Pitzer College » Pitzer College Art Galleries » Past Exhibitions

Past Exhibitions

Posted on Friday, April 24th, 2015 at 9:20 pm.

Written by

Britt Ransom: Arise and Seek

January 28 – March 25, 2023

Multigraph photographic portrait of Emma Ransom, the artist’s great-great grandmother.

Britt Ransom: Arise and Seek

“The spirit of John Brown beckons us to arise and seek the recovery of our rights, which our enemy, has sought forever to destroy” – Reverdy C. Ransom

The sculptural practice of Britt Ransom explores the transformation of data and material through digital fabrication processes such as 3D scanning, 3D printing, laser cutting, and computer-controlled milling. While earlier works have employed these methods to analyze human, animal, and environmental relationships, Arise and Seek utilizes them to examine the artist’s familial history and its links to the Civil Rights movement in the early twentieth century. In doing so, Ransom connects her earlier work on hierarchies of power between human and non-human agents to other systems of oppression that perpetuate structural racism and violence against people of color.

This project was made possible in part by a Further Fund grant from the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO of Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.

For full exhibition information, view Britt Ransom: Arise and Seek.

Maya Gurantz: The Plague Archives

January 28 – March 25, 2023

Le charbon et la vaccination charbonneuse: d’après les travaux récents de M. Pasteur / par Ch. Chamberland (Anthrax and anthrax vaccination: according to the recent work of M. Pasteur, by Ch. Chamberland), 1883, courtesy of Wellcome Collection (Public Domain).
Syphilitic ulceration of the nose, ca. 1862-1875, Thomas Godart, collection of St Bartholomew’s Hospital Archives & Museum, courtesy of Wellcome Collection (Public Domain).
Bleach Man poster copyright 1988 San Francisco AIDS Foundation, A 1988 BleachMan advertisement created by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Courtesy of UCSF Archives and Special Collections. BleachMan poster, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, 1988, AIDS History Project Ephemera Collection, MSS 2000-31.
Wen Shen, or the Five Commissioners of Pestilence, who govern Heaven’s Ministry of Epidemics.
Cylinder seal and impression depicting Nergal, Mesopotamian God of death (especially death inflicted through war, plague, and pestilence), courtesy of Wellcome Collection (Public Domain).
Aztec manuscript painting of bodies dead of smallpox, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 16th century Mexico, Courtesy of Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies.
Smallpox pustule gauge, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1870-1930, collection of Science Museum, London, image courtesy of Wellcome Collection.
Image of the tongue during different stages of yellow fever, by Etienne Pariset, 1820. Courtesy of The Rubenstein Library’s History of Medicine Collections, Duke University.

Maya Gurantz: The Plague Archives

Maya Guranz’s interdisciplinary research-based practice incorporates dance, video, performance, text, and installation, which she deploys to examine constructions of race, gender, and class in relation to shared myths, public rituals, and private desires. At Pitzer College Art Galleries, these ideas are manifested in The Plague Archives, a site-specific installation comprising two video projections and a dense collection of archival material on the social, cultural, and political histories of epidemics and outbreaks. Spanning the tenth through the twenty-first century, The Plague Archives, presents a multi-layered transhistorical and intercultural discourse on the shifting attitudes and definitions of disease.

For full exhibition information, view Maya Gurantz: The Plague Archives.

Cammie Staros: House of the Muses

September 24 – December 16, 2022

Installation view of Cammie Staros: House of the Muses, September 24–December 16, 2022, at Pitzer College Art Galleries (Nichols Gallery). Photo: Ed Mumford.

Referencing Greco-Roman antiquities and their museological display, House of the Muses approximates a museal landscape in a state of decay. Suggesting a post-human future, the installation alludes to failed historical and contemporary empires that have, through hubris, enacted widespread devastation socially, politically, and ecologically. In Staros’ universe, vitrines modeled on those found in the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art become life-supporting aquariums for freshwater fish and aquatic plants. Providing shelter and diversion for the fish, Staros’ Grecian-style amphorae are playfully distorted versions of their historical counterparts. Portals to the past and future, each aquatic vitrine functions as an artifact alternately buried and revealed by the dramatic impact of human discard and climatic transition.

House of the Muses—a title born of Greek mythology and translated from a Latin synonym of museum—highlights the role that Encyclopedic museums play in the construction of histories and cultural narratives by alluding to ancient artifacts and the exhibitionary procedures used in their display. While evocative of classical civilizations before their fall, the exhibition calls attention to the inevitable collapse and fragility of such empires, past, present, and future. Staros’ construction of museal ruin overrun by natural forces asks us to consider the fate of our own civilization, our impact on the planet, and the legacy and futurity of the human species.

For full exhibition information, view Cammie Staros: House of the Muses.

Co-curated with Fulcrum Arts:

Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River

September 24 – December 16, 2022

Installation view of Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River, at Pitzer College Art Galleries (Lenzner Family Art Gallery), September 24 – December 16, 2022. Photo: Christopher Wormald, courtesy of Fulcrum Arts.

Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio’s infrastructural artwork, Bending the River re-imagines the relationship between Los Angeles and the river that brought it into existence. Located on Tongva land, Bending the River is evolving through conversation with artists, native communities, activists, local community and the many government agencies needed in order to realize this work.

