Chapman University and Fulcrum Arts co-present

Energy Fields: Vibrations of The Pacific

September 15, 2024 - January 19, 2025

Energy Fields: Vibrations of The Pacific is an exhibition, publication, and series of public programs co-presented by Fulcrum Arts and Chapman University. Curated by Robert Takahashi Novak and Lawrence English, the exhibition presents a diverse and dynamic collection of works from artists working out of Japan, Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, and the USA.

Energy Fields traces a path of investigation that intersects the fluctuation of time and space through gravitational waves, the geologic dynamism of tectonic and seismic activities and examines how sound, light, and electro-magnetic spectra affect the body and perception. The exhibition recognizes the Pacific as a zone of entanglement where these energetic forces resonate amidst the world’s most seismically active continental plates. The show, publication, and performance program invite new understandings of how these energetic forces shape scientific and cultural practices going forward into the 21st century.

Vibrations, and the waves that follow them, are fundamental to science in understanding the nature of matter in the cosmos and on earth. They are similarly a primary means of understanding human perception and experience. From traditional cultural practices to current interstellar research such as gravitational wave observation, Energy Fields: Vibrations of The Pacific is a porous exploration of shared concepts and visions. It gives audience members tactile experiences through evocative installations that are transportive and transformative, shifting psychological and physiological perception, as well as sensory awareness. 

Each of the works in the exhibition speaks to a certain approach to sense-making and varied approaches to understanding the material (and immaterial) implications of vibration. David Haines and Joyce Hinterding’s Telepathy(2008)—a single-occupancy anechoic chamber—allows audiences to experience and contemplate an interior relationship to sound and vibration, that which exists within our own bodies. Steve Roden’s ear(th) (2004) deepens this idea, offering an opportunity for people to recognize the energetic nature of seismic activities in Southern California through the use of a custom-built sounding system that transposes these largely inaudible vibrations into a fluid, almost musical transposition. 

Additionally, Malena Szlam’s film ALTIPLANO (2018) creates visual rhythms against a soundscape generated from infrasound (below human hearing) recordings of volcanoes, geysers, and Chilean blue whales and Alba Triana’s sound sculpture Music on a Bound String No. 2 (2015) operates at the nexus of light and sound waves. Energy Fields also reflects on the contributions of Indigenous artists and traditional environmental knowledge across four continents connected by the Pacific Ocean.

Virginia Katz’ works On-shore Flow and Off-shore Flow (2008) are from the university’s Guggenheim Gallery and Escalette Collection. The Guggenheim provides provocative exhibitions and educational programming creating a local connection to the national and international dialogue about contemporary art and a framework for an interchange between artists, scholars, students, and the community at large. The Escalette Permanent Art Collection is a “museum without walls” with artwork displayed throughout the Chapman campus in hallways, public spaces, and study areas. It is a continually evolving resource that supports teaching and research on campus and reflects the diversity of Southern California. It promotes new artistic talent in this region and participates in current global artistic discourse.

Energy Fields also presents a vibrant series of public programs including artist talks, lectures, and performances including presentations from William Basinski, Ellen Fullman + Theresa Wong,  Annea Lockwood, and Jeneen Frei Njootli, amongst others.

The publication brings together essays and imagery showing diverse understandings of vibration and its resultant waveforms. The essays consider how the Pacific has been a central location for significant cultural and intellectual developments around vibration, from traditional understandings and knowledge systems such as Marshall Island’s wave navigation and Maōri spiritual understandings of vibrational shimmering, to the implications of atomic testing and contemporary research on seismic and tectonic activity. We consider how these affect the individual body and allow us to expand our understanding of the world. The catalog is designed by Willem Henri Lucas, edited by Elizabeth Hamilton, and will feature essays by Rachel Shearer, Lawrence English, Rana Adhikari, Marcus Herse, Vanessa Kwan, Patrick McCray, Enrique Rivera, Fiona Shen, and Nina Tonga.

Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art &

Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific is made possible with generous support from the Getty Foundation and will be co-presented with Fulcrum Arts as part of PST Art: Art & Science Collide in 2024.

Upcoming Events:

Campus Opening of Energy Fields

9.11.24 | Guggenheim Gallery & Packing Plant | 4-6pm

Join the Chapman Campus for an early viewing of Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific. Light refreshments will be served. Listen to an artist talk by composer Annea Lockwood at 5:30pm in Oliphant Hall 301.

Public opening of Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific

9.11.24 | Guggenheim Gallery & Packing Plant | 3-6pm

Official opening of Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific. Light refreshments will be served.

Exhibition Tour with co-curator Robert Takahashi Novak

11.02.24 | Guggenheim Gallery | 2-3pm

RAUL BALTAZAR

WELCOME TO THE BUNNY HOUSE

January 31 – March 15, 2024

Please join us for the artist's reception on Sunday, February 18, 2024, from 2:00 - 5:00 pm 

Chapman University's Guggenheim Gallery is thrilled to present Welcome to the Bunny House, an exhibition of paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Raul Baltazar.

As artist, (via a trans-disciplinary practice) I channel the revolutionary struggle rooted in Mesoamerican Indigenous cultural resistance to the home base of the "Colonial Entertainment Capital" of the World, Los Angeles. By creating contemporary art rooted in ancient culture, I share our story, how we struggle to survive in what bell hooks names, Imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I make art because it provides me purpose, a vantage point, and a sanctuary while enduring abuse of power and authority by means of sanctioned and unsanctioned reiterations of violence. I also love bunnies, coyotes, flowers, and hills.

-Raul Baltazar

Baltazar's singular acrylic paintings on raw canvas are characterized by his swift and intensely energetic draftsmanship, which gives rise to images charged with a multitude of references, quotations, and layered meanings. As in his public and social practice, the themes of his paintings center around the artist's immediate life experiences and personal history as part of the history of the Americas. His subjects range from the exploration of disrupted lineages and the genocide of millions of indigenous people to the syncretism of Catholicism, belief systems, and masculinity. He further addresses the history of painting, the significance of domestic space, the dynamics of civil unrest, environmental decline, and the nature of systemic corruption and power misuse.

