calendario eventi  :: 

X

25/11/2002

Making

Los Angeles County Museum of Art - LACMA, Los Angeles

LACMA ANNOUNCES UNPRECEDENTED COLLABORATION WITH MAJOR LOS ANGELES ART SCHOOLS

Students And Faculty Artists Create Unique Installations For Visitors Of All Ages At LACMA

An unprecedented collaboration between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and five major art schools in Los Angeles has produced the next LACMALab exhibition in LACMA’s Boone Children’s Gallery. Art Center College of Design, California Institute of the Arts, Otis College of Art and Design, and School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA have assembled teams of students and faculty artists and designers to create participatory installations that investigate the process of making art. A team of students and faculty from the University of Southern California Museum Studies Program will provide a unique analysis of the ‘making’ of MAKING, which will be presented to the public throughout the exhibition. Internationally noted Los Angeles architecture firm Frederick Fisher and Partners has designed the overall space. Presented free to the public, MAKING will be on view November 26, 2002, through September 1, 2003.

MAKING is intended to bring the interests, perspectives, and insights of L.A.’s next generation of artists to museum audiences, as the artists examine the dynamics of art making through collaborative projects. The four large-scale installations elicit public response through approaches that range from provocation to whimsy. While all projects open to the public in November, many of the works are additive in nature and will evolve throughout the nine-month project through visitor participation.

The installations include a large, semitransparent greenhouse, shed, and potting area with studio components; a mountain of clay for creating individual sculptures; an ever-expanding web of correspondence; a mixture of pods to experience the senses involved in the creative process; and a giant clear container for making a ten-foot-high, new sculptural work by collecting art given up by museum visitors.

MAKING was conceived and produced by LACMALab, LACMA’s research and development unit that invites artists to create experiential artwork for all ages. Over the past two years, LACMALab has commissioned 21 artists -from internationally distinguished, mid-career, and promising young artists as divergent as Alan Kaprow, John Baldessari, Jennifer Steinkamp, Eleanor Antin, John Outerbridge, Eric Owen Moss, and Jennifer Nelson- to create innovative and thought-provoking installations. For MAKING, LACMALab Director Robert Sain asked that the teams investigate both philosophical and practical questions as they relate to the making of art. Issues include the organization of collective projects; how an idea, concern, or inspiration is turned into art; and the challenge of creating an installation that engages both child and adult.

''All participants responded with astonishing enthusiasm and determination to operate in this age-free, experimental terrain'', said MAKING curator Robert Sain. ''Now the visitor brings the artists’ works to life in Los Angeles’ largest public studio.''

Projects Descriptions

Art Center College of Design (Art Center)
Most of the World is Covered with Blue Or So It Appears from Space In this two-part collaboration, the transdiciplinary team from the Art Center College of Design examines the use of raw materials in art making. The first component is comprised of a six-ton, eleven-foot-tall mountain of clay from which visitors can peel away portions for their own creations. Even though the clay creations may be removed from the gallery, the objects maintain a link to the project and to the other clay sculptures that act to extend the reach of the project into homes throughout the city. As visitors remove clay from the mound over time, the progressive absence is displaced by the imagination of all that it has become. The second component is an installation of postcards approximately 100,000 that are to be taken away and acted upon. One side of the postcard is blank available for drawing, writing, and communicating. The project comes to fruition when the cards are returned to LACMA and installed in a woven web of floor-to-ceiling strands. This will also serve as an index of participation, the reconstituted body of the contextual whole.

