MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO ADVANCE EXHIBITION SCHEDULE THROUGH JUNE 2013

Transcription

1 July 16, 2012 For Immediate Release MEDIA CONTACTS Leah Masterson, Communications Associate, x119, Rebecca Handelsman, Senior Communications & Marketing Manager, x116, MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO ADVANCE EXHIBITION SCHEDULE THROUGH JUNE 2013 Current as of July 16, Please discard previous schedules and call to confirm all information at x119, or via at MCASD DOWNTOWN AI WEIWEI: ZODIAC HEADS/CIRCLE OF ANIMALS: GOLD (Jacobs Building) Through 7/29/12 ISAAC JULIEN: TEN THOUSAND WAVES Through 12/1/12 /12 (Jacobs Building) MARGARET NOBLE: 44 TH AND LANDIS (1001 KETTNER) 8/9/12 1/20/13 SCOLI ACOSTA 2/3/13 6/30/13 MCASD LA JOLLA SANTA ANA CONDITION: JOHN VALADEZ 6/10/12 9/2/12 BEHOLD, AMERICA!: ART OF THE UNITED STATES FROM THREE SAN DIEGO MUSEUMS 9/16/12 2/10/13 LIFELIKE 2/24/13 5/27/13

2 AI WEIWEI: ZODIAC HEADS/CIRCLE OF ANIMALS: GOLD MCASD Downtown (Jacobs ( Building) Through July 29, 2012 MCASD presents the U.S. museum debut of Ai Weiwei s topical and sumptuous Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold (2010). This gallery-sized installation comprises twelve animal heads, each depicting a segment of the ancient Chinese zodiac. The recent works by artist and activist Ai Weiwei reference a European version of the Chinese zodiac designed by Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione. The original sculptures, with their international connections, were built for an elaborate waterclock fountain at the imperial summer home of Emperor Qianlong, just outside of Beijing. In 1860 during the Second Opium War, the imperial gardens were ransacked, displacing the twelve zodiac heads. To this date only seven have been recovered. Continuing his work of re-interpreting cultural objects from his own fantasy and historical knowledge, Ai revisions all twelve zodiac heads. His work comments on the tension between what is fake, what is a copy, and what may constitute the better of the two. Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and AW Asia, New York. The exhibition is made possible by a generous lead gift from Joan and Irwin Jacobs, and supporting gifts from Faye Hunter Russell, Valerie and Harry Cooper, and Sheryl and Harvey White. Additional funding is provided by Melissa and Michael Bartell, Olivia and Peter Farrell, Iris and Matt Strauss, and Karen and Don Cohn. Related programs are supported by grants from The James Irvine Foundation Arts Innovation Fund, and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund. Institutional support for MCASD is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. ISAAC JULIEN: TEN THOUSAND WAVES MCASD Downtown (Jacobs Building) Through December 1, 1, 2012 MCASD welcomes British artist Isaac Julien for the West Coast premier of his most ambitious project to date, Ten Thousand Waves. Julien, known for his arresting films as well as his dynamic gallery installations, poetically weaves together stories linking China s ancient past and present in this intriguing nine-screen video installation. Conceived and made over four years, Ten Thousand Waves was filmed on location in the ravishing and remote Guangxi province and at the famous Shanghai film Studios and various sites around Shanghai. Through formal experimentation and a series of unique collaborations, Julien seeks to engage with Chinese culture through contemporary events, ancient myths and artistic practice. Julien engaged many of China s leading artistic voices in creating the film. The original inspiration for Ten Thousand Waves was the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004, in which 23 Chinese cockle-pickers died. In response to this event, Julien commissioned the poet Wang Ping to

3 come to England and write Small Boats, a poem that is recited in the work. In the successive years, Julien has spent time in China slowly coming to understand the country and its people s perspectives and developing the relationships that have enabled him to undertake this rich and multifaceted work. Isaac Julien: Ten Thousand Waves is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Maryanne and Irwin Pfister. Additional support for this exhibition is provided by the Linda Pace Foundation. Related programs are supported by grants from The James Irvine Foundation Arts Innovation Fund, and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund. Institutional support for MCASD is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. MARGARET NOBLE: 44 TH AND LANDIS MCASD Downtown (Jacobs ( Building) August 9, 2012 January 20, 2013 Part of MCASD s ongoing Cerca series, this mixed media installation and performance by sound artist Margaret Noble charts a psychological path through San Diego s City Heights neighborhood, where the artist grew up. Combining references to the neighborhood s early Victorian years and motifs drawn from 1980s urban pop culture, 44 th and Landis takes the form of an intricate sculptural environment made up of hundreds of cut paper dolls and other forms. The installation also incorporates an experiential soundtrack emanating from fourteen handmade paper speakers and will serve as the set for a series of sound-based performances by Noble. Performances will take place on October 20 th and November 17 th. During the performances Noble will activate her installation with live sound, using voice and electronic instruments. Integrating strands of memory and fantasy, and public and private histories, 44 th and Landis offers insights into a San Diego neighborhood s past and present. Noble holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego, and an M.F.A. in sound art from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Growing up San Diego s City Heights neighborhood, she was influenced by the beat-driven dance culture of the 1980s; she later performed as an electronic music DJ in the underground club community of Chicago for five years. Noble s work as a sound artist and storyteller explores the industrial and sociological evolution of communities and urban spaces, weaving together text, visual mixed media, and sonic arrangements to create innovative narrative experiences. A limited-edition artist s book accompanies the exhibition. Margaret Noble: 44 th and Landis is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Funding for the exhibition has been provided by a grant from The San Diego Foundation, which was made possible by the Carl William Henry Pollier Fund; the Creative Catalyst Fund; and the Colonel Frank C. Wood Memorial Fund of The San Diego Foundation, in Partnership with the James Irvine Foundation. Institutional support for MCASD is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