Baltazar's visual language alludes to anarchic and psychedelic political cartoons while invoking a figurative vigor reminiscent of Spanish Baroque era paintings — a period coinciding with the initiation of the first wave of colonization in the Americas. The characters in his puzzling paintings, encompassing humans, animals, and hybrid beings, echo historical personalities, indigenous deities, or alternate manifestations of the artist. Ranging from tender affection to depictions of power struggle and dominance and extending to psychological portraits, the interactions of these characters portray the broad spectrum of human interpersonal dynamics.

The allegorical tales unfold against the backdrop of domestic and suburban environments, illustrating the link between individual experiences and larger political contexts. Quick brush marks flock across the canvas in vibrant, acidic hues, balancing stability with disruption. Various framing methods calibrate this dynamism: some pieces are encased in physical frames, others feature frames painted as part of the image, and some incorporate elements like fences. The reference to delineations and boundaries not only connects the work to domestic space but also embodies the notion of the home as a refuge. Baltazar explores the relationship between painting and private spaces, considering it one of the primary settings for painting's impact, emphasizing its capacity to subversively yet profoundly transform the domestic environment, quietly projecting its energetic and intellectual presence.

The exhibition title, Welcome to the Bunny House, references Baltazar's former Echo Park home, where he lived from 2008 until 2021. This location was a cultural hub for public art projects, performances, rehearsals, filming sessions, and barbecues. Notably, the property became a meeting ground for the Public Practice program at Otis College of Art and Design during Raul's graduate studies there. Over the 14 years, well over 100 individuals, artist colleagues, and friends from Austria, Germany, Korea, and different parts of the United States resided and worked here. A significant number of the paintings showcased in the exhibition were created within this highly energetic but spatially restricted environment, influencing Baltazar's distinctive painting style and affirming his paintings as extensions of his social practice. Bunny House was a sanctuary where art, spirit, and levity converged, inviting participants to contemplate the transformative potential inherent in embracing indigenous roots and finding solace through creative expression.

The home was named Bunny House after Tochtli 7 - the Aztec Bunny, a symbol of transformation and cultural connection that emerged within the Xicano/a art community of Self-Help Graphics. The origins of this figure trace back to a unique request from the directors Omar Ramirez and Gabriel Tenorio, who approached Raul Baltazar to perform as a rabbit for the Aztec New Year of the Rabbit Tochtli 7 celebration. Reflecting on this opportunity, Baltazar recognized it as more than a chance to be a pseudo-mascot. It became a profound calling, the opportunity to embody the spirit of the trickster, a coyote dressed up as a rabbit. In mythology, the coyote is a mischievous and unpredictable schemer that playfully yet subversively teaches lessons. Baltazar says: My Nagual (spirit animal) is the coyote, and Tochtli is the mask that this trickster puts on. The gesture of intertwining identities, meanings, and places, seen in the artist's paintings, originates here.

Baltazar’s inspiration deepened by witnessing Chief Phil Cummins, also known as Crazy Bull, during the Big Mountain Sun Dance, a 4-day Lakota ceremony in 1996. Crazy Bull, a Hayocoatl medicine man, and sacred clown stood resilient in the Sun Dance arbor, bringing rain through his dance despite the challenging conditions of dry, hundred-degree heat. The transformative impact of Crazy Bull's presence inspired Baltazar to create Tochtli 7 as an ode to Crazy Bull and a way to infuse levity into his community's ceremonial practices. 

Raul Baltazar (b.1972, Los Angeles) is an artist who works through aesthetic notions given in Mesoamerican and Western culture. Baltazar often mixes performance, video, photography, drawing, painting, murals, and community-based projects to create new relations for the decolonial art object. His work is often driven by the struggle of the subaltern, specifically, Xicano/a's, and Mesoamerican Indigenous communities and their revolutionary vision for change in the context of Los Angeles. In addition, his work postulates responses to trauma and the body, examining the experience and rational abuse of power and authority by means of sanctioned or unsanctioned reiterations of violence in contemporary life. Baltazar challenges this by participating in the creation of contemporary cultural production rooted in artistic research of ancient cultures. Where his work opens up a space for healing, communication and reflection; in order to engage publics and communicate the value of a self-reflexive identification with indigeneity.

Raul Baltazar received his MFA in Public Practice from Otis College of Art and Design in 2013, and his BFA in Sculpture and New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design in 2008. He has exhibited extensively in Los Angeles, and internationally in Mexico, Australia, Vienna, Egypt, and Taiwan, and was the 2015 recipient of the California Community Foundation, Fellowship for Visual Arts, LA County Arts Commission Short List, 2015 and recipient of The Armory Teaching Fellowship, 2016.

KERRY TRIBE:

STANDARDIZED PATIENT

October 23 – November 30, 2023

Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, on the occasion of Wilkinson College’s Engaging the World: Leading the conversation on Health Equity, is thrilled to announce Standardized Patient, an exhibition of related works by Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Kerry Tribe. 

Please join us for the artist’s reception on Wednesday, October 25, 2023, from 3:00 - 6:00 PM.

Standardized Patient (2017) is a two-channel video projection that offers insight into the work of Standardized Patients (“SP’s”)—professional actors who portray patients in a simulated clinical environment as part of medical students’ training. The installation features an angled screen that presents a progression of SP encounters on one side and a synchronized montage of supporting materials on the reverse. Fragments of the patients’ scripts, diagnostic flow charts, and textbook illustrations offer glimpses of the kinds of information that underlie the action. Such an encounter format suggests that these performers inhabit a dual headspace—holding conversations while mentally tracking checklist items to be submitted afterward—an inversion of roles in which the “patients” are now the evaluators. The paradox of the SP exam lies in its artifice: both parties are acting while also being themselves. Yet there is the potential for medical student and actor to connect when both willingly suspend disbelief. The project explores questions of empathy, communication, and performance, and was developed through Tribe’s close collaboration with professional clinicians, communication experts, and Standardized Patients at Stanford University and the University of Southern California. The project was commissioned by SFMOMA for its New Work series in 2017.

