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12/1/2006

Two exhibitions

Riverside Art Museum, Riverside

Raw Materials and Land in Translation

The Riverside Art Museum is pleased to present its winter 2006 exhibition schedule. Opening January 13, 2006, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m., and continuing until March 4, the museum’s featured exhibitions are “Raw/Materials" and “Land in Translation."

“Raw/Materials" includes artwork fabricated from materials that have themselves been fabricated, originally for another purpose - plastic shopping bags, for instance, or beer cans, or cosmetics. Although descended from the California tradition of para-Pop assemblage, “Raw/Materials" brings together eight southern California artists who do not simply recycle found objects, but re-use already-used substances as artistic media. Lynn Aldrich constructs sculptures out of lengths of garden hose. Gerald Clark employs beer cans in basketry. Dianna Cohen compiles plastic bags into expansive and unpredictable formations. Steve de Groodt’s installation has been realized with cloth. Rachel Lachowicz “feminizes" icons of art history by refabricating them out of lipstick and other cosmetics. Steve Schmidt collages cut-up credit cards and other flat pieces of hard plastic into monochromatic surfaces. Masking tape and cigarette packages provide Mitchell Shernoff with his compositional materials, while Nicola Vruwink knits and crochets videotape. Perhaps you can call what these artists do a kind of poor man’s late-industrial alchemy; instead of turning lead into gold, they turn the “extra" stuff of modern consumerism into art.

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“Land in Translation" brings together the photo-related work of eight artists (two of whom work as a unit) who come from northern Europe but live in the Southland and respond keenly to their adopted environment. In doing so they bring together two related photographic traditions, the “new objective" photography that has preoccupied several generations of artists in Germany and surrounding nations and the “new topographic" photography that emerged in the United States - especially in the West - in the 1970s. Thus, the pioneering work of Bernd and Hilla Becher (not to mention students of theirs such as Thomas Ruff and Andreas Gursky) meets that of Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, and the (Dutch-born) Robbert Flick. This is most apparent in the quasi-documentary images of human interaction with and intrusion into natural landscape of Corina Gamma of Switzerland and Stijn & Marie of Holland. But it can be seen also in the show’s German-born artists, including Gerd Ludwig, who explores the region around the Salton Sea); Karin Apollonia Muller, who looks at downtown Los Angeles and environs); and Stefanie Schneider, who presents sun-blasted views of life in the and near the desert. Manfred Menz takes a more conceptual approach, taking conventional shots of tourist landmarks and then excising the landmarks, leaving only the framing foliage, while German-Swiss Antoni Stutz turns streetscapes and urban events into painterly patterns.

Generously sponsored by the James Irvine Foundation and The Consulate General of the Netherlands, Los Angeles

Image: Dianna Cohen, “African Image", 2005, plastic bags, handles, and thread, 6'5" h x 3'5" w x 2" d, slight variable dimensions.

Opening: January 13, 6-8 pm

The Riverside Art Museum
3425 Mission Inn Avenue, Riverside - CA
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mondays thru Saturdays, and evening hours during special events

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