has exhibited widely including solo shows at LAXART, Los Angeles and The Western Front and Helen Pitt Artist Run Center in Vancouver, BC. He is currently developing a performative work for live broadcast which will air on public access television in conjunction with an exhibition at Queens Nails Projects, San Francisco. Jugdeo is represented by Thomas Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, where he will present a solo exhibition in 2011.
Patrick Wilson's struggle for the sublime
Patrick Wilson is a Los Angeles resident with a penchant for the kind of beauty you can't find in a sunset or a tree. He paints geometric shapes, mostly squares and rectangles and layers them densely on top one another. It's too polished to be your typical hard edge abstract paintings, and has too much going on to recall the finish fetish movement of the 1960's.
From the OCMA bio: Patrick Wilson was born 1970 in Redding, California; lives and works in Los Angeles. Wilson is a graduate of Claremont Graduate School (MFA, 1995) and the University of California, Davis (BA, 1993). He has had solo exhibitions at Marx & Zavattero, San Francisco; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; and Claremont Graduate University. His work has been shown at the Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston; the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, California; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., and is in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Jose Museum of Art, and other institutions.
Andy Ralph is not spinning his wheels.
Take big plastic trash cans, add castors and some motors ... and you've got Andy Ralph's "Trash Clan." (CLICK THROUGH TO SEE THE OFFRAMP MOVIE)
'Trash Clan' at the OCMA 2010 California Biennial from 89.3 KPCC on Vimeo.
From the OCMA bio:
Andy Ralph was born 1982 in Lake Arrowhead, CA, and earned his BA in Visual Arts (2004) from Point Loma Nazarene University. Often employing basic household objects and products typically found in discount or hardware stores, he transforms individual, unassuming commodities with a humble function into the most improbable things. Ralph’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at the Society of Arts & Crafts in Boston; Aqua Art Wynwood, Miami; Castle House Gallery Poulsbo, WA; Phantom Gallery, Long Beach, CA, and in San Diego, CA at Spacecraft Gallery, Luis De Jesus Seminal Projects, and The Museum of Contemporary Art; among other venues. He lives and works in San Diego and is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
Alexander Israel's art is real
Alexander Israel (who you might know for his LA themed line of designer sunglasses) doesn't necessarily create anything new with his art. His museum pieces consist entirely of props rented from movie studios: ephemeral installations of borrowed random items, juxtaposed to tell a new story.
From the OCMA bio: Alex Israel was born 1982 in Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles. Israel attended Yale University (BA, 2003), and the University of Southern California (MFA, 2010). His work has been included in group exhibitions at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, and at Participant Inc., New York. Israel has completed public artworks throughout Los Angeles, and in 2011 he will have a solo exhibition at LA>
Taravat Talepasand's revolution
In this interview with Taravat Talepasand, Off-Ramp's John Rabe learns that breast enhancement surgery is readily available in Iran. It seems a small and possibly "Beavis and Buttheady" point, but it says a lot about the contradictions the artist finds in the world. BONUS: on December 16, OCMA will screen "Pearls on the Ocean Floor" a documentary by Robert Adanto. It includes interviews with Taravat Talepasand along with other female Iranian artists. Click through for a clip from Adanto's documentary!
From the OCMA bio:
Taravat Talepasand, born in 1979 in the United States to Iranian parents during the Iranian Revolution. Talepasand received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2006 and her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. She lives and works in San Francisco where she shows with Marx and Zavaterro Gallery. She is currently featured in a solo exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In addition, she has exhibited in several solo and group shows around the country including Marx & Zavattero, Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery, New York, NY; Charlie James, Los Angeles; Plane Space, New York; Glerie Sans titre, Brussels, Belgium; Akus Gallery East Connecticut State University; di Rosa Preserve, Napa, CA; and Portland Art Museum. Talepasand received the 2010 Richard C. Diebenkorn Fellowship, Irene Pijoan Memorial Painting Award and was a Murphy Cadogan Scholarship recipient. Her work is also in the permanent collection of the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Publications produced in Art in America, Art Papers, Artweek, Alarm, Artltd., Planet Magazine, SOMA Magazine, Lifescapes, New American Paintings, Metro Pop, White Hot, and THE magazine.
Why are these artists wearing costumes?
It's not for Halloween! Artist Brian Dick and his partner Christen Sperry-Garcia initiated a nationwide campaign to create mascots for every museum in the nation. They've gone to Brooklyn, San Diego, and even crashed LACMA. It's all in hopes to bring in more and more visitors to museums around the country.