Kerry Tribe is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Known for expansive and profound works in film, video and mixed media, her practice explores elusive aspects of human consciousness including memory, love, and doubt. Recent projects consider text messaging within a family, the use of “standardized patients” in medical training, and the interconnected ecologies of the Los Angeles River. Tribe’s work has been the subject of solo presentations at the Wellcome Collection, London; Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection at Stanford University; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and The Power Plant, Toronto.

CEDRIC TAI

@fakingprofessionalism

August 28 – October 13, 2023

Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery on occasion of Wilkinson College’s Engaging the World is thrilled to announce @fakingprofessionalism, a solo presentation by Los Angeles based artist Cedric Tai.

Please join us for the artist’s reception on Sunday, September 3, 2023, from 3:00 - 6:00PM.

I’d like to propose that ADHD/Autism just means ‘being bad at capitalism’ (being on time, accepting authority, etc.), which… isn’t the worst thing to be allergic to. - Cedric Tai

@fakingprofessionalism is an evolving mis en scène that brings together artworks, a modular minigolf course, the artist’s temporary and improvised studio space, as well as references to keeping up appearances on social media. The installation blends three distinct social spaces: the workplace (the office and studio), a locus of negotiation and production; the exhibition space where finished products are displayed and discussed; and the sites of recreational activities, which are often haunted by the specter of professional networking. The merging of these spaces in the gallery provokes questions around the purposes, similarities, and differences of these sites. The fragmentary and ephemeral nature of @fakingprofessionalism mirrors not only diverse approaches to problem solving and the adaptable nature of the creative process, but also becomes a model of neurodivergent thinking. This is represented in how elements within the exhibition undergo transformations, unite with other segments, disappear, and subsequently resurface over the course of its duration.

In the realm of work-life, professionalism stands as a valuable standard that upholds quality, expertise, and ethical conduct. It sets a benchmark for proficiency and ensures that individuals are adequately trained and qualified to carry out their responsibilities. However, our rigid understanding of this concept often creates a culture of exclusivity, perpetuating a narrow definition of what constitutes legitimate expertise, while marginalizing individuals who do not conform to these standards. This rigidity frequently acts as a gatekeeping mechanism, stifling individuality and inhibiting the full realization of diverse talents and perspectives. In stark contrast, some neurodivergent individuals perceive intricate patterns and connections, especially valuable in fields that require complex problem-solving, data analysis, and innovative thinking. Furthermore, viewing all minds as existing within a neurospectrum challenges the idea of a singular ‘center’ from which all others diverge. 

The exhibition raises compelling questions: What if we were to embrace a broader spectrum of behaviors, bodies, and minds that don't conform to traditional societal norms, rather than labeling some human actions as pathological? How can we further support the ways in which marginalized people live, work, and play, on their terms? In what ways can we redefine the usual rules of engagement, and what might this look like?

In conjunction with Chapman University’s new Health Humanities Minor, Tai invites gallery visitors to observe the ways in which they navigate mental health resources and systems in place for the public today. The artist also shares their perspectives through printed brochures such as ‘How to Advocate for Yourself at the Doctors Office’ and ‘An ADHD Zine for/by Artists’. In @fakingprofessionalism Tai gives experimental, provisional, and non-clinically proven answers that provide a middle ground between social media hot takes and inaccessible scientific discourse. Tai shares their personal journey through the American healthcare system, professional sphere, and art world.

Bio:

Cēdric Tai is an undisciplinary artist, born in Detroit (1985), has an Art Education degree & BFA from Michigan State University (2007), and an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art (2013). 

Tai thinks through sculpture, talking, writing, performance and experimental exhibitions.

Their artwork and teaching focuses on neurodivergent experience, labor and politics. They have partnered with neuroscientists, academics from critical psychiatry, artist collectives, disability justice social media influencers, and somatic therapists to co-create accessible resources particularly around mental health, potentially as a form of anti-capitalist solidarity.

Lovingly referred to as 'Pathologically Curious', Cedric shifts Autism/ADHD shame into wonder, absurdity, meaningful challenges, and joyful interdependence. 

Some of their work is setup systematically (coding/spreadsheets/workshops/repetition) so that a given audience can become aware of their relationship to and agency within otherwise invisible structures.

Other works are like love letters, or are intentionally not efficient, wherein they come to know someone/something through immersing themselves in an intimate process. 

C.V. in a sentence: 2009 Kresge Artist Fellowship, 2015 Knight Foundation Challenge Grant,  2016 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, 2021 The Brutus Fund at Yucca Valley Art Material Lab, and a 4-month 2023 Sculpture Space Residency in Utica, NY

Favorite Exhibition Titles: “Concept Structure Torture Survival Title", New City  Space, Glasgow (2011),  "Indirectly Yours", Intermedia, CCA, Glasgow  (2013),  "We Need More ________!", Simone DeSousa Gallery (2014),  "Amateur  Strategies", CAC, UCLA (2016),  “50 Bad Artworks”, Casa Lü, Mexico City (2020) and, "@FakingProfessionalism", Chapman University

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalism

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

Faking Professionalismv

Guggenheim Gallery, @fakingprofessionalism, August 28 – October 13, 2023

"Let's Not and Say We Did"

Mostly Designed by Mark Allen, Materials: Float Glass and Color Line Screenprinting Ink (2021) 

"Let's Not and Say We Did"

Mostly Designed by Mark Allen, Materials: Float Glass and Color Line Screenprinting Ink (2021) 

"Let's Not and Say We Did"

Mostly Designed by Mark Allen, Materials: Float Glass and Color Line Screenprinting Ink (2021) 

"Let's Not and Say We Did"

Mostly Designed by Mark Allen, Materials: Float Glass and Color Line Screenprinting Ink (2021) 

"Let's Not and Say We Did"

Mostly Designed by Mark Allen, Materials: Float Glass and Color Line Screenprinting Ink (2021) 