The Los Angeles River in its current form is a concretized flood control measure that moves waste water from the city directly out to sea. Utilizing the principles of adaptive re-use, the project moves a portion of the LA River water and lifts it to The Metabolic Studio, where it is moved through a native wetland treatment. It will then be distributed to the Los Angeles State Historic Park for irrigation and to build a new spreading ground. This work culminates a transformation that began in 2005 with Not A Cornfield.

Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River was curated by Pitzer College Art Galleries and Fulcrum Arts and was originally presented as part of the 2022 Fulcrum Festival: Deep Ocean/Deep Space.

For full exhibition information, view Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River.

2022 Senior Thesis Exhibition: Shift + Ground

April 28–May 14, 2022

Jack Contreras
Lily Fillwalk
Claire Manning
Olivia Meehan
Max Otake
Julia Duran Stewart
Zoe Storz

@Nichols Gallery, Lenzner Family Art Gallery, Scott Hall, Academic Quad

For full exhibition information view 2022 Senior Thesis Exhibition: Shift Ground.

Beatriz Cortez: Cosmic Portals

February 5–April 12, 2022

Beatriz Cortez, Cosmic Mirror (The Sky over Los Angeles), 2022, steel with patina, dimensions variable. Photo: Ramak Fazel

Beatriz Cortez’s new body of work continues her exploration into Indigenous knowledges, multiple temporalities, and ancient forms of abstraction. A two-part installation, the exhibition features a large-scale indoor sculpture referencing an ancient Mayan observatory placed in dialogue with an outdoor work inspired by a mosaic built twenty-nine centuries ago by the ancient Olmec people. While one structure looks out toward the skies the other is directed towards the underworld.

For full exhibition information view Beatriz Cortez: Cosmic Portals.

Pau S. Pescador: Working

January 29-April 12, 2022

Pau S. Pescador, Working 2 (2021), photographic collage, 16 x 12 in.

Pau S. Pescador: Working explores the stories of trans individuals employed in the civil service sector at a time when legal protections have become contested ground. Pescador addresses these conditions in a video comprising interviews with US government trans employees and cultural historians to understand the challenges that this bureaucratic environment presents for a trans, non-binary, gender queer individual. In a series of photographic collage works, the artist’s body interacts with everyday objects in spaces where they worked during the early stages of their transition. Despite the legal protections for gender expression as well as the support from some colleagues, Pescador and other trans non-binary individuals are subject to constant microaggressions as they navigate the complexity and conservative nature of government bureaucracy.

For full exhibition information view Pau S. Pescador: Working.

Faculty-Driven Exhibition #2

Pato Hebert: Lingering

(with a collaborative work by Sarah Gilbert)

Curated by Associate Professor in Media Studies Ruti Talmor

January 22 – April 16, 2022

Pato Hebert, Lingering (2020), archival pigment print on silk charmeuse.

Lingering addresses the COVID-19 condition of long-hauling, in which ongoing COVID symptoms persist well after the initial infection. The exhibition traces the ongoing process of recovery as a site for healing, creativity, and questioning, and the frustrations of seeking care for the varied and extensive symptoms of long-term illness.

For full exhibition information, view Pato Hebert: Lingering.

Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend

July 22–December 18, 2021

Installation view of Sadie Barnette: Legacy and Legend at Pitzer College Art Galleries (Lenzner Family Art Gallery) at Pitzer College, July 22 to December 18, 2021. This exhibition is co-organized with the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. Photography courtesy of Fredrik Nilsen Studio.

Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend, a partnership between Pitzer College Art Galleries and the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, is the artist’s most ambitious exhibition to date.

For full exhibition information and images, visit our Sadie Barnette: Legacy and Legend and the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College.

Jenny Perlin: Maelstrom

September 11–December 11, 2021

Jenny Perlin, Maelstrom (2020), 16mm hand-processed high contrast film, black and white, sound, 5:10

“The great whirlpool arrives and sucks everything into its center, spitting out only fragments and noises. The shoreline is in view, but unreachable. The maelstrom pulls us under. This 16mm hand-processed high contrast experimental film is covered in scratches and scrapes, giving the impression it’s been retrieved after many years from the bottom of the sea.”
Jenny Perlin

For additional exhibition information and images, visit Jenny Perlin: Maelstrom

2021 Senior Thesis Virtual Exhibition: Waffle Breakfasts
Spring 2021

Minerva Cuevas: Disidencia
Fall 2020 – Spring 2021

2020 Senior Thesis Virtual Exhibition: No Single Sources
Spring 2020

Curatorial Internship Project #4: Jessica Sass ’22: Radical Learning Beyond Incarceration
Spring 2020

Candice Lin, Natural History: A Half-Eaten Portrait, an Unrecognizable Landscape, a Still, Still Life
Spring 2020

Hans Baumann: 5 Distillations (Salton Sea)
Spring 2020

Disruption! Art and the Prison Industrial Complex
Fall 2019

Ashley Hunt: Degrees of Visibility
Fall 2019

2019 Senior Art exhibition: About Time 瞬息
Spring 2019

Curatorial Internship Project #3: Julie Heine ’21: Intertext / By the Book
Spring 2019

Publishing Against the Grain
Spring 2019