calendario eventi  :: 

X

12/4/2012

Three exhibitions

Santa Monica Museum of Art SMMoA, Santa Monica

Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe
April 13 - August 19, 2012

curated by Lisa Melandri

Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe is the first major solo museum exhibition for the New York-based multi-media artist. Best known for her elaborate paintings of African American women against the backdrop of décor recalled from her childhood, Thomas has created an all-new suite of works that examine aspects of landscape painting. She introduces a new model of trans-generational female empowerment as she explores interior and exterior environments in relation to the female figure. The exhibition opens at SMMoA on April 14, 2012 and continues through August 18, 2012. It will then travel to the Brooklyn Museum for display from September 28, 2012 to January 20, 2013.

Thomas is best known for her bold enamel and acrylic paintings adorned with rhinestones, glitter, and “bling.” Her subjects seem to have stepped directly from a 1970s Blaxploitation film, yet Thomas’s influences extend far beyond. Her oeuvre stems from her long study of art history and the classical genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life. Thomas’s layered facture process begins with a photographic portrait that is translated into a collage, and ultimately reenvisioned as a painting. Her imagery comprises careful borrowings from art history and from contemporary popular culture.

For Origin of the Universe, Thomas examines art historical constructs of feminine identity, sexuality, beauty, and power in 15 works in a variety of sizes, shapes, and media. Taking cues from Marcel Duchamp’s Étant Donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) and Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World), Thomas presents the female figure as the origin of the universe, focusing on how the female body both engenders and inhabits landscape. The works on view are in communication with one another—portraits of Qusuquzah and Din gaze out at modernist interiors and plein-air landscapes, all confronted by the artist’s arresting recreations of Courbet’s Origin.

In nineteenth-century visual culture, black female sexuality functioned as something to be rejected or disparaged, but Thomas reconfigures these historical tropes into contemporary statements of empowerment. By casting African American women as the “heroines” of her works, she makes a profound statement regarding gender and racial identity. Thomas’s dialogue with Courbet and Duchamp is a strong reclamation of history, reasserting the subjective nature of beauty. In addition to her paintings and photographs, she will create an installation in SMMoA’s Project Room 1, to reinvent Étant Donnés, where the “peep show” reveals the true surprise of a 70s-style paneled interior in the place of Duchamp’s splayed female body.

Some content may be deemed inappropriate for younger viewers.

Mickalene Thomas was born in 1971. She earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute and a Master’s of Fine Arts from Yale University. She has participated in residency programs at the Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program, Giverny, France, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, and MoMA PS1, New York, and is included in the important collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; The Museum of Fine Arts Boston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe is organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art; SMMoA Deputy Director Lisa Melandri is the exhibition curator. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of free, engaging public programs and a full-color, illustrated catalog published by SMMoA and distributed by DAP. The publication includes an interview with the artist by Melandri; an essay that contextualizes Thomas’s work by writer/curator Sarah Lewis, Professor at Yale University School of Art; and an in-depth investigation of Thomas’s nineteenth-century influences by scholar Denise Murrell, a 2011 PhD Dissertation Fellow at Reid Hall of Columbia University in Paris.

Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Additional support has also been provided by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and Janine and Lyndon Barrois.

-----

Isa Melsheimer: Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West
April 13 - July 7, 2012

Santa Monica Museum of Art presents Isa Melsheimer: Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West, a never-before-seen installation that explores Hollywood’s cinematic heyday and its motion picture icons, investigating notions of glamour and luxury as they relate to characters, architecture, and locations in and around Los Angeles.Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West, Melsheimer’s first American museum exhibition, will be on view in the Museum’s Project Room 1 from April 14 through July 7, 2012.

Santa Monica Museum of Art Deputy Director Lisa Melandri is curator of Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West, in which the artist utilizes commonplace, and largely domestic materials, to create site-specific environments, including a mixture of altered and embroidered t-shirts, live plants, paper, pearls, yarn constructions, and cast concrete sculptures.

During a 2007 residency at Villa Aurora—a nonprofit organization located in Pacific Palisades dedicated to German-American cultural exchange—Melsheimer became interested in Los Angeles’s landscape and architecture, as well as the fictional and historical characters that inhabit these spaces.

Influenced by classic Hollywood films such as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, and the stories of James Graham Ballard, Melsheimer examines the affects of architecture and location on Los Angeles’s glamorized cinematic figures; as well as the demise of those figures from lifestyles of fame and financial success. Melsheimer is particularly drawn to examples such as the Salton Sea, a former glamorous resort area new Palm Springs that has since degenerated into a kind of wasteland, and the character Norma Desmond—and her shabby mansion—from Wilder’s iconic film.

With Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West, Melsheimer wants viewers to be aware that architecture is always representative—of ideas or subjects that permeate society. She asks viewers to consider: Which fictional and historical subjects are admired within Los Angeles? Why do residents emigrate from Los Angeles? What aesthetics characterize Los Angeles’s buildings; and what sentiments manifest in the region’s architecture?

Melsheimer (b. 1968) was born in Neuss, Germany, and lives and works in Berlin. She attended the Hochschule der Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), Berlin, and completed a master class with painter Georg Baselitz.

Melsheimer’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout Europe, including in Paris at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, in Nîmes at Musée d'Art Contemporain, in Vienna at Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, in Berlin at Esther Schipper Gallery, in Switzerland at Kunsthaus Langenthal, in Maastricht, Netherlands at Bonnefantenmuseum, and in Marfa, Texas at The Chinati Foundation. Melsheimer’s work has also been presented in numerous group exhibitions, including in Chamarande, France, at Domaine Départemental de Chamarande, in Berlin at Kunsthalle Autocenter, in Copenhagen at the Institute of Contemporary Art, in Istanbul at BM SUMA Contemporary Art Center, in Mexico City at Museo Tamayo, and in Philadelphia at Cereal Art Project Room.

Some content may be deemed inappropriate for younger viewers.

Support for Isa Melsheimer: Vermilion Sands and Other Stories from the Neon West has been provided in part by Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.

-----

Back Gallery:
Park Studio: Complex Elements
April 14 - August 19, 2012

Park Studio: Complex Elements is an exhibition of original glass-blown works by 24 high school student participants from Santa Monica and Watts who have participated in SMMoA’s distinguished, annual Park Studio interdisciplinary arts education program.

Complex Elements showcases an array of colorless, clear glass vessels in various sizes, forming an abstract sculptural arrangement. These unusual glass-blown forms are the result of a unique collaboration between students from Santa Monica High School, Olympic High School, and Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center, and students from the Watts Labor Community Action Committee’s (WLCAC) glass program. In addition, the exhibition will feature a film that shows the participants’ process of learning how to blow glass and the skill-sharing that develops between students throughout the program.

The free Park Studio: Complex Elements education program took place during the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s (SMMUSD) spring break, from April 2 through April 5, 2012. Held at the WLCAC’s glass studio in Watts, Park Studio: Complex Elements included a visit to SMMoA and the Watts Towers. Participating students learned the practice of glass blowing from WLCAC artist Jaime Guerrero and his assistant, artist Richard Franco, as well as from year-round students in the WLCAC glass program. All workshops included transportation, lunch, refreshments, and art materials.

Complex Elements highlights the collaboration between the disparate communities of Santa Monica and Watts. Students from Santa Monica are recruited from the Pico/Cloverfield neighborhood, Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center, Santa Monica High School’s Art Program, and Olympic High School (a continuation school where students are eligible for semester elective credit toward obtaining their high school diploma). Students from the WLCAC glass program will help to impart the knowledge of glass blowing to the youth from Santa Monica and will exhibit their work at SMMoA.

Each year, Park Studio explores themes that combine art and urban life. The glass blowing program in Watts works with at-risk youth to build confidence, pride, and skills to work collaboratively through the creation of glass objects. Glass is beautiful and fragile—a metaphor for high-school student’s transition from adolescence to young adulthood.
Park Studio, founded in 1999 by SMMoA’s Director of Education Asuka Hisa, is an innovative interdisciplinary art education program that serves the community. Through Park Studio, SMMoA brings local students and contemporary artists together for workshops, art history lessons and field trips to cultural sites, offering extraordinary extra-curricular opportunities to students for free.

Support for Park Studio: Complex Elements has been provided by the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Grant Program and the Eileen Harris Norton Family Foundation. In-kind support has been provided by Bergamot Station Arts Center, IZZE, Cliff Bar, Bergamot Café, and the Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center.

Image: Isa Melsheimer

Press contact:
Beth Laski at 818.986.1105 or beth.laski@smmoa.org
Elizabeth Pezza at 310.586.6488 ext. 112 or elizabeth.pezza@smmoa.org

Opening Reception: Friday, April 13
6 - 7 pm Members’ Preview
7 - 9 pm Public Opening

Santa Monica Museum of Art SMMoA
Bergamot Station G1
2525 Michigan Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90404
Museum Hours
Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Closed Sunday, Monday, and all legal holidays
Admission
Suggested Donation: $5; Artists, Students, Seniors: $3

stampa

permanent link