Otis College of Art and Design (Otis)

Sunny + 72º
The Otis team uses the four seasons as a departure point to investigate the relationship between the cyclical aspects of the physical world and the cultural presentation within the institution. The project involves a fan room and three pods that reflect the olfactory, the auditory, and the visual senses. The fan room is an enclosed performance space that borders the gallery window facing Fairfax Avenue. Inside this transparent space, Styrofoam snowballs, paper leaves, and other seasonal objects will be constantly tossed around by the fans and by visitors. The first pod includes a projector that will flood the entire floor space with an image along with a soundtrack playing seasonal sounds. The second pod is a recording studio, in which children and adults are encouraged to make sounds mimicking seasonal noises, such as wind, rain, birds, etc. Visitors will experience seasonal scents produced by oils, perfumes, natural objects, or highly artificial products, in the third pod. School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA (UCLArts)
Collection: November 2002 - September 2003
The UCLArts team project grew out of discussions of the art process; how ideas are shaped, molded, and then, often, discarded. Discarding or ‘giving up’ ideas or work is an essential process, critical to the development of a single work, as well as to the evolution of a larger art practice. The project encourages visitors to cross the barrier between artist and viewer and to participate in a collaborative artwork. Visitors are asked to revisit their existing artworks and select one to 'discard' into a larger, collaborative work, which will continually transform over the course of nine months. The items will be placed in a ten-foot-wide, nine-foot-tall Plexiglas container, which is approached by a ramp giving visitors access to all vantage points of the collective work. Collection: November 2002 - September 2003 demands that participants confront their own relationship to their art objects and to artmaking in general.

California Institute of the Arts (CalArts)
Weeds
This installation -made up of a full-size greenhouse, materials shed, potting area, and ‘edutainment’ area- reevaluates subjects that exist under a maligned status. Weeds are commonly conceived of as being out of place and having no apparent value, as well as being wild. These connotations can be applied to individuals as well and become the focus of this four-part project. In Weeds, visitors are invited into a sitting area where they will be introduced to the theme of weeds and pests through a combination of audio, video, photographic components, as they wander around a 30-foot, soft-sculptural entangled weed. Visitors then pass through a 30-foot greenhouse made of more than 10,000 recycled waterbottles, and into a potting area that provides workspace for creating their own sculptures. Next door, in the materials shed -made of corrugated, green plastic sheeting and faux wood grain to resemble a traditional shed- recycled products are stored in containers for participants to use in their works. Finally, these new works of art can be displayed in the greenhouse for future audiences to enjoy.

University of Southern California Museum Studies Program
MAKING Analysis
The USC Museum Studies Program is providing a unique analysis of MAKING. A museum rarely commissions an in-depth study on the relationship between visitor and art as an integral and public component of an exhibition. The goal of the USC team is to investigate the ‘making’ of MAKING. In addition, they will analyze the visitors’ initial responses and participation and make public the lessons learned through this exhibition. Working with artists, designers, curators, and educators, this invaluable report extends LACMA’s knowledge of how a museum can better engage the public -particularly children, teens, college students, parents, and seniors- in new and meaningful ways. It will also become an invaluable tool for the study of museums as they contemplate new ways to relate to artists and age-free public in future exhibitions.

MAKING has been realized with the help of the prominent architecture firm Frederick Fisher and Partners. Fisher was selected to create an overall sense of cohesion to the four installations. As organic issues are present in the four installations, Fisher selected colors from nature -sky blue, grass green- to reinforce the artists’ themes and unify the entire space. Throughout the perimeter of the space, Fisher and his team will install a continuous wainscot that unites text, images, and didactic materials produced by the USC Museum Studies Program. In a departure from museum convention, all primary didactic information is conveyed in the voices of the participants, bringing clarity to this new model for working. Fisher has also installed an important work from LACMA’s permanent collection, Hammering Man by Jonathan Borofsky, to further advance the theme of ‘making.’ Fisher has added a library area and an individual artists’ workspace to supplement LACMALab’s ongoing childrens’ art making area.

Following the huge successes of LACMALab’s first two projects, Made in California: NOW and SEEING, MAKING will continue to produce valuable information for LACMA and other museums that seek a greater understanding of visitors’ art experiences and provide an innovative blueprint for engaging new audiences.

Exhibition Organizers

MAKING was produced by LACMALab and directed by Robert Sain, with Kelly Carney, project coordinator, and Howard Fox, LACMA curator.

Image: John Baldessari, "In Still Life"

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles CA 90036

stampa

permanent link