| General | Being creative whenever possible.
October 13, 2007
"Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure is a full-scale retrospective of one of the key figures to emerge in the generation of artists that followed minimalism. During the brief but highly productive ten years that he worked as an artist, and even more so since his death at the age of 35, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–78) has exerted a powerful fascination on artists and architects who know his work. The son of surrealist painter Roberto Echaurren Matta, Matta-Clark produced a body of work that incorporated spatial, social, and psychological experiences. Best known for the variety of his often spectacular, planned architectural interventions, Matta-Clark’s works transformed everyday experiences into extraordinary visual encounters. Among the major works featured in the exhibition are sculptures made from his acclaimed architectural building cuts, as well as drawings, films, photographs, and notebooks. A wealth of documentary material related to his interactions with architecture and space, community events, and collective activity is also shown." - MOCA
October 20, 2007
"Bergamot Station is the historical name for the site on which the gallery complex is located, dating back to 1875 when it was a stop for the Red Line trolley running from Los Angeles to the Santa Monica Pier. Bergamot is a flower of the mint family that once flourished in the area.
When the trolley cars stopped running in 1953, the site's warehouse buildings housed a celery packing operation, then an ice-making plant, and finally a factory for the manufacture of water heaters. Thereafter, the City of Santa Monica purchased the property which then sat abandoned, with plans for it to once again serve as an eventual transit stop, this time for a proposed light rail line running from Los Angeles to Santa Monica.
Plans for the light rail were eventually shelved and the City, seeking an interesting use for the site, approached Wayne Blank, developer and co-owner of the Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Blank's development expertise has already been tapped by the City of Santa Monica for an earlier project: the conversion of a vacant city-owned airport hangar into artists' studios. The City, pleased with the project's outcome, asked Blank to conceive of an artistic use for the Bergamot Station site. Bergamot Station, a campus-like complex that has retained its industrial and rustic look, held its official opening on September 17, 1994.
Over the past eight years, Bergamot Station has become a popular destination for visitors from around the country and the world. Bergamot Station provides a central location which allows visitors to park in one place and spend the day seeing art, rather than spending time driving from one gallery to the next. It now appears in every guide to Los Angeles as a primary cultural destination, with well over 600,000 visitors each year." - Bergamotstation.com
October 27, 2007
November 3, 2007
"Arguably the most internationally acclaimed artist to emerge from Asia in the postwar era, Takashi Murakami effortlessly navigates between the worlds of fine art and popular culture and is best known for his cartoon-like, "superflat" style. This large-scale retrospective includes key selections that span the early 1990s to the present. More than 90 works in various media: painting, sculpture, installation, and film; will be installed in three sections, occupying over 20,000 square feet of exhibition space at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. The first portion will be an immersive, theatrically lit environment, recreating the annual "Wonder Festival" comic market convention. It will feature many of Murakami's acclaimed large-scale otaku-inspired figure projects of the late 1990s, including a new version of Second Mission Project Ko2 (2000-07). The second section will comprise a grid-like shelving display of all of Murakami's merchandise, including multiples, collectibles, and maquettes, among other items. The final section will trace Murakami's artistic development since 1991, including early works that engage branding and the evolution of his signature character, DOB. Of particular importance will be the premiere of a new animated film, kaikai & kiki, and the debut of Buddha Oval, an enormous self-portrait sculpture in the guise of a Buddha. The exhibition is organized by MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel with Project Coordinator Mika Yoshitake and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue." - MOCA
Anthony Pierson was a study visit that our class went to. It was one of the best saturdays of this whole quarter. We learned so much from being able to talk to an artist today. How he works. how he sells, and how he lives. It was nice seeing his studio and learning more about the art world through his eyes and not through our professors eyes. It was a first hand experience, and it was great opportunity.
"BARRY MCGEE: ADVANCED MATURE WORK
Perhaps best known for his site-specific wall paintings that feature satirical figurative imagery, decorative script, floating heads, and simple tags, Barry McGee presents a newly commissioned installation at REDCAT that draws upon the attitudes and processes of unsanctioned acts of expression. McGee’s wry sense of tragedy and skilled hand continue to develop a destabilized art practice that suggest a nostalgia for direct forms of communication, an insatiable appetite for discarded and recycled remains, and an ambivalent relationship toward consumer society. McGee is based in San Francisco.
Born 1966 in San Francisco, McGee received his BFA in painting and printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. He has exhibited internationally, including at the Museum Het Domein, Sittgard; Deitch Projects, New York; Prada Foundation, Milan; Deste Foundation, Athens; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He lives and works in San Francisco." - REDCAT
November 17, 2007
"Rudolph M. Schindler
R.M. Schindler (1887-1953) was born in Vienna, where he studied under architects Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's 1910 Wasmuth portfolio, he came to Chicago in 1914 and began to work for Wright in 1918. Wright sent him to Los Angeles in 1920 to supervise the construction of the Hollyhock House for Aline Barnsdall. Schindler established his practice there in 1922 with his own Kings Road House — a house designed as live-work space for two couples with a shared kitchen and an apartment for guests. Schindler’s work focused on the integration of interior space and exterior space using complex interlocking volumes and strongly articulated sections. He designed over 400 projects, 150 of which were built during his career. These consisted largely of low-cost single family houses for progressive clients. Although the materials and vocabulary of Schindler's work changed during the span of his career, his principles of design and spatial characteristics were consistent throughout his work. This is true even as his spatial ideas evolved in his late work, including the translucent houses of the mid-1940s to early-1950s."
—Kathryn Smith, architecture historian and author of Schindler House
December 1, 2007
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