4 SANTA ANA CONDITION: JOHN VALADEZ MCASD La Jolla Through September 2, 2012 John Valadez is widely considered the most significant artist to have developed a realist pictorial language recording the Chicano experience in Los Angeles during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. His work has come to define the iconography of Chicano identity of the period, situating it within the changing dynamics of the city rather than nostalgically attempting to reconstruct a mythical and distant past. Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Valadez began as a muralist, presenting themes of invisible borders and histories binding together Spanish, Mexican, and American culture. Valadez s intense and colorful artworks express the Chicano experience in a contemporary representational style infused with elements of magical realism. His virtuoso pastel drawings present intense contrasts: the formal and narrative interpretations resemble unlikely photographs that offer social commentary on everyday urban life. Santa Ana Condition: John Valadez is the first survey exhibition of this important Mexican- American artist and muralist, who has had profound influence on the Chicano art movement in the United States. This exhibition spans 35 years of Valadez s photographs, paintings, pastels, and other works on paper. Santa Ana Condition: John Valadez presents, for the first time, the development of Valadez s studio works: from his early use of documentary and street photography to the influence of European Baroque and Rococo painting and sculpture, and finally, to his more recent amalgamation of photography-based imagery with a spatial and temporal structure pointing towards Surrealism. The exhibition explores the specific documentary implications of Valadez s paintings, pastels, and drawings of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and their later evolution into cityscapes imbued with his desire to depict the nitty-gritty of urban life in L.A. and its ethnic underclass. Pastels and paintings from the 1990s and 2000s are also included in the exhibition. These works, which depart from his earlier strict adherence to deadpan representation towards a more Baroque compositional structure, are marked by a need to push the boundaries of structure and style. Memory, desire, intuition, and humor blend in these masterfully accomplished works on canvas and paper, which are thrust by their very excess into a territory that materializes a personal iconography beyond the limits of cultural identity. In his later works, Valadez aims to make familiar the unfamiliar whether dreams and fantasies, or the cultural identity of others. Santa Ana Condition: John Valadez is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Support for the exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, the LLWW Foundation and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund. Additional funding is provided by the Cochrane Exhibition Fund. Related programs are supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation Arts Innovation Fund. Institutional support for MCASD is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

5 BEHOLD, AMERICA!: ART OF THE UNITED STATES FROM THREE SAN DIEGO MUSEUMS MCASD La Jolla September 16, 2012 February 10, 2013 This fall, MCASD will partner with the San Diego Museum of Art and the Timken Museum of Art to bring together the finest American works from their permanent collections presented in a groundbreaking collaborative exhibition entitled Behold, America!: Art of the United States from Three San Diego Museums. Internationally known for their permanent collections and provocative exhibitions, these institutions together provide a three-museum venue for Behold, America! This civic collaboration, which presents work from the colonial period to the present, offers an unprecedented opportunity to view the full sweep of American art history as told through the visual art of each institution, and to reconsider how national and individual identities have shifted over time. Behold, America! is grouped into three main sections, Figures, Forms, and Frontiers, with each venue showing works from all three collections. MCASD will exhibit Frontiers, the section of the exhibition that emphasizes landscape painting by artists such as Albert Bierstadt and Georgia O Keefe and includes important installations by artists like Vito Acconci, Ann Hamilton, and Robert Irwin. At The San Diego Museum of Art, early American portraiture by Thomas Sully will be seen in concert with contemporary works by Cindy Sherman and John Currin in the Figures component of the collaboration. The Timken Museum of Art will present Forms, which will include examples of traditional still-lifes by Raphaelle Peale, early American modernism by Morgan Russell and Manierre Dawson, and a minimalist work by Agnes Martin. The San Diego Museum of Art and MCASD will also both show components of Forms. Additional artists represented in the exhibition, who are among the most important artists in the history of the art of the United States, include: John Singleton Copley, Eastman Johnson, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, and Lorna Simpson. In conjunction with this exhibition, the three museums will present a wide spectrum of programs, lectures, tours, and opportunities to enhance the exhibition. A full-color comprehensive catalogue will be published in conjunction with the collaboration and will feature essays by Alexander Nemerov and Frances Pohl. Members of the three museums will be invited to special previews and will have the opportunity to view the exhibition in full at the partnering institutions. Behold, America! Art of the United States from Three San Diego Museums is a collaborative exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The San Diego Museum of Art, and the Timken Museum of Art. Lead support for the show is provided by a generous grant from the Qualcomm Foundation. Further major funding has been received from The Henry Luce Foundation, and Jake and Todd Figi. Additional support for the show has been provided by RBC Wealth Management, and the Wells Fargo Foundation. Institutional funding for all three Museums is supplied by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