"Let's Not and Say We Did"

Mostly Designed by Mark Allen, Materials: Float Glass and Color Line Screenprinting Ink (2021) 

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Glass Material Library”

Materials: Glass tiles, rocks, metals, white acrylic, LEDs, kiln shelf, didactic, bookmarks with information, website (2022)

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart, 
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart, 
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart, 
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart, 
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart, 
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

Work Area

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart,
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

Work Area

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart,
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

Work Area

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart,
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

Work Area

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart,
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

Work Area

“Large Finished Painting / Comprehensive Color Chart,
(An ADHD Artwork)” 

“A mock-up for a Neurospectrum intake form, 
towards a non-pathologizing structure of you right now”

Materials: Adobe Aero Augmented Reality, vinyl, QR code (2023 - still a work-in-process)

“A mock-up for a Neurospectrum intake form, 
towards a non-pathologizing structure of you right now”

Materials: Adobe Aero Augmented Reality, vinyl, QR code (2023 - still a work-in-process)

“A mock-up for a Neurospectrum intake form, 
towards a non-pathologizing structure of you right now”

Materials: Adobe Aero Augmented Reality, vinyl, QR code (2023 - still a work-in-process)

“A mock-up for a Neurospectrum intake form, 
towards a non-pathologizing structure of you right now”

Materials: Adobe Aero Augmented Reality, vinyl, QR code (2023 - still a work-in-process)

“A mock-up for a Neurospectrum intake form, 
towards a non-pathologizing structure of you right now”

Materials: Adobe Aero Augmented Reality, vinyl, QR code (2023 - still a work-in-process)

“A mock-up for a Neurospectrum intake form, 
towards a non-pathologizing structure of you right now”

Materials: Adobe Aero Augmented Reality, vinyl, QR code (2023 - still a work-in-process)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

“Making Connections”

Materials: Embroidery, printouts, bunya pine leaves, scrap fabric, canvas, books, chairs (2023)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Play Area (2021)

Neurospectrum Conference

Accessible ADHD Guide & How to Advocate for Yourself at the Doctor's Office

Neurospectrum Conference

Accessible ADHD Guide & How to Advocate for Yourself at the Doctor's Office

Neurospectrum Conference

Accessible ADHD Guide & How to Advocate for Yourself at the Doctor's Office

Neurospectrum Evening Walk

Neurospectrum Evening Walk

Neurospectrum Evening Walk

Neurospectrum Evening Walk

Neurospectrum Evening Walk

Neurospectrum Evening Walk

Neurospectrum Evening Walk

<Product>: or how I learned to stop <doing something> and love <idea>

BENJAMIN LORD & KIM SCHOEN

February 1 – March 10, 2023

Please join us for the closing reception on Sunday, March 12, 2023, from 3:00-6:00PM.

With <Product>: or how I learned to stop <doing something> and love <idea>, Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery is thrilled to celebrate two works drawing from the pool of art history and visual culture, each in their own way related to translation and authorship.

Kim Schoen's work Baragouin (2021) (Baragouin, from French; unintelligible speech) gives voice to copies of sculptures whose origins range from Buddhism to Rococo to Neoclassical to Modernism. The video takes us inside the now-closed retailer Stones & Gifts Inc., a business for domestic and garden sculptures formerly located in Los Angeles's Chinatown, and delineates the tableau of some four dozen figures of what western culture perceives as archetypical images of humans and animals. Alternating between slow pans and steady views, between close-ups of faces and bodies, and overviews of groups, the video invites the viewer to linger at this strange and ambiguous gathering of characters. Playfully oscillating between suggested narrative and documentary, it dramatizes the display throughout the afternoon and into the evening, while reflections of the shifting sun and the headlights of passing cars illuminate the showroom. 

The work, created in collaboration with the art historian Edward Sterrett, and voice actors who imitate the sounds of languages from around the world in different ways, presents sculptures that all seem to "speak" in tongues which refer to the provenance of their originals. In Baragouin, both language and image are imitations and translations, visual and verbal approximations that nonetheless communicate in unpredictable ways. These replicas, together with the echoes of the languages ascribed to them, stimulate reflection on the emergence of artistic forms as expressions of specific traditions and cultures. The work asks about accessibility to these qualities in a world determined by commerciality, in which surfaces are perceived as essential while being separated from their original ground like a bouquet of flowers.

Benjamin Lord's monumental work The Golden Jackal (2023) consists of over 300 images that narrate a cluster of fictional scenarios in and around Venice, Italy. A mob of hooded figures arrives at the train station and infiltrates the city, setting it ablaze. A dance party at a museum gala turns violent. In an elegant penthouse apartment, a bearded figure chain-smokes, watching the spectacle unfold. In a bracketing scenario, an unoccupied gondola from the city drifts out into the neighboring lagoons, where a field of glasswort blooms bright red. The title character, a wild European wolf-like canid, appears at various junctures, wandering in and out of view. The work is presented at the Guggenheim Gallery as a sprawling installation of unframed photographic prints hung in salon-style groupings.

All the pictures in The Golden Jackal were created using Dall-E 2, a recently released artificial intelligence service available on the Internet that can create realistic images from text-based descriptions or "prompts" written in natural language. The resulting images are not selected or cobbled together from an existing database but generated inferentially using what is called a digital "model" using a complex technical process called "diffusion". The resulting new images, while not intelligent per se, codify and extend the patterns, habits, and biases of the massive digital image set that the model was trained on.

The manual copying of works of art has probably existed since there were works of art themselves. Movable type made the copying of the written word affordable and swift. The technologies of photographic reproduction radically accelerated the copying of images, disseminating low-cost pictures globally. We have reached a watershed moment with the arrival and ever accelerating development of digital computation. In the past thirty years, internet culture fostered by the ubiquity of personal computing has propagated the social expectation of free (or nearly free) copying, resulting in radical transformations to the culture industry. In the latest development (which builds unmistakably upon the previous), computer programs freely generate complex and novel texts, sounds, and images based on relatively minimal initial human input. This art-historical moment, while long predicted by technologists and media theorists, has nevertheless arrived somewhat ahead of schedule. The crisis of authenticity, one of the theoretical hallmarks of what was called postmodern art, thus returns to the stage with new intensity.