From the OCMA bio: Brian Dick was born 1963 in Las Cruces, New Mexico; lives and works in Long Beach and San Diego. Dick graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (BA, 1991), and the University of California, San Diego (MFA, 1995). He has participated in numerous gallery shows, museum exhibitions, and film festivals throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. In 2008 He participated in the New Children’s Museum, San Diego, inaugural exhibition Childsplay with a reinvention of Allan Kaprow’s No Rules Except . . . and Yard. In 2009, together with his partner, Christen Sperry-Garcia, he participated in the Bushwick SITE Fest in Brooklyn, and in 2010 he was featured in Here Not There: San Diego Art Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Dick received the 2008–9 San Diego Art Prize
Zlatan Vukosavljevic says, "Step on it!"
It's a simple thing. A plastic tent covering a pair of slippers duct-taped to the ground. To Zlatan Vukosavljevic, it's about de-cultifying art. He explained it all to KPC's John Rabe.
Zlatan Vukosavljevic is a sculptor and installation artist. Born in Yugoslavia, he studied architecture in Belgrade. In 2004, he collaborated with Los Angeles artist Jason Rhoades at the Kunsthause, Graz in Austria. Along with artists Franz West and Heimo Zobernig, Vukosavljevic created the installation Studiolo during the Venice Biennale in 2005. Studiolo was part of the New Festival at Georges Pompidou Center in Paris 2009, and will be part of the New Decor exhibition, curated by Ralph Rugoff, at Hayward Gallery London in June 2010.
Violet Hopkins' living geology
Violet Hopkins paints uneasy things: surreal underground landscapes with mysterious fleshy forms in the middle, massive volcano eruptions scaled down to the size of an iPod. And despite all that, she's one of the most friendly and approachable artists in the show.
Violet Hopkins is an artist in OCMA's 2010 California. Check out the rest of OCMA's biennial coverage here!
From the OCMA bio: Violet Hopkins was born 1973 in El Paso, Texas; lives and works in Los Angeles. Hopkins is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin (BFA, 1996), and California Institute of the Arts (2002). She has had solo exhibitions at Foxy Production, New York; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; and Balice Hertling, Paris. She has been featured in exhibitions at the Galerie Uschi Kolb, Karlsruhe, Germany; the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; Galería Moriarty, Madrid; the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; Peres Projects, Berlin; Deitch Projects, New York; David Zwirner Gallery, New York; and Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo. Her work is in the collections of the Rubell Family Museum, Miami; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Lisa Williamson's little room
This movie (CLICK THROUGH TO SEE) eyes detail from Lisa Williamson's "Shelf Painting/A Model Situation has Five Parts." Acrylic on linen, wood, and miscellaneous objects, courtesy of the artist and Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago.
Off-Ramp at OCMA's 2010 California Biennial from 89.3 KPCC on Vimeo.
From the OCMA bio:
Lisa Williamson received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2008. She lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include The Reader in the Garden, Unosunove Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2010) and Whisper Chipper, Small A Projects, New York (2009). Her work has been presented in group exhibitions including Auteur/Amateur, Layr Wuestenhagen, Vienna; Kathryn Andrews, Heather Cook, Leslie Vance and Lisa Williamson, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Alex Olson and Lisa Williamson, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Beyond Process, Renwick Gallery, New York; Other People's Projects, 2nd Cannons Publications, White Columns, New York; Summer Reading, Invisible Exports, New York, Reframing, CCA Andratx Kunsthalle, Mallorca, Spain; and Kai Althoff, Justin Beal, Lisa Williamson, ACME, Los Angeles. The artist is represented by Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago.
California Biennial Blast from the Past: The Los Angeles Urban Rangers
Last year, Off-Ramp correspondent Jackson Musker explored hidden private beaches in Malibu with the Off-Ramp Urban Rangers. This year, they're a featured artist in the 2010 California Biennial. Here, again, is Jackson's trip to the beach!
From the OCMA bio: Los Angeles Urban Rangers (LAUR), founded in 2004, is an interdisciplinary collective including artists, writers, architects, and geographers. The Rangers are Nicholas Bauch (b. 1978, Rochester, Minnesota); Sara Daleiden (b. 1975, Waukesha, Wisconsin); Therese Kelly (b. 1972, Pittsburgh); Ron Milam (b. 1975, Torrance, California); Jenny Price (b. 1960, St. Louis); Emily Scott (b. 1971, Bluffton, Indiana); and Sara Wookey (b. 1972, Columbus, Ohio). The Los Angeles Urban Rangers develop guided hikes, campfire talks, field kits, and other interpretive tools to spark creative explorations of everyday habitats, in our home megalopolis and beyond.