6 SCOLI ACOSTA MCASD Downtown (Jacobs Building) February 3, 2013 through June 30, 2013 Los Angeles-based artist Scoli Acosta transforms images and objects gleaned from daily life, literature, mass culture, and dreams his own and those of other people. Acosta is part of a lineage of artists who embraced the found object, from the Surrealists to assemblage artists of the 1960s, but his practice emphasizes recycling and reclamation, actions born of the pressures and necessities of the present moment. Working in a range of mediums painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, all of which may be incorporated into elaborate installations Acosta s work is characterized by his use of humble materials, economic gestures, and transparency with respect to craft. His installations emerge as poetic constellations that seem to retrace and map his research and production processes, as well as the urban landscape he inhabits. Scoli Acosta was born in Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work. Acosta has had solo exhibitions at LA><ART (2008) and at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena (2011). His work is featured in Made in L.A organized by the Hammer Museum and LA><ART, and he was included in the 2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, the Biennale de Montréal 2007, and LACMA s Phantom Sightings, also in He is represented by Galerie Laurent Godin in Paris. LIFELIKE MCASD La Jolla February 24 May 27, 2013 This international and multigenerational group exhibition considers the continued relevance of mimetic realism in contemporary art. Featuring a range of artists from the 1960s to the present, the show focuses on artists who embrace the visual vocabulary of everyday life, often painstakingly re-creating mundane objects and images in their work. Their uncanny works play with verisimilitude but also foreground the fabrication of representation that they create. Through sly shifts of scale and context, the artists reveal the manner in which their subjects authenticity is manufactured. Showcasing a range of approaches from painting and sculpture to moving images, drawing, and photography, the exhibition will survey approximately 80 works by more than 40 artists, including: Robert Bechtle, Maurizio Cattelan, Vija Celmins, Robert Gober, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, Ai Weiwei, and others. Lifelike explores the many ways artists have pursued handmade verisimilitude through a range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, video, and threedimensional environments. Some artists featured, such as Vija Celmins and Peter Rostovsky, paint from photographs, creating immersive surfaces that exhibit an astonishing degree of

7 likeness and detail. Others work in sculpture, often fashioning their works from materials that belie the pedestrian nature of the subject, such as Ai Weiwei s jar of hundreds of sunflower seeds, made from hand-painted cast porcelain. In video, artists including Thomas Demand and Jeon Joonho create moving images that at first seem familiar, but deceive us through sly use of animation, and in photography, artists including James Casebere and Isaac Layman play with the hyper real, through fabricated scenes or clever layering of images. Lifelike is one of the first museum presentations and publications to specifically gather the work of artists who have embraced the practice of meticulous recreation in their work, and have fused it with the subject matter of the everyday. In presenting recent work against a backdrop of 1960s and 1970s artists, Lifelike addresses work by several generations who have laid claim to this territory, embracing the handcrafted and the complicated in the face of technological shortcuts. In so doing, these artists have found material rich for exploration both formally and conceptually. Lifelike has previously been seen at the Walker Art Center, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. After it is shown at MCASD, the exhibition will travel to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. Lifelike is organized by the Walker Art Center and made possible by generous support from John L. Thomson and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Institutional support for MCASD is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO (MCASD) Founded in 1941, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is the preeminent contemporary visual arts institution in San Diego County. The Museum s collection includes more than 4,000 works of art created since In addition to presenting exhibitions by international contemporary artists, the Museum serves thousands of children and adults annually at its varied education programs, and offers a rich program of film, performance, and lectures. MCASD is a private, nonprofit organization, with 501c3 tax-exempt status; it is supported by generous contributions and grants from MCASD Members and other individuals, corporations, foundations, and government agencies. Dr. Hugh M. Davies is The David C. Copley Director and CEO at MCASD. Institutional support for MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. # # #