The questions posed by these two works are broadly disquieting. What is authorship? How do the geneses of digital and analog works inform their reception? What are the future domains of expression, originality, provenance, and meaning in a globally networked world?

Kim Schoen’s work in video installation, photography, and text engages the rhetoric of display. Her absurdist, experimental approach takes on objects and language that try to persuade or convince us of something, using them as raw materials to say something new.

Kim Schoen (b. Princeton) received her MFA in Photography from CalArts in 2005, and her Mphil from The Royal College of Art in 2008. Her work has been exhibited at LACMA; MMoCA; BAM, Brooklyn, New York; Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Kleine Humboldt Galerie, Germany; Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Roma; Whitechapel Gallery, South London Gallery, and MOT International, London; The California Museum of Photography, Moskowitz Bayse Gallery, Young Projects and Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles. Her work is included in private and public collections, and has been written about in Artforum, Mousse, Art in America, The Los Angeles Times, and Hotshoe International. Her own writing (‘Cracking Walnuts: Nonsense and Repetition in Video Art’, ’The Serial Attitude Redux', 'The Expansion of the Instant: Photography, Anxiety, Infinity') can be found in X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. Kim is also the co-founder, publisher and editor of MATERIAL, a journal of writing by artists.

Benjamin Lord’s work explores the poetics of the mediated subject, with a particular regard for the relationship between photography and fiction. Spanning the techniques of printmaking, sculpture, drawing, the artist’s book, and the occasional performance, his work often presents situations in which old and new worldviews intertwine or collide, with harmonious, comic, or tragic results.

Lord began as a painter, studying at the University of Chicago with Vera Klement. He began making large photographic prints after college, in the early days of ubiquitous digital image editing. He received his MFA at UCLA. He has since exhibited his work internationally. His work is in major public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Los Angeles County Museum. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

RICHARD TURNER: No Ideas but in Things

September 12 – November 19, 2022

Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery

Monday - Friday 12:00PM -  5:00PM, Saturday 11:00AM - 4:00PM

Please join us for the artist reception on Wednesday, September 14, 2022, from 3:00-7:00PM

and for the catalog presentation on Sunday, October 23, 2022, from 3:00-7:00PM.

With No Ideas but in Things Richard Turner presents an everchanging environment that reprises and advances his 50+ year long career as an artist and educator. Unfettered by chronology, the artist assembles a discontinuous mise-en-scene using objects and furniture from his home and artworks from his studio, some dating back to the 1960s. While Turner has been a prolific exhibiting as well as publishing artist, many of the works that comprise the exhibition will be shown for the first time. Sculptures, drawings, paintings and found objects are newly configured and contextualized to create a space that is equally a gallery, an atelier and a dwelling. In an ongoing interplay between the artist and the gallery team the elements of the exhibition undergo daily changes, rendering in material the infinite possibilities of “a hundred visions and revisions”.

Richard Turner is a Professor Emeritus at Chapman University where he taught contemporary Asian art history and studio art and curated over seventy exhibitions as Director of Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery. He lived in Saigon, Vietnam from 1959 – 196 and studied Chinese painting and language in Taipei in 1963 – 1964, as well as Indian miniature painting in Jaipur, Rajasthan in 1967 – 1968, while on a Fulbright scholarship. His travels in Asia have been a lifelong point of reference to his work. Turner has worked as a public artist for over thirty years on projects ranging from metro stations, public parks and water treatment facilities to a justice center, a veterans’ memorial, and a university chapel. He has worked independently and as a member of a design team, collaborated with architects, engineers, landscape architects and other artists. His public work is guided by a desire to make works that are accessible but not obvious, pieces that reveal themselves over time to a diverse audience.

The cinematic device known as split diopter might be described as the camera’s equivalent of bifocal glasses, a supplementary half-lens applied over an existing one, so that one side of the view is trained on what is close and the other on what is farther away. In the uncannily sharp image—at once deep and shallow—that appears onscreen, a seam can sometimes be detected, running right down the middle.

In analog photography, depth of field is gained through constricted apertures and long exposure times, but moving images, if they are not to devolve into a blur, must be shot at higher speeds. The split diopter was conceived as an efficient means to get around this built-in restriction of focal range. We have chosen to construct our exhibition around this by now somewhat antiquated artifact of the entertainment industry because its operations are readily understandable, which is something that cannot be said for any apparatus of visualization at the present stage of development. The cause (diopter) is legible within the effect (dioptic), a condition that might allow one to approach the question of resolution, so central to our current economy of imaging, from “behind,” so to speak.

Today, we are routinely assailed with images in which the point of view of an observing subject—inherently selective, discriminating and exclusive—is overridden by auto-correcting cameras that effectively see for us and past us. Once the image becomes data driven, no detail can escape its compass: maximal definition is distributed evenly across the entirety of its surface area. At the extreme, the technical extension of vision comes up against an absolute flattening of the visual, an outcome that is now largely taken for granted. Certainly, the split diopter was inclined in this general direction from the first moment, while also falling quite wide of the mark. In retrospect, its various “deficiencies” may be seized for purposes of analysis and speculation. They remain behind as evidence of what has been submerged beneath a field rendered wholly visible.

This exhibition was developed out of a series of conversations concerning the relation between fine art and cinema, as well as the impact of technical optics on creative practices. The machine for producing the “waking dream” of film is here dismantled into parts that can be identified as: still frame, action sequence, prop, soundtrack, poster, etc. These parts have been dispersed across an array of singular and discrete artworks within a space of distanced contemplation (an art gallery), where they can only be met with a certain lucidity. We hope that viewers will reflect on these works in much the same way as we have: as objects in the room right along with ourselves, and simultaneously as hinges to other rooms in other dimensions where we also could be, and in fact often are.

