Pitzer College Galleries - Uncommon Practice Pitzer Faculty Show

PITZER COLLEGE ART GALLERIES:
NICHOLS GALLERY, BROAD CENTER & LENZNER FAMILY ART GALLERY, ATHERTON HALL
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday-Friday, Noon-5 p.m., or by appointment
CLOSING RECEPTION: Friday, August 8, 6–8 p.m.

Steve Cahill

Steve Cahill's 360° digital images are the contemporary descendents of the panoramas of Eadweard Muybridge and other nineteenth-century photographic pioneers. Cahill creates impossible illusions by stitching together multiple exposures of a landscape or an interior. The resulting scenes are eerily familiar, yet uncanny pictures of places we may think we recognize but appear warped and distorted by the camera's lens and the compression of long exposures (ranging from ten to thirty minutes) into a single scene. Cahill's images remind us that the artist and the camera do not merely record the objective world, but create new perceptions.

pictured: Dublin Castle, Ireland (2007), Epson archival Inkjet Print, 16 x 40 inches, Courtesy of the artist

Eddie Gonzalez

Eddie Gonzalez's series of posters may appear to announce a Hollywood premiere, but they are actually fictional advertisements for the end-date of the ancient Maya calendar. Prophesized as the transition from the present world into the next, December 21, 2012, has been imagined by many as a “doomsday.” Others look forward to the date for the return of Quetzalcoatl, the great, feathered serpent revered by the Pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. Indeed, one might ponder whether 12-21-12 portends catastrophe, or the beginning of a new age. Gonzalez views the date as a last opportunity to reverse our current destructive course and heal the earth.

pictured:Volver (2008), Digital print, 24 x 36 inches, Courtesy of the artist

Alexandra Juhasz

Alexandra Juhasz's work as a director, producer, scholar and activist embodies her commitment to feminist theory and practice. As a videomaker living in New York in the '80s and '90s, Juhasz produced activist videos that documented a city ravaged by AIDS. Working with newly available, inexpensive camcorders, Juhasz and her collaborators reframed mainstream media representations of AIDS and disseminated much-needed information on the unfolding crisis. Her more recent short video, Naming Prairie, examines a Jewish naming ceremony for the daughter of a lesbian couple, offering an intimate view of how rituals and traditions are transformed to accommodate contemporary lives and families.

pictured: Naming Prairie (2002), Looped DVD projection, 6 minutes, Courtesy of the artist

Gina Lamb

Gina Lamb is a media activist whose work has dealt with race, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, and immigrant issues. A collective portrait of the young gay black men in the House and Ball community of Los Angeles, Still Here: Becoming Legendary is the product of many collaborators within a community that has been defined by its status as a “triple minority—young, poor and gay.” Lamb's raw and honest, yet artfully edited video eschews the omniscient voice-over of traditional documentaries. The young men in the video are not merely characters in a film. They are co-authors who narrate their own lives and worlds.

pictured: Still Here: Becoming Legendary (2007), Looped DVD projection, 31 minutes, Courtesy of the artist

Jesse Lerner

Jesse Lerner's Ruins is a clever collage of found and fabricated footage that skewers the museumification of Mesoamerican artifacts and their conscription in the nationalist politics of the twentieth century. Lerner's pelicula documental falsificada or “fake documentary” is a border-crosser of sorts, troubling the distinctions between the documentary and art, high and low, engagé critique and avant-garde experimentation, fiction and reality. Focusing on the story of a Mexican counterfeiter of antiquities whose work has been exhibited in major U.S. and European museums, Ruins is a meditation on notions of truth and colonialist biases of archaeology, ethnography, film and history.

pictured: Ruins (2000), Looped DVD projection, 78 minutes, Courtesy of the artist

Jessica Lawless

Jessica Lawless's Past Present Future explores the ongoing relationship between violence and gender in a series of outdoor self-defense classes that provoke a re-thinking of our persistently rigid definitions of femininity. Filmed over a month, the work traces the development of the participants’ skills from awkward self-awareness to skillful coordination. After a successful choreographed demonstration in a parking lot, the group takes their act to the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles. Dressed in drag—to demonstrate the range and fluidity of interpretations of femininity—the group performs their self-defense strategies along the median and at the Freeway's exits.

pictured: Past Present Future (2006), Looped DVD projection, 5 minutes, Courtesy of the artist

Ming-Yuen S. Ma

Ming-Yuen S. Ma's reinterpretation of Yoko Ono's seminal Cut Piece (1964) places it firmly in the present tense. In Ono's original work audience members were invited to cut as little or as much of her clothes off while she sat motionless. In keeping with the Fluxus spirit and Ono's instructions for the performance—Ono agreed that others could perform Cut Piece regardless of their sex—Ma invited a diverse group of writers as well as visual and performance artists to reinterpret the work. Informed by varied social, racial and cultural contexts, the performances were profoundly innovative in their scope, taking forms that extended and reinvented Ono's original action both formally and conceptually.

pictured: RECUT Project (2006), Looped DVD projection, 43 minutes, Courtesy of the artist

Jessica McCoy

Jessica McCoy's immense oil paintings of fragmented interiors are reminiscent of David Hockney's elaborate Polaroid collages. Using her own photographs as source material, McCoy cleverly constructs labyrinthine compositions that weave multiple interior views into intricate narratives that intrigue and entice. McCoy's kaleidoscopic scenes present keyhole views into deeply private moments that frequently involve lone female figures. Reclining partially clad on beds, the women are fully confident in their own seclusion and act accordingly. Thrust into the role of shameless voyeur—a position we may or may not enjoy—we are free to indulge in the heady sensuous drama played out in the work.

pictured: 386 Jackson Street (2005), Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 feet, Courtesy of the artist and Fanny Garver Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin

Kathryn Miller

Informed by her studies in biology, botany and ecology, Kathryn Miller's eclectic practice is deeply concerned with social, political and environmental issues and often takes the form of joint works with individuals. This collaborative impulse and blurring of practice drives Miller's projects, making them accessible to a much wider public. Like that of British artist Andy Goldsworthy, Miller's work, frequently site-specific, comprises natural and found objects—driftwood, pebbles, shells, earth—that she transforms into elaborate sculptures and installations. Miller treats her materials with obsessive care and attention imbuing the works with talismanic qualities despite their often ephemeral nature.

pictured: Rock Raft (2008), Drift wood, black agate stones, 8 x 18 x 48 inches, Courtesy of the artist

Kelly Sears

Comprised of hundreds of found images culled from National Geographic-type publications from the '50s and '60s, Kelly Sears' archly suspenseful film The Drift creates a collage of compelling animation. Reminiscent of Cold War-inspired sci-fi movies from the '50s such as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It Came from Outer Space (1953), The Drift dramatically narrates the fate of a doomed space voyage that returns with only a few on board. Unable to resist a mysterious and beguiling sound, the astronauts were lured from their ship, destined to remain “drifting” through outer space for eternity. Combining Soviet era paranoia with the romance of a Greek tragedy, The Drift presents a rich and compelling narrative.

pictured: The Drift (2007), Looped DVD projection, 8 minutes and 20 seconds, Courtesy of the artist

Text by Bill Anthes and Ciara Ennis

Uncommon Practice: Pitzer Faculty Show