Please join us for the artist reception on Saturday, March 5, 2022 from 6:00-10:00PM

Moffat Takadiwa, The Occupation of Land, 2019; found computer keys, toothbrushes and plastic bottle tops; 120 x 144 , 7 inches, image courtesy the artist and Nicodim Gallery

Old Growth - New Decay

Environmental Justice, Environmentalism and Sustainability 

September 7, 2021 – November 12, 2021

Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University

David Bell

veronique d’entremont

Alexandre Dorriz

Joel Garcia

Karen Hampton

Colleen Hargaden

iris yirei hu

Pope.L

Julie Shafer

Moffat Takadiwa

Oscar Tuazon

Jenny Yurshansky 

On the occasion of Wilkinson College’s Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Environmental Justice the Guggenheim Gallery is honored to present Old Growth - New Decay: Environmental Justice, Environmentalism and Sustainability. 

As a society generally, and more specifically in the arts we have come a long way from romanticist notions of landscape and the concept of ‘nature’; in 2021 intact versions of the former are increasingly hard to find while it is uncertain whether or not the latter in its separation from human activity still holds any meaning. The ongoing impact of homo sapiens on their immediate environment as well as the planet is well documented and can be felt in many ways and places; be it water- or air-quality or the globally rising temperatures and subsequent changing weather patterns.

Situationist International writer Raoul Vaneigem remarked in 1961 in the Basic Program of the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism: “You don’t live somewhere in the city; you live somewhere in the hierarchy. At the summit of this hierarchy the ranks can be ascertained by the degree of mobility […]. “While mobility as an expression of power doesn’t hold the same significance as it did 60 years ago, considering the daily movement of middle- and lower-class commuters on congested freeways and crowded airports, the allocation of coordinates to power still rings true. Today at said summit the ranks can be ascertained by their degree of access to clean water, air, food and a moderate climate, which are tied to access to technology as well as geographically desirable locations. Subsequently not all populations are exposed to changes of the environment in the same way. Black, indigenous and other people of color are disproportionately disadvantaged when it comes to access to resources as well as the decision-making processes tied to these resources.

The works in the exhibition speak to the urgency of an international environmental agenda as well as the importance of environmental justice and a shared and just ecological agenda that emphasizes the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.

Ni Santas at L.A. Freewaves' Love &/Or Hate, A Celebration of Genders. Hollywood, CA. September 7, 2019. Ni Santas chanting, "Ni Santas, Ni Putas, Solo Mujeres."

Ni Santas x Ni Putas x Solo Muxeres

A performance by Ni Santas

as part of the virtual exhibition

 Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works

In the summer of 2016, Andi Xoch and a friend (who wishes to remain unnamed) began to make art together and noticed that the women in their community had little access to art resources. Xoch, who was an art instructor at Self Help Graphics and had recently left the all-female bicycle brigade known as the Ovarian Psycos Cycles, wanted to create another collective that would retain the sisterhood of ex-Ovarian Psyco members. The one-time friends then decided to do a call out on social media and invite women to create art together. Self Help Graphics became the perfect place to meet.

With a shared attraction to graffiti, painting, and other similar art styles, soon thereafter, many women joined the group. At one point Ni Santas consisted of about thirteen members. As time passed by the collective grew smaller due to a difference in interests, time schedules, and life. The current collective is composed of: Andi Xoch, Joan Zeta, also a former Ovarian Psyco member, and The Clover Signs, who had also joined OPC bicycle rides.

While the majority of Ni Santa’s work is rooted in aerosol art, serigraphs, and community altars, every member contributes to incorporate a myriad of art mediums through different skills and style. The goal of the collective is be open to any muxer and manifest the power of muxeres with all artistic backgrounds to learn from each other.

Ni Santas is an all women of color collective whose mission is to write their history through art, with responsibility to create socially conscious visual narratives. Ni Santas envision creating a safe space by cultivating a community of women, free of judgment to nourish their emerging artists.

“When you’re brown a women from the hood, whether you’re queer or gender non-conforming, your oppression isn’t only experienced as a women, it is any and all those things at the same time so you have to create spaces to be able to articulate those experiences.
Historically we’ve been erased from art, and we have a responsibility to re write herstory through art creating socially conscious narratives. It empowers us to support each other because we have that trust and healing space among each other. We only get stronger by coming together.”

Ni Santas x Ni Putas x Solo Muxeres

CYCLIC, Perfomance by Ron Athey, Cassils and Fanaa, 2018, Biosphere 2; Presented by MOCA Tucson; Film Still, Filmographer: Graham Kolbin

CYCLIC

A performance by Ron Athey, Cassils, and Fanaa

ON VIEW: Monday, March 1, 2021 at 12:00PM PST until Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 12:00PM PST

as part of the virtual exhibition

 

 Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works

We are honored to host this groundbreaking collaboration between artists Ron Athey, Cassils and Fanaa. For a period of 24 hours, beginning on Monday, March 1, 2021 at 12:00PM PST until Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 12:00PM PST visitors of our virtual exhibition will be able to view the film Cyclic, which documents (while unfolding on its own terms) the performance of the same name.

On December 1, 2018, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA Tucson) first presented Cyclic to an international audience of over 230 attendees in the uniquely resonant “lung” of Biosphere 2, a site which simultaneously evokes utopian and dystopian possibilities. This new, collaborative work presented in conjunction with the exhibition at MOCA Tucson “Blessed Be: Mysticism, Spirituality, and the Occult in Contemporary Art”, presented actions which highlighted the value of lives often deemed disposable, or even incomprehensible. Triangulated within a circle, alternately illuminated and concealed, the artists worked against light and dark, visibility and invisibility to bring their creative forces and subjectivities together in this performance that continuously unfolded in a triptych of tableaux vivants. MOCA TUCSON

bust & MEXIKA HI-FEM
Performances by rafa esparza

as part of the virtual exhibition

 

 Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works
 

rafa esparza (b. 1981, Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work reveals his interests in history, personal narratives, and kinship, his own relationship to colonization and the disrupted genealogies that it produces. Using live performance as his main form of inquiry, esparza employs site-specificity, materiality, memory, and what he calls (non)documentation as primary tools to investigate and expose ideologies, power structures, and binary forms of identity that establish narratives, history, and social environments. esparza’s recent projects are grounded in laboring with land and adobe-making, a skill learned from his father, Ramón Esparza. In so doing, the artist invites Brown and Queer cultural producers to realize large-scale collective projects, gathering people together to build networks of support outside of traditional art spaces.

Continental Drift / Big Head
Performances by Denise Uyehara

as part of the virtual exhibition

 Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works

Denise Uyehara is an award-winning, interdisciplinary performance artist, writer and playwright whose work has been presented across the U.S. and in London, Vancouver, Helsinki and Tokyo. For over two decades she has investigated what marks us in our migration across borders of identity through interdisciplinary performance. Uyehara’s work has been hailed as “powerful…intimate and elegiac” by the Los Angeles Times. She is a recent recipient of the MAP Fund, the National Performance Network Creation Fund and a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council (see complete listing below). A founding member of the Sacred Naked Nature Girls, she conducts workshops for artists and a wide range of communities – LGBTQ, women, people of color – and is a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities. Her book Maps of City & Body: Shedding Light on the Performance and Process of Denise Ueyehara (Kaya Press, 2004) documents her process.

Music Videos by XINA XURNER

In collaboration with Lila De Magalhaes and Christopher Richmond

as part of the virtual exhibition

Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works

Through the use of sound and performance, Xina Xurner creates a space where collective healing and shapeshifting can occur. Xina Xurner is an experimental music/performance art collaboration between Marvin Astorga and Young Joon Kwak, whose cathartic performances combine DIY and power electronics, mutated vocals, and bad drag, to expand ideas about queer and trans bodies.

Their music combines a variety of genres, in order to create sadical and sexperimental noise-diva-dance anthems that evoke a sense of death, decay, and transformation. Through their music and performances, Xina Xurner deals with themes of desire, rage, sexuality, pain, joy, and laughter - all feelings that accompany expressing one’s true self. When viewing Xina Xurner’s videos, one realizes that social constructs such as gender are constantly in flux; their work aims to make space for their audience to question how we categorize people. Experiencing their music is a cathartic experience; it allows the listener to dance-their-butt-off through their own transformation.

Their first debut album, “DIE”, was released in 2012, followed by “Queens of the Night” in 2018. Past performance spaces and events include sCum, The Smell, the Hammer Museum, Cool World, Mustache Mondays, LACE, Smart Museum of Art (Chicago), Bath Salts (NYC), and Bitchpork (Chicago), as well as international performances in Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, and Mexico City.

Glean / nOOse

Performances by Sherman Fleming

as part of the virtual exhibition
 

 Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works

Sherman Fleming received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and his MFA from Hartford Art School. His performance work has been featured at a number of institutions, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, and Franklin Furnace in New York.

His solo exhibitions include Codewords, VIAP Galerie, Heerlen, Netherlands (2006); Watercolors, International Visions Gallery, Washington, DC (2001); and Big Rebus Paintings, Nexus Gallery, Atlanta (1990). His performances include OLYMPIC, Project Row Houses, Houston (2009), and Pretending to Be Rock, Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia (2003).

He has participated in group exhibitions such as The Postmillennial Black Madonna, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Brooklyn (2007); Whisper! Stomp! Shout! A Salute to AfricanAmerican Performance Art, Colorado Springs Fine Art Center (1996); Other Bloods, Museum Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (1995); Endurance, Exit Art, New York (1995); Glean, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2019).

ABSCONDED :: #PRECEDENTSDAY

A PERFORMANCE BY DRAGONFLY

as part of the virtual exhibition
 

 Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works 

DRAGONFLY [she/they, aka Robin LaVerne Wilson] is a multidisciplinary artist who creates media and performance rituals for collective liberation. Born in Detroit and raised in Texas, she descends from enslaved Africans who rooted themselves in Alabama and Georgia after the end of the first American Civil War. She is the Gen X daughter of a career US Army combat medic (Korea and Viet Nam), and a military wife / homemaker / non-domestic cleaner. The unresolved intergenerational traumas of race, class, gender, religion and sexuality inform Dragonfly’s work as an artist/activist.

Dragonfly has studied with Linda Montano, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Sharon Bridgforth, earned a BA from Rutgers, and is completing an MA from CUNY in Applied Theatre. Recent appearances include collaborations with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens at NY MOMA and in the San Francisco Pride Parade, environmental street activism with Al Límite Collective and Sane Energy Project, debut of her solo show Black Queer Madness is/as Hypersanity at Theatre Neumarkt in Zurich, as well as a decade of leadership and performance with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir.

Her current project is ABSCONDED, featuring embodiment of historical fugitive and forgotten founding mother Ona Judge. ABSCONDED is a recurring site- and context-specific public performance on streets and social media. Archival performance of #UnpaidLaborDay was co-produced by Grace Exhibition Space, and #EjectionDay was supported by Hemispheric Institute. ABSCONDED has received coverage by Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail and Ecumenica.

BODY MEMORY - BODY VISION: PERFORMANCE WORKS

Ron Athey, Cassils, Dragonfly, Arshia Fatima Haq, Sebastián Hernández, Sherman Fleming, rafa esparza, Lila De Magalhaes, Christopher Richmond, Ni Santas, Denise Uyehara, Wilawan Wiangthong, Xina Xurner.

February 15th – March 15th, 2021

The Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University is honored to host BODY MEMORY BODY VISION – Performance Works, a virtual exhibition that takes place over the course of February and March 2021, co-curated by Danielle Cobb, Olivia Collins, Nicole Daskas, Lucile Henderson, Marcus Herse, Hannah Scott and Natalia Ventura.

Members of the Art Department’s DEI Committee, student gallery assistants and the gallery coordinator have co-curated this exhibition to present artists and artist collectives whose practices are vital to furthering diversity, equity and inclusion. Each week we will highlight two artists or collectives and release additions to the growing exhibition accompanied by student writing from interviews and personal notes to poetry.

Performance wants to be partaken in and a virtual exhibition can hardly replace the understanding of bodies interacting in the real world; the fleetingness of the moment and the impact that intense experiences have, the smells, the sounds, the feeling of proximity to other bodies and how we negotiate shared spaces cannot be captured via documentation. However, this show takes the notion of space and who occupies it as its cue. Addressing the ongoing underrepresentation of marginalized groups in the institutionalized and free market art world, the exhibition shows a selection of performance works by BIPOC and genderqueer artists. Questioning the status quo of visibility within this framework and actively contributing to changing that status is one aspect the contributions share. Another one is the deliberate step outside of this structure beyond addressing art world internal discourses, in offering visions relevant to communities and social realities.

Body Memory Body Vision – Performance Works presents 16 artists who create a distinct range of actions and whose aesthetic scope is manifold and cannot be subsumed under one criterion of expression - stylistic unity is beside the point. The commonality is making ways of being visible that are invisible or actively suppressed; it is the invitation to see the complexities and scope of society’s heterogeneity beyond the binary thinking that still guides mainstream culture’s decision-making in philosophical and therefore social, political and economic terms.

Stay tuned for announcements in your inbox and on our Instagram and Facebook accounts.

Interior Space - A Visual Exploration of the International Space Station: Photographs by Paolo Nespoli & Roland Miller; Virtual Exhibition

Interior Space - A Visual Exploration of the International Space Station: Photographs by Paolo Nespoli & Roland Miller

Please join us for the artist reception on November 2, 2020 at 6:00PM PST https://chapman.zoom.us/j/2230148906

Visit the Virtual Exhibition here:
https://scalar.chapman.edu/scalar/interior-space---a-visual-exploration-of-the-international-space-station-photographs-by-paolo-nespo/index

We are thrilled to premiere this exceptional body of work by Roland Miller and Paolo Nespoli. The photos provide unique insight into the cultural landscape generated by astronauts, scientists and visitors on the International Space Station. At the same time the works constitute a first attempt to co-create photography of this environment by an artist on earth and an astronaut inhabiting this most remarkable milestone in the development of human capabilities for living in space. With 20 years of ongoing habitation, the superstructure continues to set the standards in space occupancy from being the largest space craft ever constructed, having hosted around 40% of all space travelers to the costliest space endeavor with some estimates as high as $150 billion. The images are witness to the reality of space life from fixing objects to the wall with Velcro to keep them from floating around the station, to the awe-inspiring view from the station's cupola, its main observation window, onto earth or into the depths of space. The reception on November 2nd, 2020, coincides with the 20-year anniversary of human habitation of ISS.

Roland Miller, a Chicago native, studied photography at Utah State University earning his B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees. For 14 years, he taught photography at Brevard Community College (now Eastern Florida State College) in Cocoa, Florida, where he was first exposed to many nearby NASA launch sites. He then taught at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois for six years before becoming dean of its Communication Arts, Humanities and Fine Arts division in 2008. Miller retired from higher education in 2018 to work full-time on his aerospace photography.

Paolo Nespoli is an Italian astronaut and engineer of the European Space Agency (ESA). In 2007, he first traveled into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a mission specialist of STS-120. In December 2010 he again traveled into space aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft as an Expedition 26/27 flight engineer. Nespoli's third spaceflight was on board Soyuz MS-05, which launched in July 2017 for Expedition 52/53. He received his bachelor's degree in Aerospace engineering in 1988 and his master's degree in 1989 in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Polytechnic University in New York.

We are grateful to the artists Paolo Nespoli and Roland Miller for entrusting us with their extraordinary work and want to thank Justin Walsh, Lia Halloran and Julie Shafer for their support of our virtual presentation.

Hostile Terrain 94 by the Undocumented Migration Project at Chapman University Online Exhibition

Hostile Terrain 94 by the Undocumented Migration Project at Chapman University

As part of our fall 2020 programming the Guggenheim Gallery will host Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94), a participatory art project sponsored and organized by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a non-profit research-art-education-media collective, directed by anthropologist Jason De León. The exhibition is composed of ~3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. These tags are geolocated on a wall map of the desert showing the exact locations where remains were found. The installation will simultaneously take place at a large number of institutions, both nationally and globally in 2020.

During the month of September 2020 Students from several classes in the Wilkinson college (including the Wilkinson Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Race FFC, Cultural Anthropology and Latinx studies) along with many volunteers from across the campus will participate in filling out the tags that comprise the installation. Due to physical distancing regulations in response to the COVID 19 virus this activity will take place remotely and participants will work form the safety of their homes. We will present the finished installation along with documentation of its creation as well as personal reflections by students in form of a virtual exhibition during the reception on October 1st.

On occasion of the project the Guggenheim Gallery will publish a conversation with Los Angeles based artist Raul Baltazar about his video works, some of which will be featured in the virtual exhibition. Working through aesthetic notions given in Mesoamerican and Western culture, Baltazar often mixes performance, video, photography, drawing, painting, murals, and community-based projects, to create new relations for the decolonial art object. His work is often driven by the struggle of Mestizo, Xicanx, POC and Mesoamerican Indigenous communities and their revolutionary vision for change in the context of Los Angeles. In addition, his work postulates responses to trauma and the body, examining the experience and rational abuse of power and authority by means of sanctioned or unsanctioned reiterations of violence in contemporary life. Baltazar challenges this by participating in the creation of contemporary cultural production rooted in an artistic research of ancient cultures.  Where his work opens up a space for healing, communication and reflection; in order to engage publics and communicate the value of a self-reflexive identification with indigeneity.

Please join us and Jason de Leon, Gabe Canter, photographer Michael Wells from the undocumented Migration Project as well as artist Raul Baltazar for the reception on Zoom on October 1st, 2020 at 5:00PM.

https://chapman.zoom.us/j/2230148906